coconut cream pie

If there were such a thing as extreme cookery, I think I'd be a champion. You know, baking under dangerous conditions, high-speed frosting, using spatulas to fend off oncoming missiles... all hypothetical examples, obviously. Of course I don't live in a madhouse.

The thing is now, I don't know how to cook in normal conditions. I'm so used to stepping over brawling sisters on my way to the Kitchenaid that when the kitchen is quiet and empty I'm quite baffled, and keep checking behind doors and under tables in case someone's planning an ambush. Every recipe I make comes with mental breakdown as standard, and if there's no one else around to cause it, I find I've started sabotaging myself.

There's no excuse. Perhaps I felt I was having too easy a time of it? Perhaps I was subconciously un-nerved by my serene and stress-free morning in the kitchen, and felt I should dump my pie crust out on the counter just to stop myself from getting too complacent? Perhaps I had been lulled into a false sense of security and totally disengaged my brain as a result, causing me to - I wish I was kidding - TURN MY PIE DISH UPSIDE DOWN to try and brush away the messy crumbs from the trimmed edges?

I'm getting hacked off again just thinking about it.

Usually I'd take this sort of thing as a sign that I'm not destined for culinary success on that particular day, and would either go back to it some other time or ditch the recipe - but I had a potluck dinner that evening, and had already made the pie filling, and didn't have a lot to lose by baking up another rush-job coconut crust. I mean, apart from my sanity, and other things I wouldn't really miss. As a result my pastry is a bit of a mess, but nothing that can't be fixed by a mound of sweetened, vanilla-scented whipped cream.

So, yes. Extreme baking: I'm pretty good at it. Regular baking?

Not so much.

Triple Coconut Cream Pie
Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen
(Makes one 9-inch pie)

The good news is that this pie is pretty simple to put together, provided you remember to switch your brain on beforehand, and is completely delicious - and apparently, rather famous at Tom Douglas' Dahlia Lounge restaurant in Seattle. I've never set foot in Seattle, but it went down equally well in a sleepy Northern English village at our potluck dinner. Of the coconut filling, my friend Leah declared happily, 'it tastes just like the filling of a Bounty bar!', and I had to explain that Bounty bars tasted of coconut, rather than coconut tasting of Bounty bars.

This was the only part of the dinner conversation that wasn't about religious theme parks or Alice's shorts, so you're lucky I have anything suitable to report at all.

For The Coconut Pastry Cream:
480ml (2 cups) milk
480ml - don't know the weight, sorry (2 cups) dessicated coconut
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
2 large eggs
110g (1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp) sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
60g (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened

For The Pie:
One 9" Coconut Pie Shell (recipe below) pre-baked and cooled
600ml (2 1/2 cups) heavy cream, chilled
60g (1/3 cup) sugar
1 tso pure vanilla extract

For Garnish
60g (2oz) toasted flaked coconut - or unsweetened "chip"/large-shred coconut (about 11/2 cups)
Chunks of white chocolate (60-100g/4 to 6oz, to make 60g/2oz of curls)

1. To make the pastry cream, combine the milk and coconut in a medium saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add both the seeds and pod to the milk mixture. Place the saucepan over medium-high heat and stir occasionally until the mixture almost comes to a boil.

2. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and flour until well combined. Temper the eggs (to keep them from scrambling) by pouring a small amount (about 1/3 Cup) of the scalded milk into the egg mixture while whisking. Then add the warmed egg mixture to the saucepan of milk and coconut. Whisk over medium-high heat until the pastry cream thickens and begins to bubble. Keep whisking until the mixture is very thick, 4 to 5 minutes more. Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the butter and whisk until it melts. Remove and discard the vanilla pod. Transfer the pastry cream to a bowl and place it over a bowl of ice water. Stir occasionally until it is cool. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream to prevent a crust from forming and refrigerate until completely cold. The pastry cream will thicken as it cools.

3. When the pastry cream is cold, fill the prebaked pie shell with it, smoothing the surface. In an electric mixer with the whisk, whip the heavy cream with the sugar and vanilla on medium speed. Gradually increase the speed to high and whip to peaks that are firm enough to hold their shape. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a star tip with the whipped cream and pipe it all over the surface of the pie, or spoon it over.

4. For the garnish, if not using pre-toasted coconut, heat the oven to 180°C. Spread the coconut chips on a baking sheet and toast in the oven, watching carefully and stirring once or twice, since coconut burns easily, until lightly browned, 7 to 8 minutes. Use a vegetable peeler to scrape about 2 ounces of the white chocolate into curls.

