Occasional Cooks: Pavlova

 Here is your weekly thread to talk anything and everything food. 

Share your cooking this week, ask for tips or recipes for a dish, tell us about your meals out.

This meme inspired this week's pavlova post. I read the first line, thought 'why would we clap meringue, not pavlova?', and then realised I was over-thinking a joke.

Pavlova is the quintessential aussie summer dessert. Unless you're a kiwi, in which case it's the quintessential kiwi summer dessert. We've been arguing for a century about who invented it.

It's like a meringue, but it's cooked so that the outside is crisp, but the inside remains soft and marshmallowy, then topped with cream and fresh fruit.

It is supposedly named for the Russian dancer Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and NZ in the 1920s - the shape represents her billowing skirts.

The trick is all in the baking, and knowing your oven. You warm the oven, but turn it down as soon as the pav goes in. And then at the end, you turn the oven off and leave it in there until it is cold, even leaving it overnight. Stephanie Alexander's recipe is definitive.

It's a great summer entertaining recipe, because you can do the baking the day before, and just put it all together last minute.

A trend this summer was the pavlova grazing board.

And now I'm really hungry...