Autumnal tarts: Novel Food

‘You know darls’ said Jo, pausing to take another sip of tea, ‘I wish I’d not read Babs. Then I could have the pleasure of reading her all over again.’

Jo, my best friend, is a woman who knows an awful lot about literature. Babs is our affectionate, Australian-ized nickname for Barbara Trapido, a South African born novelist whose small output is as impressive and enjoyable as it is addictive. Quite simply, both women are stellar.

Trapido’s characters are sexy, clever and literate, often artistic. Set in and around universities and academia, she revels, absolutely, in the romance of bohemian life. In fractured families and unlikely pairings; the ugliness and beauty of language itself. ‘Reading her,’ Anthony Thwaite wrote in the Observer, ‘is rather like being bombarded by sequins’.

Juggling draws together four people: Sparky Christina and her brilliant but melancholy adopted sister Pam; the beautiful, powerful Jago and otherworldly, grey Peter. All are bright, gifted students, each in possession of their own share of demons. A chance meeting of parents on a railway platform binds them, inextricably, to one another. There is love, unexpected and wondrous in its scope, woven with ill-conceived mayhem and devastating consequences; family breakdowns intertwine with Shakespeare, jugglers and even a smattering of mathematics. Unlikely pairings done with considerable wit and skill.

Food offers insightful portraits. Doesn’t it always? Christina and Pam’s father, the extravagant, brash Joe, wooed their gentle mother Alice on a picnic of truly epicurean tastes. Both daughters are repulsed by their father’s choice of aphrodisiac on that fated day – squid and calves sweetbreads – and delight in recoiling with mock-horror as Alice obligingly recounts the tale. Christina’s subsequent, feisty vegetarianism throws down a direct challenge to her father’s impressive, carnivorous culinary skills.

Cooking is a little like juggling. It’s about concentration, balance and practice - small feats of culinary dexterity. It’s also, sometimes, about pleasing the people you feed, taking into account their particular needs and wants. So, drawing an admittedly very long bow, these little tarts, a juggling act themselves of sweet and savoury, are just right for an offal-free seduction. Portable picnic fare to tempt even the staunchest carnivore.

Roasted pear and rocket tarts – makes 4 individual tarts

For Jo. The pastry is based on a recipe in a favourite book, Nourish by Sydney-based macrobiotic chef Holly Davis. Iku, her iconic kitchen, is legendary among my friends.

For the pastry:
50g (1 ¾ oz) of sesame seeds
150g (4 ½ oz) of spelt flour
50ml (scant ¼ cup) pale sesame oil (not the dark stuff)
75ml (scant 1/3 cup) of boiling water
1 tablespoon of tamari or soy sauce

Toast the seeds to a pale shade of gold in a dry pan. Cool on a plate.

Sift the flour into a roomy bowl and mix though the toasted seeds. Whisk the wet ingredients together, ensuring they are well combined. Using a fork, gradually add the wet mixture to the dry. Turn out onto a clean, dry surface and knead for a minute.

Cover the dough and rest for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F).

Roll pastry out thinly on a lightly floured surface to fit 4 tart tins, each with a removable base. This is a very forgiving dough – take your scraps, scrunch them into a ball and re-roll if necessary. Trim edges and bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Cool before filling.

The rest:
4 ripe but firm pears
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, finely grated
2 teaspoons of olive oil
Sea salt and pepper
Honey, for drizzling
3 handfuls of rocket (arugula)
¼ cup of almonds, roughly chopped
1 fat clove of garlic, chopped
½ teaspoon of sea salt
1/3 cup of olive oil
4 tart shells (see above)
4 tablespoons of soft goat’s curd cheese or labneh

Preheat the oven to 180 C (375 F). Quarter the pears lengthways, cutting away the cores. Place in a small baking tin.

Squeeze the ginger hard to extract the juice, as much as you can get, into a small bowl. Add the oil to the ginger juice, along with a little salt and pepper. Whisk. Pour this over the pears and toss them well. Roast for 45 minutes, turning each piece at least once to caramelise. Drizzle with a little honey.

Whiz the rocket, almonds, garlic and sea salt to an emerald green slush in a food processor or blender then, with the motor running, slowly trickle in the oil.

Cover the base of each tart shell with a spoonful of pesto. Break up a little goat’s curd and dollop as artfully as you like on top, no more than a generous tablespoon per tart, though. You don’t want to completely overdo it here. Arrange 4 pieces of roasted pear on top of each and dab with a little more pesto. Serve cold.

freshly made labneh

Simona and Lisa’s event, Novel Food, a wonderful mix of all things bookish and culinary is well under way. They're three chapters in and this is my, late, entry.

Spring herb tart

Away from the kitchen for more than a couple of weeks and these fingers start to itch, this brain begins ticking, whirring slowly into gear and then, oh dear, food itself becomes the very topic of dreams. Eating out every night in Spain, every day, too, had its charms (no washing up for starters) but the subconscious was not-so-subtly letting me know what it was craving. In lieu of actual cooking, dreaming about cooking took me by surprise.