Decorate pie with white chocolate curls and the toasted coconut.

Coconut Pie Shell
180g (1 cup + 2 tbsp) plain flour
120ml - don't know weight- (1/2 cup) dessicated coconut
115g (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
80ml (1/3 cup) ice water, or more as needed

In a food processor, combine the flour, coconut, diced butter, sugar, and salt. Pulse to form course crumbs. Gradually add the water while pulsing. Use only as much water as needed for the dough to hold together when gently pressed between your fingers. You don’t want to work the dough with your hands; you just want to make sure the dough is holding. The dough will be quite loose.

Place a large piece of plastic wrap on the counter and dump the coconut dough on top. Pull the edges of the wrap around the dough, forming a rough flat round. Chill for 30 minutes to an hour before rolling.

Once chilled, unwrap the dough and place onto a lightly floured surface. Using a floured rolling pin, roll out the dough into a 1/8-inch thick circle. Add more flour if the round sticks to the surface. Trim to a 12- to 13-inch circle.

Transfer dough to a 9-inch pie plate. Ease the dough into the plate. Take care to not stretch the dough as it will shrink during baking. Trim any excess dough to a 1- to 1 1/2-inch overhang. Turn the dough under the edge of the pie plate and flute the edge with your finger. Chill at least one hour before baking (I put it in the freezer). This will help prevent shrinkage during baking.

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Place a sheet of foil or parchment paper in the pie shell and fill with pie weights (or dried beans) to prevent bubbling. Bake 20-25 minutes until golden. Remove the pie weights and foil and continue to bake another 10-12 minutes, or until the bottom of the crust has golden brown patches. Allow to cool before filling.

Note: The dough can be made ahead and stored in the refrigerator for 1-2 days, or in the freezer for a few weeks.

tomato & mozzarella tart with basil-garlic crust

Food blogging is one of those things which starts off fairly rationally ('oh, I'll just take a quick picture and copy/paste this recipe up for future reference') and ends up taking over your life and sanity ('NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO EAT UNTIL I'VE PHOTO'D THIS, AND I DON'T CARE HOW COLD IT IS. AND NO, YOU CAN DAMN WELL HAVE THE CHIPPED PLATE, I NEED THE WHITE ONE. NOW SHUT THE HELL UP WHILE I TRY TO THINK OF SOMETHING WITTY TO SAY'). It's maybe not the best hobby to take up if you want to make friends, although you'd be amazed at what eccentricities people will forgive when a tray of brownies is in it for them.

There are a few things which are incredibly frustrating to a blogger. One is a great recipe which photographs appallingly, especially if it involves seasonal produce. You know you're going to have to make it again, and then you can't get the fruit or whatever it is you need, and it's going to be another year before it's back in season - ugh. (I have a stunning rhubarb & orange cake sitting on my hard-drive - not literally; the crumbs would get on my keyboard - which embodies this very problem)

The other problem is similar, but less common. When you make something, and you photo it - and then you take it to a party and can't get pictures of the inside (oh cake, how you taunt me) before it's inhaled.

OR, when you make a kickass tomato and mozzarella tart in that tiny interval of time before the summer's tomatoes vanish forever, with a glut of tiny, perfect red-and-orange tomatoes donated by your charming and lovely friend Alex and her greenfingered father (who apparently has had great success with tomatoes and courgettes this season), and it's pretty much the cutest, most photogenic thing you've ever seen in your life. And then you go out for the night, and when you come back the next morning you find that the ENTIRE 10" TART has been ENGULFED by the THREE members of your family, IN ONE NIGHT.

Not that this has ever happened to me -- OH, WAIT.

But when am I ever going to see such adorable tomatoes again; in 2009, at least? I had to post it anyway. Because let's face it, I may not have personal feedback here - but the rate at which this tart vanished is, in itself, a pretty good review.

Don't miss me too much: I'm spending the next week in a tent in Scotland (in September. Yes, I know. Wettest holiday ever), so won't be around until next Sunday. Assuming your comments give me the will to survive the drowning hazard this camping trip entails (hinting, much?) I will be back soon with the sugar high you've been waiting for. Three clues for you: Chocolate. Peanut butter. Cake.

Okay, so they weren't so much 'clues' as the recipe title. Don't wait up!

