French Apple Tart

I actually made this last week but I've been a bad blogger recently. I haven't been cooking anything very exciting either, mostly because it has been so hot that I really don't want to be standing over a hot stove for any length of time. The apple crisp I posted about a couple of weeks ago is Blondini's real favourite apple dessert but in the summer who can face a hot apple pie? This, therefore, is our summer version.

French Apple Tart

Pastry
4oz hard tomor (or other hard fat)
8 oz plain flour
1 oz caster sugar
1 egg
A little water (I fill half an eggshell with water and this is usually the right amount)

Filling
7 cooking apples (rough amount - obviously depends on size)
Caster sugar to taste
Cinnamon to taste
Juice of half a lemon
1 teasp of oil or small amount of butter

Glaze
3 tablespoons apricot jam
3 tablespoons caster sugar

Combine the pastry ingredients together in a food processor or mix by hand until you have a smooth dough. Roll out and press into the pie dish. Cover with baking paper and baking beads (or weigh it down with something else) and put in the oven at 160 or your normal baking temperature for about 30 minutes, or until it has hardened but it not totally cooked.

While it is cooking, peel all of the apples (rub lemon juice over them to keep them from going brown while you work on other apples. Quarter 3 of the apples and cut them into thin slices - these will be the top of the tart. Put these in a bowl with a little of the lemon juice and sprinkle a little sugar over them. Cut the remaining apples into small chunks.

Heat the butter or oil in a saucepan and add the chunks of apple to it, stirring to prevent the apples burning or sticking to the bottom. Cover the pan and let the apples cook slowly. When they have softened, taste and add lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon as required. Keep stirring and cooking (covered) until you have an apple puree.

Spread the apple puree into the pastry case. Layer the sliced apples on top, starting on the outside, overlapping the pieces so that you have rings of overlapping apple. When completed, put the whole thing back into the oven. Cook for about 30 minutes (but check to ensure that the apples on the top are not burning (some may have darkened edges - this is unavoidable) on 160 or your normal baking temperature.

When the tart is out of the oven, take a bowl andcombine the jam and sugar and heat in the microwave (or in a saucepan) until a thick syrup is formed. I do this in the microwave and it is best to heat it for no more than a minute each time, and keep checking on it, as too long can burn it very quickly. It usually takes around 3 minutes, though obviously this will vary for all microwaves.

Using a spoon or palette knife, spread the glaze thinly over the whole tart. Leave to set and then refridgerate.

Apple Crisp

I could pretty much post about Apple Crisp any day of the week because it is one of my signature desserts and I make it all the time. Everything here is "Blondini's favourite" but this one really really is his favourite dessert, which is why we have it so often. We also call it Piao, but I won't go into why - it relates to things like Beauty and the Geek (which Blondini wouldn't want to admit he has watched) and Namibia and other hilarious in-jokes.

This is actually an invention of my mum's, and more often now she makes it as a strudel, laying out the filling onto sheets of pastry and rolling them up. This is because my brother claims not to like it as Apple Crisp, but really likes it as Apple Strudel, despite the ingredients being identical. It's one of the quickest and easiest desserts to make, and also one of the most effective. It is a Friday night staple in our house.

Apple Crisp
(serves 8-10 in a dish that is around 30cm diameter)

Filo pastry
4-5 Bramley's (cooking apples)
Raisins (if you like - we love them but some people don't and I once made this half with raisins half without)
A couple of tablespoons of brown sugar (you need to taste to see how sweet/tart the apples are)
1-2 teaspoons of cinammon
A squeeze of lemon
Sunflower or other tasteless oil spray
Icing sugar to garnish

Start by peeling, coring and chopping the apples. I cut them into little rectangles about 1.5cm x 1cm. Put them all into a bowl with a squeeze or two of lemon, to stop them from going brown along with the sugar, cinammon and raisins and mix together. Taste a piece of apple to see how sweet it is and then judge your sugar content from that. I probably use 1-2 tablespoons of sugar for this quantity of apples.

