Will try and not blog about the animals for a while lest i get formulaic and derivative. I need to sort out some pics of my garden and blog on that but first here's a little of my days work - no, not the ironing or breadmaking but a little pastry number with apples I concocted from perusing several blogs. I was looking for a pastry base guaranteed not to shrink from its task in hand - namely holding a simple but delicious fillling of apple. I found one here.

So, here is my take on those patisserie apple tarts you get in french bakeshops. We can't get real sour cooking apples here so I usually look for the greenest granny smiths I can find. I made one too delicately thin so when it fell apart as i was prising the base out of the tin (oh dear! what a shame! YEAH right!) there was nothing I could do but sample it.

The base is a short (almost shortbread) pastry, the filling simply sliced apples and the syrup I made from the apple leftovers a cinammon stick,water and brown sugar boiled down and seived before adding a couple of knobs of butter. The green stuff is some little mint leaves from the garden. I only had a recipe for the pate sucree (sweet pastry) and kinda guessed the rest...Secret is to freeze the shells before filling and baking them. I parbaked the tartlets for 15mins then added the syrup and baking them for a further 10-15mins. I think the syrup will thicken significantly after refrigeration prior to serving - vanilla mascarpone as a blob on top do you think?

We had friends round this weekend and since I am still not working I had plenty time on my hands to come up with and make dinner for them. My self-given brief was a wholesome and simply flavoured menu with strong Mediterranean influences. Bit of perusing of the cookery books and magazines on the shelves and I came up with the following menu. It also allowed a lot of forward preparation before the guests arrived. Meaning it was easy to pop a champagne cork and show off my garden whilst G dealt with batch cooking some gnocchi.

Le Cachat

Le cachat is a rich goat cheese spread with a slosh of cognac. It is seemingly best matured for a week but is delicious eaten fresh made too (i.e it never lasts that long here!). Recipe is taken from p.77 of Dish magazine (Aug-Oct 2006).  Serve with the crudités of carrot, celery, gherkins and small radishes

• 100g mature crumbly feta (I used Te Mata sheep milk feta), coarsely grated
• 100g soft goat cheese (eg President), crumbled
• 125g crème fraiche
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1-2 sprigs thyme, finely chopped
• fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon cognac
• 1 tablespoon avocado oil (or alternatively EVO)

1. Mix the first six ingredients together with a fork
2. Slowly stir in the cognac
3. Taste and season further as desired
4. Spoon the mixture into a sterilized glass jar and cover with the oil
5. Seal with an air tight lid and store in a refrigerator til required – preferably 1-2 weeks to allow flavour to develop

Gnocchi

The gnocchi can be made with all purpose flour but just seem more golden when farina grade durum flour is used. They should be made pretty close to when needed – but can be refrigerated for a little while.

• 1kg agria potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 250g pasta grade durum flour plus more as required for kneading
• 2 eggs
• seasoning
• 2 tablespoons melted butter

1.                  Cut the potatoes into quarters and steam until a fork will pass through easily

2.                  Sieve cooked potato into a large bowl

3.                  Make a well in the potato and add the flour, eggs, seasoning and butter

4.                  Mix gently by hand til it has the feel of a soft smooth dough

5.                  Cut the dough into 8 pieces and roll into sausages of diameter 2.5cm

6.                  Cut gnocchi into 2cm lengths

7.                  Bring a large pot of water to the boil and add the gnocchi in batches –they sink then will rise when cooked. Cook for a further minute then remove and drop into bowl of chilled water to arrest further cooking

8.                  Place in an oiled dish, cover and place in a warm oven til ready to assemble

 

Roasted tomato broth

Doesn’t really get more simple than this – tomatoes  just roasted, pureed through a sieve (I even used the leftover solid “bits” as the base topping for a pizza and it was excellent!) and then reduced to generate a reasonably thick tomato broth – didn’t seem to need any other flavourings than those below.

• 12 large vine ripened tomatoes
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• sea salt
• coarse ground pepper
• extra virgin olive oil
• 2-3 sprigs of rosemary
• Dash balsamic vinegar or red wine (optional)
• Coarsely grated parmesan 

1. Day before required halve tomatoes, place on a large oven tray and sprinkle with the other ingredients
2. Place in an oven at 120-140DegC for several hours (as long as possible)
3. Leave in oven until cool
4. Sieve the tomatoes and garlic into a pan and warm on a low flame
5. Add a dash of balsamic vinegar or red wine if you think it needs it (I didn’t bother) just reduced to a reasonable pouring thickness
6. Pour over the gnocchi and grate parmesan over the top

Serve with a salad (spinach leaves, avocado, cucumber, spring onion etc etc) and pain l’ancienne to mop up any spare sauce…