Tomato & Mozzarella Tart with Basil-Garlic Crust
via Ezra Pound Cake
Adapted from Jack Bishop’s “The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook”

I know tomatoes are almost gone, but Alex had so many that I told myself it was okay to post this now - surely she can't be the only one with three giant ice cream tubs full of tomatoes at his time of year? Besides, that should just spur you all to hurry all the more to try this. If you're a Caprese salad fan, this is a much more fun and interesting way to get the same flavours; not to mention that the basil-garlic tart dough is charmingly green-hued before baking. Easily amused, moi?

1 recipe Basil-Garlic Tart Dough (recipe follows)
250g (8 oz) sliced mozzarella
500g (1 pound) ripe tomatoes - if fullsized, core and cut crosswise into thin slices. I used teeny ones, cut into halves.
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1. Prepare the dough, and press it into a 10-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.

2. Preheat the oven to 190C. Line the bottom of the tart shell with mozzarella. Arrange the tomatoes over the cheese in a ring around the edge of the tart and a second ring in the center. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil.

3. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the cheese has started to brown in spots, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool on a rack for at least 5 minutes before slicing. (The tart may be covered and kept at room temperature for 6 hours.)

Basil-Garlic Tart Dough
hanful (1/3 cup) fresh basil leaves
1 medium garlic clove
180g (1 1/4 cups) plain flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
115g (1 stick) unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 8 to 10 pieces
4-5 tablespoons ice water

1. Place the basil and garlic in the work bowl of a food processor. Process, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed, until finely chopped. Add flour and salt; pulse to combine.

2. Add butter. Pulse about 10 times, or until the mixture resembles pea-sized crumbs.

3. Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, pulsing several times after each addition. After 4 tablespoons water have been added, process the dough for several seconds to see if the mixture forms a ball. If not, add remaining water. Process until dough forms into a ball. Remove dough from processor.

4. Flatten the dough into a 5-inch disk. Wrap it in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (The dough can be placed in a zipper-lock plastic bag and refrigerated for several days or frozen for 1 month. If frozen, defrost the dough in the refrigerator.)

5. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch circle. Lay the dough over the tart pan, and press it into the pan. Trim the dough, and proceed with the recipe as directed.

strawberry & rhubarb cheesecake tart

Time is doing freaky things all over the place at the moment, and I don't like it. I keep intending to post a particular recipe that just-can't-wait, and then thinking, you know, 'shit, better post that asparagus tart before next year's asparagus turns up', or 'when is rhubarb season over'?

I don't know when rhubarb season is over, but I'm posting this in the hopes that the answer is Not Yet.

So that's annoying enough to keep track of, but you want to know what's really weird? My nineteenth birthday. The other day. Um, what? Nineteen is old. Nineteen is resolutely Not A Child. Nineteen sucks.

Interesting fact for you: I was sixteen when I began Happy Love Strawberry. I mean, okay, it was like the day before my seventeenth birthday. But still! I was technically sixteen! And ever since, one thing I've heard a lot is 'I can't believe you're only 17/18/so young'. No longer!

I think I can feel my cells dying.

Anyway, since summer is going by crazyfast - does time do this as you get older? Oh my god, I'm having an age crisis here - I had to rethink the post I'd initially planned for today so I could share this with you before the last of the strawberries & rhubarb is lost to us. Lost, like my youth.

So: this recipe. You know when I fell in love with the brown sugar cinnamon pastry of my apricot galette, a few weeks ago? Well, I promised you'd see it again, and here it is; but this time, with a creamy layer of baked vanilla cheesecake between pastry and fruit - because everyone knows that anything is better with cheesecake involved. And yes, it's another big hit with my mother, especially warm from the oven and finished with a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream. Oh my.

Strawberry & Rhubarb Cheesecake Tart

I had no idea if I even liked rhubarb before making this tart - but yum, apparently I do. If you're dubious over it, you can definitely use all strawberries, but you'd need to reduce the sugar a little (likewise, if you wanted to use all rhubarb (900g/2lb), I'd up the sugar back to 85g/3oz; these were the original proportions in the recipe I based this upon).

This is the perfect late-summer dessert: a little sweet, a little tart, kind of wholesome, and wrapped in brown sugar cinnamon pastry. Do you think I've said those words enough times yet?

For the pastry:
150g (5oz) plain flour
50g (2oz) wholemeal flour
2 tsp cinnamon
140g (1 stick + 2 tbsp) cold butter, cut into small chunks
85g (3oz) light muscavado sugar
1 egg, separated
1 tbsp demerara sugar

1. Put the flour & cinnamon in a food processor and add the butter, processing to make fine crumbs. Reserve 2tbsp of the muscavado sugar, then add the remainder and the lemon zest, and briefly mix. Add the egg yolk and 1 tbsp water, then pulse to make a firm dough. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and briefly knead. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.

