Tag Archives: cookbooks

How Bompas & Parr see the world.

Like a new word that, once learnt, suddenly pops up everywhere, jelly seems to have made a resurgence. For me it started a few weeks ago when I found three Victorian glass moulds on Brick Lane for a fiver. Whether they are in fact Victorian is debatable (they look suspiciously like Pyrex), but I couldn’t just leave them there among the usual bric-a-brac and items that had almost definitely fallen off the back of a truck.

Then came the June publication of Sam Bompas and Harry Parr’s book Jelly, and with that no excuse for me not to try out my new moulds. For those who are unfamiliar with these names, Bompas and Barr are ‘architectural jellymongers’; two young chaps who noticed a gap in the food market for jelly and have been wowing foodies with their culinary antics ever since. Among other things they have been involved in an Architectural Jelly Banquet (think moulds in the shape of St Paul’s Cathedral and Madrid’s Barajas airport); they’ve created scratch ‘n sniff cards to complement Peter Greenaway’s film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover; and they’ve transformed a building into a breathable beverage by filling it with a Hendrick’s Gin and tonic fog.

The recipes in Jelly with Bompas and Parr range from the usual fruit jellies to Glow in the Dark jelly, Bacon Cola jelly and Funeral jelly. With a birthday party on the horizon I decided to start somewhere in the middle, with Alcoholic Jellies. Being summer I opted for Champagne and Summer Fruit, Pimms Cup and Campari and Orange Jelly Bombe.

It wasn’t until I’d brought everything home from the shops that I realised my first dilemma in the guise of a small line of fine print in the Frequently Asked Questions chapter. Here the boys warned of the difficulty of using glass moulds (especially if a beginner): “The impending disaster will put you off jellying for years”. Undeterred I read on as they advised that if you must use glass, then you can line the inside of the mould with Trex, a form of vegetable shortening, to help ease the jelly from the mould. Not having Trex, I used some butter. Don’t do this. Jelly is not a cake. Failing also to read that you should wait for the jelly to cool before pouring it into a lined mould, I watched with dismay as my perfectly clear champagne jelly mixed cloudily with the melting butter.

Only one of my jellies, the Campari and Orange Bombe, successfully came from its mould in one piece but the others were delicious anyway. One friend declined to try any on the basis that she “doesn’t trust the way jelly moves”. I understand this sentiment in relation to two things – snakes and swing bridges – but for me it is precisely jelly’s quiver that makes it so appealing. Just do yourself a favour and avoid the temptation of rescuing jelly moulds from piles of junk. What you save in pounds you will pay for in disappointment. It’s easier and not much more expensive to just buy plastic moulds.

Bompas and Parr’s current event, ‘The Complete History of Food’, is taking place in London until 18 July. For more information, see their website www.jellymongers.co.uk

By Annika Kristensen