Pain l’ancienne

The idea with this technique it to develop as much flavour as possible from the flour and develop more sugars to give the bread a deeper caramel colour. This means starting with cold dough and leaving it to mature in the fridge for about 24hours. I also had some dough left over in the fridge from my baguette dough made 3 days earlier which should also contain significant fermentation species I decided the more flavour I could add the better and added it to the fresh dough. I have just bought (yet) another bread book – The Breadmakers Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. So decided to use the recipe therein (p160) – this makes a pretty slack dough so you need to be careful when shaping and not lose too much body. I played with the style of bread – making two small baguette and two small ciabatta shapes from the dough.  I used some stoneground flour that gave the bread a slightly rustic look 

Lemon chiboust tarts

Ooh la la! C’est trop de sucre, ouefs et citron. First you make the sweet shortcrust pastry then the lemon curd then a lemon mousse assembling as you go. The recipe comes from John Burton Race’s book titled French Leave (p210). My sister thought I would like this book and indeed I spent Christmas Day 2004 on a beach in New Zealand reading it and wishing I could live in rural southern France for a year. But I digress…

The amount of pastry actually makes enough for 8 individual tart cases – using moulds with removable bases, whereas the filling is actually for 6 tarts. So you either need to reduce the ingredients or find a use for the leftover pastry….

Pastry

• 100g unsalted butter, chopped into 1cm cubes
• 100g icing sugar
• 1 egg
• 200g plain flour

1.      Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and well mixed

2.      Add the egg and mix in thoroughly

3.      Fold in the flour and form into a pastry ball, wrap tightly and chill for about 2 hours

4.      Dust a work surface with some flour and cut the pastry ball into 8 segments, form into balls and roll into circles. Place into individual tart moulds and prick base.

5.      Bake blind for 15minutes then bake open for a further 5minutes until golden brown

6.      Remove from oven to cool and gently prize off the tart moulds and cool to room temperature

Lemon curd filling

• 2 lemons, zest finely grated and juiced
• 100g caster sugar
• 75g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs beaten

1.      Place the lemons, juice and butter in a pan and bring to boil

2.      Remove pan from heat and add eggs, beating to incorporate

3.      Return pan to heat and, stirring continuously, bring mixture back to the boil until curd thickens

4.      Pour the mixture into a bowl to cool

Lemon zest decoration

1.      Before juicing the lemons for the chiboust below, finely pare off the skin (no pith) and slice into slivers and coat in caster sugar

Chiboust

• ½ tspn powdered gelatin dissolved in a tablespoon warm water
• 100ml double cream
• juice of three lemons
• 3 eggs, separated
• 120g caster sugar
• 10g cornflour dissolved in a dessertspoon of water

1.      Bring the cream to the boil, remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice

2.      Whisk the egg yolks and half the sugar together until pale then whisk in the cornflour

3.      Pour the boiled cream over the eggyolks gradually, mixing continuously

4.      Pour the cream mixture into a pan and bring back to the boil, stirring continuously until it thickens

5.      Remove from the heat and stir in the gelatin, leave to cool

6.      Whisk egg whites, adding remaining sugar gradually until it forms soft peaks

7.      Fold the egg whites into the cream mixture

 Assembly of the tarts

1.      Place a dollop of curd in each tart case to cover the base

2.      Cut 6 pieces of baking parchment about 30cm long and 4 cm high and wrap round each case, taping it to secure it. Refrigerate til chilled

3.      Spoon the chiboust into the cases smoothing the tops with a knife

4.      Dust with icing sugar and place in a freezer

5.      At least 2hours before serving remove the paper and brulee the tart tops til golden then place in the refrigerator to defrost before serving.

6.      Just before serving add some of the crystallized zest for decoration

7.      Serve with a dollop of unsweetened greekstyle yoghurt

Tasting Notes

I thought the filling could be a little less sweet for my palate and the pastry would have been perfect for a tart you ate with your fingers since it wasn’t too fragile to the touch BUT in a future effort I would go for a far crumblier really short sweet pastry (something like the pumpkin pie pastry in my American cookbook) that at least could yield to the slightest of pressure from a dessert fork.

Greek Style Yoghurt

• 750ml milk
• 2-3 tablespoons of yoghurt from a previous batch

1.      Warm the milk until about blood hot  - I just use the microwave and then let it cool if necessary

2.      Mix in the yoghurt thoroughly and place into an insulated container or somewhere warm for about 8 hours. I sometimes let the oven warm slightly, turn it off and then place a glass container of mixture into it overnight.

3.      When it is set, place the yoghurt into a muslin cloth or jelly bag and squeeze out excess whey or let it drip for several hours in the fridge until desired thickness is reached