For the fruit:
juice of 1 whole lemon
450g (1lb) rhubarb
450g (1lb) strawberries, sliced
50g (2oz) caster sugar

2. Put the lemon juice in a pan with the rhubarb & caster sugar, and cook on a low heat til sugar is dissolved. Then cook for about 5 mins, tipping the strawberries in for the last minute or so (so they don't break up too much). It will be very juicy; tip it all into a sieve over a bowl and leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 200C.

For the cheesecake:
1 egg
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
400g (14oz) full-fat soft cheese
50g (2oz) caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

3. Beat the egg in a bowl, then beat in soft cheese, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest.

4. Roll out pastry on a sheet of baking parchment to a roughly 12"/30cm round. Slide pastry & paper onto a large baking sheet. Spread cheesecake mixture over pastry to within 2"/5cm of the edges. Spread cooled fruit over top, then fold the pastry edges over the filling, leaving the centre exposed. Brush with reserved egg white & sprinkle with 1tbsp demerara sugar. Bake at 200C for 30mins.

5. Optional: While baking, heat the reserved juices with 50g sugar and boil for a few minutes until reduced to a thickish glaze (I left mine runny, for time reasons). Drizzle a little over the fruit to when out of the oven, and serve the rest warm, separately. Eat warm or hot with ice cream.

french lemon meringue tart

What did you always want to be when you grew up?

Not that I'm, er, looking for ideas, or anything. Various friends have proposed to me that I could work in a bakery, or open my own cake-and-teashop, or generally pipe buttercream for a living... but I've always thought I'd probably get bored (and/or obese) too easily. The truth is, I not-so-secretly want to be a pirate, or possibly a hired assassin.

I also want to be several inches taller and married to Johnny Depp, but it turns out we don't always get what we want. Sigh.

This lemon meringue tart got me thinking, for several reasons. Firstly; I'm not going to pretend that I'm all experienced with patisserie, because I'm not, but though I know this is by no means perfect and I would probably be laughed out of cookery school -- hooboy, was I proud of it. I've never made a French-style lemon meringue tart before (LM tarts have a lemon cream filling, with a texture which reminded me of swiss meringue buttercream; whereas the more common (to me) LM pies have a lemon filling made with egg yolks and cornflour), and the several components of this are rather intimidating - not to mention all the 'chill overnight' and 'let rest for two hours' type instructions (all of which I entirely disregarded), and the demand for a sugar thermometer (which I similarly ignored, on account of not having one).

Yeah, I really wasn't qualified to make this tart, on reflection.

But I'm so glad I did, because as I piped swirls of Italian meringue over the lemon filling (piped being a term used loosely, since I left my piping bags at uni and had to use a plastic sandwich bag from my mother's kitchen drawer... which inevitably burst midway through and forced me to blob the rest of the meringue onto the tart with a teaspoon. But I digress) I really thought that I wouldn't mind a future in this sort of thing. When I realised it had all actually worked, and come together, and I didn't even have to call it 'rustic' for a change... I saw the appeal of a little shop of cakes and patisserie; all neat and pretty and professional.

And then?

...

AND THEN I GOT TO BLOWTORCH IT.

HELL YEAH.

Maybe I'll be one of those pirates who attack people with blowtorches... and then make creme brulee afterwards. I'm pretty sure there's a job market there.

Lemon Meringue Tart
Adapted from Pierre Herme, via Foodbeam.
Tart crust adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Makes enough for one 9-inch tart

I was so proud of how pretty this looked that I've barely even talked about the taste - but for the record, this kicks the arse of any lemon meringue 'pie' I've eaten previously; turns out the french-style lemon cream is absolutely the way to go. This is impossibly light, crisp and delicate, and was devoured (at a family gathering; I'm a show-off) to rave reviews. For all the effort, this is definitely my go-to recipe; it's just the best there is.

For pastry:
210g (1 1/2c.) plain flour
90g (1/2c.) icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
130g (1 stick plus 1 tablespoon) very cold (or frozen) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg

1. Pulse the flour, sugar and salt together in the bowl of a food processor. Scatter the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in. (You’re looking for some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas.) Stir the egg, just to break it up, and add it a little at a time, pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process in long pulses–about 10 seconds each–until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change–heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very lightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing. Chill the dough, wrapped in plastic, for (ideally) about 2 hours before rolling.

