I first came across this within the pages of Alan Davidson's personal recipe collection which was handed out to the members of the congregation at AD's funeral in 2003. And I'm including it here, because it is simply the best crumble recipe I know of - and I have searched, high and low, for the acme of all crumbles; amongst the nursery foods of which I'm most fond, crumble ranks highly. Recipes for crumble abound, but to my taste, too many of them end up being too dry, or too claggy, too heavy, or just a bunch of dispiriting lumps. This one, however, is light, and crisp, and perfect. TD particularly likes it in the form of a tart, as given here, but in the interests of time I frequently fore-swear the pastry shell, and just make a fruit crumble tout-court. It's allowed.
I was sceptical about AD's claimed provenance for the dish as the hotel Au Bon Acceuil, at Yport near Fecamp, since crumble seems to me to be a distinctly un-French type of thing; but, I was wrong. Davidson himself quotes a provenence from Simone Morand's 'Gastronomie Normande', which I don't have, but when I searched in the pages of Ray Compas's 'Le Grand Livre de la Cuisine Normande', there it was. And actually with the name of Tarte d'Yport, which triangulates very neatly with the story about the Hotel Au Bon Acceuil. All very satisfying...
For one eight inch tart:
Ingredients:
8" shortcrust pastry shell, chilled; approx 5 eating apples (enough that when peeled, cored and roughly chopped they will generously fill the tart shell); 100 gm sugar; 100 gm ground almonds; 100 gm butter; 100 gm flour; 1 tsp vanilla essence; quarter tsp cinnamon; generous pinch salt.
Method:
1. Heat the oven to 190 degrees C.
2. Fill the pastry shell with the chunks of apple, heaping them in the centre as they will settle during cooking.
3. Combine all the remaining ingredients (food processor is fine for this) and scatter evenly over the fruit.
4. Bake for about 35 minutes; serve, warm or cold, with thick cream or mascarpone.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment