Tarte Bordaloue

I had thought I had posted this recipe on here ages ago - it having long been in my repertoire - and was surprised to find it not there recently when I wanted to check on the quantities I generally use for the ingredents in the almond cream filling (the recipe was originally based on a version from Michel Roux, but I know I don't use his quantities, as his are for a much larger tart than I would normally make). Anyway, I realised that I hadn't ever committed it to blog, which seems a sad failing on my part. The tart is delicious, and using this method it could not be simpler to make.

When adding the almond cream to the shell, don't bother trying to spread it evenly, or to make it look neat - the amount of butter in the mixture in practice means that as it cooks it sorts itself out and levels automatically, and if you heap the mixture on top of the pears, in the centre of the tart shell, and put it in the oven like that, as it cooks, the cream adjusts itself to fill all parts of the tart shell, and puffs evenly all over.

For one 8" tart.

Ingredients: 1 8" shortcrust tart shell (I make three such shells from shortcrust made from 8 oz butter, 10 oz plain flour 1 generous pinch salt, and 50 ml water....yes, I know, it's a hybrid of metric and imperial; that's what happens when a person's long ago schooling bridged the changeover between the two systems...anyway, the three unused shells go into the freezer, from where they can be baked from frozen as and when they're wanted); 2 large pears, of pretty much any flavourful variety; 2 tbs sugar, for sprinkling; 100g butter; 100g sugar; 100g ground almonds; drops of almond essence (optional, but I think necessary, since ground almonds these days have negligible flavour of their own, and need all the help they can get); 3 eggs; 2 tbs rum; apricot glaze (again optional, depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, and on how long before serving you have finished baking the tart; if it is to be left for several hours, it will look better for being brushed with glaze).

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C and then blind bake the tart shell until the base is partially browned but not completely baked.

2. Peel, quarter and core the pears, then cut each quarter into two lengthwise, so you have 16 pieces in all.. Lay the pieces in the partially baked shell, making an outer and an inner circle. Sprinkle with the 2 tbs of sugar. Put the pears in the shell back into the oven for ten minutes or so, to soften the flesh and to concentrate the flavour of the pears.

3. In a food processor, work together the butter and the sugar, then add the ground almonds (and optional almond essence), followed by the eggs and the rum. The mixture should be fairly dense.

4.  Out of the oven, spoon the almond mixture into the centre of the tart shell, over the top of the pears. It doesn't matter if the mixture doesn't go anywhere near the edge of the shell - trying to get it to do so will only mess up the arangement of the pear pieces and in any case isn't necessary, as the cream will sort itself out during baking.

5. Bake the tarte in the oven for about forty minutes. By the end of this time, the cream will have covered the entire tart, and should have puffed and browned.

6. Remove the tarte from the oven, and leave it to cool. At this stage, if using it, brush the surface with apricot glaze. Delicious either cold or still warm.

Richard Olney

...has been my reading material for the past few days. Mostly his memoirs, unfinished at the time of his death in 1999, but with forays also into 'Simple French Food' and into 'Lulu's Provencal Table'. The memoirs have been a complete pleasure, despite - or perhaps because of - their unedited and somewhat formless delivery. With little attempt to shape the events of his life into stories with clear structures, the result is a patchwork of anecdotes and memories, many of which lead to nothing beyond themselves and are merely what they are: recollections of events which occurred and people he met and things people said from time to time. Julia Child and James Beard don't emerge from it particularly well - although both seem diminished and mean as a result, rather than impressive and monstrous - and Nico Ladenis and Simone Beck and Elizabeth David, amongst others, shine brightly.
From the  inclusion of  numerous menus of lunches and dinners he produced over the years, I can see where I've gone wrong with him in the past - with both of the other aforementioned books, I dived straight into the dessert sections. Bad idea. Desserts are not Olney's thing, and were presumably only included at the insistence of his publisher. From SFF - before consigning the book for years to the unreachable and dusty upper shelves of a bookcase - I remember unwisely trying an apple dessert of some kind  the recipe for which he said had come from his sister-in-law Judith .....only to discover that said sister-in-law ('ex' by the time of writing) had, in Olney's opinion, neither any interest in nor any skill in cooking or any knowledge whatsoever about food. Equally, from his many mentions of dinners chez Peyraud, there is no mention anywhere of dessert being served, and one assumes that Lulu's attitude towards them was significantly the same as his, i.e that any meal should finish with a good selection of cheese (and another bottle of something appropriate). Dessert wine was something of which he was very fond, but it seems that he often foreswore the accompanying dessert, on the basis that the food might interfere with the character of the wine.
Odd lacunae remain, even after having finished the memoirs - called 'Reflexions' , by the way, which is an unfortunately 'cutesy' title, and presumably intended to suggest instinctive reactions to what has happened in his life rather than a considered analysis of them; the latter, he certainly doesn't go in for...things happen, you observe them, react as appropriate (or not), record them (maybe), and then move on.   But, where and how did he learn to cook? From where did he develop his abilities and knowledge about wine? And where is any suggestion of the breadth of knowledge and practical experience behind the twenty seven volumes of the Time-Life 'Good Cook' series which he so famously edited in the eighties? His spat with Julia Child over the best way to make pastry (apropos of which, he declared that just because she was on TV did not make her a good cook...) suggests that he was practiced in the art - but, apart from a passing reference to an apple pie, made in Clamart sometime in the fifties, pastry appears to have formed no part of his repertoire. In fact, on the basis of lunches and dinners recorded in the book, he seems to have lived largely on fish soup, salads, and cheese, with the occasional roast bird chucked in for good measure. Oh, and wine. In  quantity.
Significantly, he remains an enigma. And seems destined to be so for evermore, since it seems unlikely that anybody will ever now be inspired to write his biography, and anyway many of those who knew him well enough to be able to give a fair picture of the man are no longer around to tell the story.
I was pushed to read Reflexions by Charles asking the other week if I'd ever heard of 'some chap called Richard Olney', since he never had but had recently come across a reference by somebody else to the greatness of the man.  Which suggests to me that Olney seems destined either to disappear entirely without trace, or else to be resurrected as some kind of obscure but sanctified holy man of food. Neither of which I think would be entirely deserved.