2. To roll the dough: Butter a 9-inch removable bottom tart tin. Roll out chilled dough on floured surface to 12-inch round, lifting and turning dough occasionally to free. (Alternately, you can roll this out between two pieces of plastic, though flour the dough a bit anyway.) Turn dough into case and aeal any cracks . Trim overhang to 1/2 inch. Fold overhang in, making double-thick sides. Pierce crust all over with fork.

3. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.

4. To fully or partially bake the crust: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 190C. Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil (or use nonstick foil) and fit the foil, buttered side down, tightly against the crust. Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for 20 to 25 minutes.

5. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust has puffed, press it down gently with the back of a spoon. Bake the crust about 10 minutes longer to fully bake it, or until it is firm and golden brown, brown being the important word: a pale crust doesn’t have a lot of flavor. (To partially bake it, only an additional 5 minutes is needed.) Transfer the pan to a rack and cool the crust to room temperature, and proceed with the rest of your recipe.

for the lemon cream:
200 (1c. + 2 tbsp ) sugar
finely grated zest of 3 lemons - I used a microplane zester for this, because apparently I'm a total idiot. I lost hours of my life straining big pieces of zest from my cream; don't be like me. Use a fine zester.
4 large eggs
130ml freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 4-5 lemons)
300g (10 1/2 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into big chunks

(This amount of filling is enough for 1 8" tart + 4 3" tartlets; I just made one 9" tart and had a little filling leftover - which worked for me cause I lost some when straining, sigh.)

1. First thing: fill the sink with 3-4cm of cold water. Put the sugar and zest in a large heatproof bowl (I use the bowl of my kitchenaid stand mixer) that can be set over a pan of simmering water. Off the heat, rub the sugar and zest together between your fingers until the sugar is moist, grainy and very aromatic. Whisk in the eggs, followed by the lemon juice.

2. Set the bowl over a pan of simmering water, and start stirring with a wooden spoon. Cook the lemon cream until it reaches 85°C (ahem), stirring constantly – be prepared, as it can take quite a lot of time. As soon as it reaches 85°C, remove the cream from the heat and place the bowl into the sink and allow to cool down to 60°C. Gradually incorporate the butter, whisking after each addition (at this point, I used my kitchenaid fitted with the whisk, hence the use of the kitchenaid bowl…).

3. When all the butter as been used, blend the cream with a hand-held blender for 8 minutes. It might sound long, but will ensure a too-smooth-to-be-true lemon cream. Pour the cream into a container, press a piece of cling film against the surface to create an airtight seal and refrigerate overnight. And again I say, ahem.

4. The next day (or later, as the cream can be kept in the fridge for up to 4 days), whisk the cream to loosen it and pipe it into the tart shell and refrigerate for at least an hour before starting with the meringue. Oh, I actually did this one!

for the Italian meringue:
2 egg whites
35g (2 tbsp) caster sugar
50g (2 oz) water
150g (5 1/2 oz) sugar

Make the meringue just a little before you serve to avoid weeping. I mean the meringue weeping, not you. Well, maybe you.

1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt at slow speed until the foam throughout, add the sugar, gradually increase the speed to fast, and beat to soft peaks. Turn the machine to slow as you complete the sugar syrup.Bring the sugar and water to 115°C. Beating the egg whites at moderate speed, pour the boiling syrup into them. Increase the speed to high, and beat until the bowl is no longer hot (it should still feel slightly warm).

2. Pipe the meringue onto the lemon cream and caramelise using a blow torch.

asparagus & potato tart

I'm not a big watcher of food programmes on TV. I'm not sure why this is - I suppose a contributing factor is having Not Had A Telly for the past year at uni, but I was baking last night when Nigella Express came on BBC2, and I definitely wasn't a fan ... if by 'not a fan' you mean 'kind of wanted to give her a good shake', which I do. It was a bit of a crushing blow, considering I love all of her recipes and the way she writes - maybe I just don't like seeing people for real? Maybe it's a little too close to actual human contact for comfort? Maybe I should be locked up; but let's move on.

I was as surprised as anyone to find myself really enjoying Jamie At Home, then - you know; Jamie Oliver grows courgettes and potatoes and things, pours copious amounts of olive oil over everything, gets nice and grubby, and then serves an amazingly fresh, simple dish at the end of it. I'm good at maybe two of those things (read: consuming olive oil and getting dirty fingernails) so I feel a bit of an affinity for him.