Being surrounded by delicious salt cod and tuna dishes, inventive and awash with the most beautiful, grassy olive oil, anchovies both white and pink so succulent as to silence us on more than one occasion, snaffled up, alternating one pink, one white until the plate was empty was both wonderful and inspiring, yet each night, drifting off to sleep, vegetables, herbs and wholegrains took hold of my thoughts. Perhaps there’s something Freudian in that.

Notes from my journal this year are dotted with references searching for the perfect recipe for an all wholemeal (wholewheat) pastry. So often the dough is leaden, shrinks to nothing and tastes of cardboard. Holiday reading has happily fixed that. The idea of a tart, with a crumbly, buttery fibre-rich crust, filled with spring herbs, was sown.

Chervil is a pretty, wispy, girly sort of herb with a pale green, fern-like head of hair similar to, but finer still than, the feathery tops of baby carrots. It’s a spring tonic; a subtler version of parsley with the just the vaguest hint of anise. The classic use for it, then, is fines herbes a combination of equal quantities of finely chopped chervil, parsley, tarragon and chives. Sprinkled over a dish of perfectly cooked spring vegetables lightly drizzled with olive oil or topped, still-warm, with a spoonful of unsalted butter is reason enough to grow your own. I, however, am the chervil-killer, having tried to grow it unsuccessfully a record five pathetic times now. And it goes to seed as soon as you turn your back, before you can even utter the words, ‘I hope I don’t manage to kill this one before the holiday’s begun…’ Needless to say Prahran Market was able to oblige.

Holidays are marvelous, and there’s much more to tell, but it’s nice to be home.

Spring herb tart for 6-8
This is a Tarte aux fines herbes in essence, but as I can’t stand buying a bunch of herbs and using only a measly tablespoon or two (and watching the remainder wither away on the bench) it’s very herby and a little rougher around the edges than the classic-sounding name suggests. Spring herb tart it is then, and just the way home-cooked should be.

1 prepared tart shell (see below)
1 large bunch of spring onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of olive oil
4 large sprigs of tarragon
1 handful of chervil leaves
1 handful of parsley leaves
1 handful of chives
4 eggs, free range (you know the drill)
250ml of double cream, preferably organic
Pepper
1 large handful of grated cheese (Cheddar, Gruyere, Manchego, whatever)

Slice the spring onions thinly, greens and all, and crush the garlic. Heat the oil in a frying pan over low-medium and add the spring onions and garlic. Cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Strip the tarragon leaves, discard the stalks, and chop them finely. Chop the chervil and parsley finely, snip the chives into short lengths and add all of the herbs to the cooked spring onions and garlic, stirring well. Cool.

Beat the eggs lightly with the cream and plenty of pepper. Add three-quarters of the cheese and mix well.

Spread the spring onion-herb mixture evenly over the base of the cooked pastry shell. Gently pour in the egg mixture and top with the remaining cheese.

Bake for 20-30 minutes at 180 C (375 F) until golden on top. Rest for at least 5 minutes before slicing and serving. Good hot, cold or somewhere in between, with a salad.

Wholemeal (wholewheat) tart shell
From an idea in Colin Spencer’s Vegetable Pleasures. Don’t feel that you need to use this particular pastry – by all means use your own shortcrust – it’s just that I had a eureka moment and thought you might be interested. It will crack and misbehave and you’ll end up with a patch-worked tart shell, but it’s worth the effort. The secret is the lemon juice (which helps to develop the gluten) instead of water (which is why pastry shrinks). Bear with me.

150g (6oz) of unsalted butter
300g (a fraction less than 12oz) of wholemeal (wholewheat) flour
Pinch of sea salt
1 lemon

Measure your butter and then wrap in foil and freeze for 30 minutes or longer.

Sift the flour into a bowl and tip any bran left in the sieve into the bowl. Add the salt and mix. Using a box grater, coarsely grate the ice-cold butter into the pastry and, working quickly and lightly, crumble the mixture between your fingers, or use a pastry cutter if you happen to have one, until it resembles breadcrumbs. (This takes more effort than with white flour, but be patient).

Squeeze the lemon and add all of the juice to the bowl. Using your knuckles, pummel the mixture into a crumbly paste and form into two balls. Again, be patient – it will be crumbly, but this is desirable. Wrap in greaseproof paper and pop in the fridge for 30 minutes – 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F).

Remove both balls of pastry from the fridge. Roll out, one at a time, as thinly as you can (about ½ cm is the thinnest I got to) and yes, it will shatter and break. No matter. Place as many whole pieces as possible on the base of a tart tin with a removable base. Fill the holes and cracks in between with enough pastry to completely cover the base and sides. Any leftover pastry should be kept – this is important.

Cover the base generously with a sheet of baking paper and fill with dried beans or ceramic baking beads, whatever you have. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the beans and paper and return the shell to the oven for a further 10 minutes.

When the shell comes out, the base will reveal cracks and even holes. Fill these, as you would a cracked wall, while the case is still warm, with the leftover pastry bits and cool completely before filling and continuing with the recipe.

This is my entry for the 105^th week (can you believe?), of Weekend Herb Blogging, and event created by Kalyn Denny and hosted this week by my friend Susan, the Well Seasoned Cook.