Spray the dish with the oil spray and then lay out sheets of filo pastry. You need to cover the whole dish and the sides (it's easiest just to leave a few centimeters hanging over the edges) and it should be about 2 layers thick in all parts. Give it another spritz of oil, and then tip in the apples and raisins. Level it out and then tear up pieces of filo pastry and scrunch them up and cover the apples with these. You'll probably get through 8 or 9 sheets of pastry like this - the whole area needs to be completely covered so that you can't see any apple. Spritz this again with oil when done, and then put in the oven and bake at 160 or your normal oven baking temperature (not too high) until it is golden brown - it will probably take about an hour. Remove and before serving, sieve some icing sugar over the pastry. We like to heat this in the oven whenever we serve it - you can of course eat it cold but the pastry tends to get soft and it tastes more strudelly than crispy, though it is still yum.

Lemon Fairy Cakes and Chocolate & Fresh Mint Tart

It's time to catch up on a couple of things from last weekend. We had friends staying with us, and those friends like to eat (no judgement - so do we!) but as always, preparation time was short. Obviously I made proper meals with chicken and vegetables, all nutritionally balanced - I will post about the Moroccan Baked Chicken with Chickpeas and Brown Rice another time - but what was also required was snacks and sweet things. I decided that fairy cakes make a good snack as they cook so quickly and therefore don't occupy my oven for very long, which is important when it is 7pm on a Friday night and you need to get a whole dinner in there. I also really like these fairy cakes as they are like the ones my grandma used to make - I really remember picking the delicious lemon icing off and eating them in tiny bites.

Lemon Fairy Cakes
(makes about 20)

Cakes:
4oz butter/margarine
6oz caster sugar
6oz self raising flour
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons cold water
Pinch of salt

Icing:
Juice of one lemon
Approx 6oz icing sugar, sifted

Beat all the cake ingredients together and spoon into fairy cake cases (I put my cases inside fairy cake tins, to help them hold their shape). Cook for about 15 minutes on 160 or your normal baking temperature. They are done when you can stick a fork into the centre cake and it comes out clean, and they should be spongy to the touch and lightly golden.

When they are cool, put the lemon juice in a bowl and rest a sieve on top of it. Push the icing sugar through it, stopping every now and then to stir the mixture, so that you can see when you are at the desired thickness (this is quite thick, nearly opaque, so that it is spoonable but not too liquidy) - it is impossible to be more precise because of course each lemon will yield a different amount of juice. Spoon this icing onto your cakes, leave to set.


For dessert on Saturday, I made a chocolate tart. As we were having meat for lunch (cf rules of keeping Kosher), the dessert needed to be non-dairy. I used a recipe I had from a chocolate tasting class at Maison du Chocolat for the chocolate ganache, but the quantities in that recipe were somewhat imprecise, so it was really improvisation.

Chocolate and Fresh Mint Tart
(in approx 20cm diameter pie dish)

Pastry:
2oz hard tomor/other hard fat
4oz plain flour
1 egg
0.5oz caster sugar
A dash of water

Filling:
500ml soy cream (I imagine it is the same amount of real cream (single cream) if you prefer the dairy version)
200g dark chocolate - I used Lindt 70% (I should probably take out shares in Lindt, I use it so much)
Handful of fresh mint leaves (easier if you use stalks with leaves, as you have to remove them later)

Begin by mixing all of the pastry ingredients together. If it is too soft, leave it to chill in the fridge first, and then roll it out. I like to put a piece of clingfilm down on the surface, sprinkle with a little flour and roll it on that. Then you can pick the pastry up all in one piece, fit it into the pie dish and peel off the clingfilm with no mess or breaking pastry. Put a piece of baking parchment on the surface of the pastry and use baking beads or something else to weigh it down for cooking. Bake the empty pie case at 160 or your normal baking temperature for 30-40 minutes or until it is golden and hard.

When it is cooled, prepare the filling. Break the chocolate into small pieces and put it in a large bowl. Then put the cream into a saucepan with the fresh mint and bring to the boil. When it is boiling, remove the mint leaves (you may need to sieve this, or just take them out with a spoon), and then pour it over the chocolate in the bowl. Leave to stand for 30 seconds, and then stir - the chocolate will melt into the cream this way. When you have a thick, smooth chocolate cream, simply pour it into the tart case and you're done.