However, Jamie At Home was something I could only watch on internet catch-up while I was at uni, which meant more often than not I'd be watching Jamie grilling seafood and tossing it with chopped red chilli and lemon juice on a bed of courgette ribbons, while I'd be sat at my desk eating cuppasoup, or - at best - 'insert food item here' on toast. (Under such depressing circumstances, you can see why I wasn't blogging.)

To come home and be allowed all the chopped red chilli and lemon juice I could get my hands on was a revelation (specifically; not to eat red chilli and lemon juice on their own), but it was this asparagus & potato tart that was the biggest success with my family; something I'd seen Jamie make on the programme weeks before that had made me sigh dramatically -'WILL I EVER SEE ASPARAGUS AGAIN?', type thing.

The fun irony of this story is that, since I made this, asparagus season has kind of ended.

I could say I'm doing this to you because I care, but that would be a lie. I'm doing this to you because I want you to feel my pain.

And also because this tart is delicious.

And also because I'm well brought up and am going to give you other options to use this base for. As long as you tell my mum what a nice girl I am.

Asparagus & Potato Tart

Adapted from Jamie At Home

Jamie's version of this used filo pastry and double cream, but since it's the eggs that set tarts like this, I used milk as it's what we had in. Obviously both work, but cream is richer if you're serving this for a particular occassion. I also used a fair bit less butter and cheese than he suggested; not consciously, just because I didn't feel we needed quite so much - use your own judgement.

British asparagus season is shorter than my tolerance for most TV chefs, but it's the mashed potato base of this that's so different, and almost anything could replace the aspargus. My little sister's optimistic suggestion (I don't know why I even asked) was 'SAUSAGES': I rolled my eyes, but on reflection a 'bangers & mash' tart is quite a cute idea.

500g (1lb 2oz) potatoes, peeled & cut into chunks
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
500g asparagus spears, woody ends removed
about 400g (8oz) shortcrust pastry (or 2oog filo, Jamie's way, but he uses an extra ton of butter for this)
100g (3oz) freshly grated Lancashire cheese
100g (3 oz) freshly grated Cheddar cheese
3 large eggs
1 x 284ml pot (1 1/4c.) double cream (I used milk)
1/4 of a nutmeg
a good blob of melted butter

1. Put the potatoes in a pan of salted boiling water and cook for 15 mins. Meanwhile blanch the asparagus in a separate pan of salted boiling water for 4 mins, and drain in a colander.

2. Preheat oven to 190C (375F) and prepare an ovenproof dish (Jamie helpfully says, 'I've used many different shapes and sizes' - men. I think a 9x13" halfroaster would be the perfect size; I made one 8x11" tart and one individual one with this quantity). Roll out shortcrust pastry into a large rectangle on a floured surface and line your tart dish with it.

-- Have you ever used the trick of rolling out pastry between floured sheets of clingfilm (plastic wrap)? I would explain further, but that's basically all there is to it. I did it for the first time making this tart, and it's changed my life, to exaggerate but a little. Yet I digress --

Prick the bottom of your pastry case a few times with a fork, and if your life is empty and you don't have an Aga, cover it with a layer of baking parchment and parbake it for five minutes or so.

3. When the potatoes are done, mash them with the cheeses. In a separate bowl, mix together the eggs and cream/milk and stir into the cheesy mashed potato. Grate in the nutmeg, season well with pepper (seasoning is key in this tart) and mixed together. Spread the mash over the pastry, then take the blanched asparagus and line it up across the filling, making sure you cover it all. Brush all over with the melted butter and put in the oven for about 20 mins, or until golden. Allow to rest 10 mins before serving alongside some fresh salad.

DB5: Dragging Arses Out Of Hiding Since 2008

Unexpected hiatus abounds!

I break my sorry silence with August's Daring Baker challenge - after totally failing to find the time to blog for two weeks, my long-standing fear of the DBers finally got me scurrying from my hiding place. You know how to get me to do whatever you want now; the threat of those Daring Baker hitmen always gets me moving...

In actual fact, it's not exactly the reveal date anymore, but I've decided it's still the 31st by virtue of the fact that I've not been to bed yet (late shift at work, sigh. And er, a trip to the pub afterwards, involving three separate people all trying and failing to teach me to play snooker. I managed to pot three balls eventually -out of about five games- but that does include the white one, twice). Besides, I couldn't let this post go by, not after all the effort to get it done.

In short: I woke up in a cold sweat two nights ago thinking the DB ninjas were lurking round my bedroom. Usually for a challenge I do it in parts throughout the month to minimise hyperventilation - for this one, I dragged my friend Alex round first thing in the morning and enlisted her aid asap.

(Alex gets a special mention today as Vice-President Camera-Owner; you may have remember me mentioning that my usual one died rather spectactularly a couple of weeks ago. It's now lying downstairs, practically with its feet in the air and its tongue stuck out. And yes, I could have got it fixed... but hello, I had eighteenth-birthday money to spend. In short: say hello to my new, shiny, beautiful Nikon D40. She is my soulmate. And also, apparently, female).

...But back to this month's challenge: chocolate eclairs.

Complete with choux pastry recipe with the fateful instructions: After the 7 minutes, slip the handle of a wooden spoon into the door to keep in ajar. When the éclairs have been in the oven for a total of 12 minutes, rotate the sheets top to bottom and front to back. Continue baking for a further 8 minutes or until the éclairs are puffed, golden and firm.

Oh. Oh, REALLY.

There is no 'slip a wooden spoon handle into the door' when you're cooking on an Aga, Daring Bakers. It just doesn't happen like that. What does happen is improvising shifts of two baking sheets of blobby pastry between the roasting and baking ovens - at which point they did look rather impressive - while pretending you can't hear your friend Alex going, 'my mum always puts slits in them now so the steam can get out, so they don't collapse or go soggy' ('THE DARING BAKERS KNOW EVERYTHING, THANK YOU ALEX.') I am apparently a stressful person to bake with.

Predictably, my choux pastry then collapsed and went soggy.

Alex is too good a friend to sit around laughing smugly (after five minutes or so, obviously), so we left the flat and soggy eclairs in the simmering oven to dry out (at a very low temperature) for a couple of hours. They did go crispy and over-baked, yes, but at least I could pick them up by then. If you were wondering; this is why my eclairs are all ugly and mis-shapen. Sigh.

I'm not a total failure. I decided not to make the pastry cream chocolate flavoured, simply because I'm not a big fan of chocolate cream, and instead added the hazelnut praline paste of last month's challenge. And the chocolate glaze on these things is to die for, though admittedly Alex did most of the work on that, while I was flailing around and breaking my mother's sink.

And maybe I'm a sucker for punishment, but yes. I will try choux pastry again. Just on a real oven. A real oven, with a door I can leave open. I dream of such things.

Recipe for Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs here.

...I hope Alex helping is okay with the Daring Bakers, on reflection. Don't hurt her. Please don't hurt her. Or me. Or my camera.

Fight The Fear Of Filo

I never understood what the problem was with filo pastry (sorry if that makes you want to slap me, cause I know some people fear it. I do avoid yeast when possible, if that helps? I thought so). My mum uses it pretty often, and I prefer it to say, puff pastry. I just never considered it a problem medium, so to speak.

A 'medium'. Ahaha. For my art.

...No, it's okay for me to laugh at that. It's just rude when you do it.



On the subject of my pastry masterpieces (imagine me saying all this very sarcastically by the way, or else you might want to slap me again. Generally speaking I often deserve it, but let's at least wait for the opportune moment), I hereby present to you a work of art to rival the pyramids...

...and also some filo pastry, spinach & ricotta studel affair rubbish.

(I jest, once again. This is delicious). It would probably look better if I were a better cook - I fear poetry is my true calling, sorry everyone - but this doesn't reflect on my filo ability. Or filobility, if you will. I am confident in my filobility. I take pride in it.

*I mean, I do use bought filo sheets. You realised that, right? God, it's like you don't know me at all.

Filobility. Fility. Filability.

The Oxford English Dictionary should just employ me already.

Spinach, Ricotta & Pine Nut Strudel
Recipe from Good Food Vegetarian Summer 2008
Serves 8, 230 cals p/s
Prep 35 mins, Cook 30 mins

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, finely sliced
2 crushed garlic cloves
15g sage, roughly chopped
350g spinach leaves, shredded
350g ricotta cheese
50g pine nuts, toasted
freshly grated nutmeg
6 sheets filo pastry (about 33x24cm)
50g butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Heat oil in a large frying pan, then fry the onion over a low heat for 10-12 mins until caramelised. Stir in the garlic, then cook for a further 1-2 mins. Add the sage and spinach, then immediately transfer to a bowl. Add the ricotta, pine nuts and fresh nutmeg to taste (I overdid the nutmeg a bit) and season well.