The Apprentice Final

Five of my best girls came over last night for the Apprentice final (that's wot i'm talkin' abou') so I made us a quick and delicious dinner: open-roasted sea bass, new potatoes and broccoli. Broccoli is something that I've tried for a long time to like - I've always thought it was vile and have long agreed with that Simpsons bit - Dr Hibbert pulls broccoli from Homer's corpse and says, "another broccoli-related death" and Marge says, "but I thought broccoli was healthy" and Dr Hibbert says, "one of the deadliest plants alive. It tries to warn you with its terrible taste." The Simpsons aside, I know that it is very healthy and also it is Blondini's favourite vegetable so I wanted to make more effort to like it. My mum suggested stir frying it with a tiny bit of olive oil (or olive oil spray), crushed garlic, chili and salt, using tenderstem broccoli (the long thin one, not the nasty one that looks like a revolting tree) and it's actually really good. As in, not just edible, but excellent.

For the seabass, I got the fish guy (he's really not a fishmonger - he just wears the fish hat and stands at the fish counter but he can't distinguish between plaice and salmon) to scale and gut the fish but leave the heads on, and then at home I just rinsed them, slashed their sides with 3 or 4 cuts, laid them out on a tray, stuffed their slashes with fresh rosemary and drizzled olive oil and sprinkled sea salt over them. They roast just like that for about 30 minutes, and meanwhile I had a big tray of baby new potatoes with olive oil, salt and Provencal herbs roasting beautifully in the bottom of the oven.



That was all very nice but since it wasn't really a very cooking-ish night I will also write about the Chocolate Nemesis I made on the weekend, since I am not likely to make it again for another year. It's delicious, but.. well, when you see the ingredients you'll see why. Quickly googling this recipe has revealed that this is apparently notoriously difficult to make. I have always had success with the following recipe - the original but with my own hints and tips! I think in this recipe more than any other you really need to follow all the instructions to the letter.


Chocolate Nemesis (from the River Cafe Cookbook - I have halved the recipe because I cannot think of any occasion when you would need the big one - it is so rich that you would only eat a tiny slice anyway. This halved version would probably serve about 20 people)

12oz dark chocolate (I used Lindt 70% - I recommend using the best chocolate you can find because that is what you taste)
5 eggs
1/2 lb unsalted butter
9 oz caster sugar (this is the one area of the recipe where I think you can deviate - I think this is too much sugar and I use less)
8fl oz water

Start by heating the water with 2/3 of the sugar in a saucepan, and simmer until it dissolves into a syrup (I recommend using a sugar thermometer to make sure you have this right - on a sugar thermometer the temperature needs to get to, I think, 110° C or 230° F.) When it reaches this point, take it off the heat and add the chocolate and butter cut up into small bits. Stir to melt and leave it to cool - it will be a thick glossy chocolatey sauce.

Then put all the eggs, not separated, into a bowl with 1/3 (or less) of the sugar and now you need to use electric beaters (the best would be if it was in a KitchenAid or Kenwood mixer) for 10 minutes. The eggs need to quadruple in volume - this will happen before 10 minutes are up but beat for precisely 10 minutes. Then pour the chocolate into the egg mix, scrape all the sides down with a spatula, and mix for 10 seconds. I expect this will not be quite enough, so mix for another 10 seconds, but really try not to mix any more than that. Use a round tin - mine is an ancient loose-bottomed tin, around 8 inches diameter - grease it, and if it is a loose-bottomed one like mine, wrap the bottom of it in foil, covering most of the outside of the tin. Pour the mixture into the tin, and then place the tin into a deep tray (like a roasting tin). Pour boiling water into this tin and put the whole thing into the oven, cooking for about 30 mins on whatever your normal baking temperature is (mine in my electric fan oven is 160°)

Take it out the oven and out of the bain marie, and leave to cool and set in the tin, and then refrigerate. Remove from the tin when you are ready to serve - I like to dust it with icing sugar.