2. Lay two sheets of filo pastry on the work surface with the long side nearest you, and overlapping by 2.5 cm to make one double width sheet. Brush with a little of the melted butter. Top with two more sheets and brush with more butter. Spoon the filling along one of the long edges. Fold the short ends in over the filling, then roll up the pastry.

3. Place the strudel, seam down, on a baking sheet and brush with more melted butter. Scrunch the two remaining sheets and arrange them over the strudel. Drizzle over any remaining butter, then bake for 25-30 mins until golden and crisp. Transfer to a serving plate or board and slice to serve.

Drip Drip Drop, Little April Showers

Dear friends,

In the tradition of yesteryear's tea party of last April, we would like to cordially invite you to take afternoon tea with us this Sunday, 6th April. The gathering will take place at ---, and will commence roughly at mid-day, finishing by about 4pm.

Regarding dress code, we hope everyone will be suitably attired in clothing dating between 1880 and 1930; for the ladies, this means tea-dresses, lace gloves, hats, parasols &c., whereas gentlemen are asked to wear suits, waistcoats, monocles, and bowler hats. Similarly, we hope to see many many moustaches.

It might just be that my friends and I really really like moustaches, but what you read above was the plan for this last Sunday; just as we'd done last year, we were going to all congregate at a nearby park dressed in period clothing for an outdoor tea party, weather permitting.

'Weather permitting' should really be emphasized in that sentence, because weather did not permit. Weather really was not bloody permitting anything. If it had drizzled, we might have persisted. Heavy rain could have been fairly depressing. SNOW BLIZZARDS, IN APRIL - I spit upon you, Weather. Pchuu.

Actually, I suspect the reason for this was that I'd organised the tea party (last year, Boy and I shared responsibilities, but he was away for the planning stage this year), so the weather was just being sadistic. People tend to like to torture me, I don't know why. Apart from the obvious reasons.


Our invitations did include an extensive list of tea party food (scones, Victoria sponges, strawberries and cream, cucumber sandwiches, &c. &c.), and one of the savoury things I'd planned to make were mini quiche tartlets - crisp shortcrust pastry; bright, juicy cherry tomatoes; colourful pieces of courgette; melted, tangy feta cheese just turning golden on the top... come on, it's practically summer in a pastry case.

Well it looks like summer's currently in the freezer, kids, and with snow this morning it may take a while for us to dare reschedule our annual tea party.

Watch there be a heatwave this weekend, now. Pchuu.



These quiche tartlets are pretty much my own recipe, if by 'my own recipe' you mean 'ripping compartments out of here, here, here, and oh, here'. I take the cheerful view that I've bastardised other people's recipes to the extent that they probably won't recognise them anymore. Plagarism for the win. On the other hand, this does mean that measurements are fairly approximate; sorry about that.

I wasn't sure if I had to bake the pastry shells blind, especially with them not being full sized, so I spent hours googling it, and then eventually stumbled across the beautiful sentence, 'if you have an Aga, there's no need to bother baking pastry blind'. I have an Aga. The rest of you can work it out for yourselves, suckers.



Courgette, Feta & Tomato Quiche Tartlets
Recipe adapted from above sources

Made 8 tartlets and one 7.5" tart for me. You could halve the ingredients if you didn't want a larger quiche, or if you have more than 8 tartlet tins (that was my downfall) make more tartlets. But you might need more pastry if you do.

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 courgettes
200 g of feta cheese
cherry tomatoes, halved
3 eggs100ml milk
100ml single cream
fresh mint & basil, chopped
ground nutmeg
grated lemon zest
500g pack of bought shortcrust pastry

Heat oven to 200Cish.

1. Roll out the pastry and cut to fill small tartlets. Use fingers to mould the pastry into the cups, before pricking them with a fork and refridgerating

2. Meanwhile, fry the onions and courgette over low heat, till softened (5-7 mins) Mix egg, milk, cream, salt and pepper and the chopped herbs. Pour it over the courgette.

3. Pour the egg and vegetable mixture on top of the pastry cases. Crumble feta and add halved cherry tomatoes individually over the tops. Make sure all ingredients are evenly spread.

4. Bake until the filling is set and a knife comes out clean, about 12-15 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving. I don't really know how long it took to cook, so keep an eye on them. The larger tart needed something like 25-30 mins.

Anyone know the weather forecast for a week on Sunday? April is indeed the cruelest month. Pchuu.