Tonight;s Dinner:

Bouchées à la reine

Bass en croute, stuffed with fennel & pernod; braised cucumber

Chocolate meringue vacherins with strawberries & creme chantilly

And more camera...

Dundee Rambler growing through Trachelospermum, in a corner of the Old Orchard

The Old Orchard, looking towards the Well-house

Emerging from the Old Orchard into the main garden

Roses, under the SE Pergola

Entrance to the Old Orchard, under the Weeping Poplar

Tonight's Dinner:

Terrine of Foie Gras with toasted brioche

Saltimbocca alla romana; zucchini sauteed in butter and thyme

Apple Croustades with Crème Frâiche

The new camera...

has arrived!

The path behind the church

The south-east pergola

The church, from amongst the soft fruit bushes

NE corner of the north lawn

Buddleia alternifolia, looking Rousseau-esque

Pierre de Ronsard (looking coy)

Under the East pergola

The agrumi lawn

Tonight's dinner:

Black risotto

Boned rabbit, stuffed with herbs and parma ham, pot roast

Burnt lemon cream, with blackberry filling

I stand corrected (ish)

It seems that I was mistaken in reporting that the TD served 'samphire' as one of the garnishes for his Masterchef weekend, last week....I have always assumed that samphire and agretti are just different names for the same thing. It appears from this recent article in the Independent that this is not so.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/agretti-the-italian-vegetable-that-chefs-are-fighting-over-10077674.html

 

It was definitely agretti that we were served with our black risotto.

 

But, at the same time, I think somebody has been pulling the leg of Cahal Milmo, the hapless writer of the piece in the Indie. Either that, or supermarkets in Tuscany can expect ravening hordes from Umbria and Lazio to sweep over the borders in great numbers practically at any moment. Last time I looked, agretti was sitting peacefully (and untroubled by grasping hands) on the shelves of my local Esselungha...in pretty impressive quantities, too. Could it be that the story was actually a load of old cods?

 

Tonight's dinner (still leftovers):

 

Terrine of Foie Gras with toasted brioche

 

Grilled Pork Chops with Pommes Parisiens

 

Apple Croustades. 

 

 

 

 

Masterchef 2015

Has been generally acclaimed a triumph! Three days of intense (but not too intense) slaving in the kitchen, to excellent effect.

On Friday, the TD produced a black risotto of exquisite richness (garnished with scallops and samphire), which was followed by oven-poached chicken breasts accompanied by mouth-watering miniature baked potatoes, stuffed with a tarragon/guanciole mixture (Jennie's contribution), served with a sauce of piopini

mushrooms,  and we finished off with individual pithiviers, filled with a walnut frangipane, and served with caramelised walnuts and a pistachio crème anglaise.That last was mine....note to self: in future, for individual pithiviers, roll the pastry to 2mm thickness rather than 4mm, or else the pastry fights against the filling.

Saturday: weather was lousy, and so we spent the day indoors, poring over books of recipes. Jennie decided to ditch the chocolate torte she had intended to make, and instead she produced a chocolate medley of egg-white chocolate soufflé alongside an ice cream of white chocolate,

layered with raspberries which had been macerated in grappa. The soufflés were wonderfully indulgent and much richer and more luxurious than the version I usually make (so, I'm going to have to change habits), and rose to towering perfection. That was preceded by another done-two-ways production, when TD served magret de canard, pan-seared and then finished in the oven, alongside deliciously crisp confit de canard (made two days previously), and accompanied by  individual pommes anna, and vignole. A sauce of deceptive simplicity (a litre of stock, made from the duck bones, reduced to about 75 ml, and then thickened at the last minute, off the heat, with a nut of cold butter). And to start with, that evening, we had a terrine of foie gras, which I'd made earlier in the week (Mossiman's recipe, where the pieces of liver are marinated beforehand in port and brandy, and an improbably long and complicated list of spices, which

end up being subtle and beguiling in the finished dish). My contribution on the day was to make brioche, slices of which, lightly toasted,  were served with the foie gras, all helped on their way by a not-half-bad sauternes.

And then, last night, we coasted home, standards not slipping, with a starter (Jennie's) of velouté of asparagus, in which were tiny new potatoes (jersey royals, by preference) and flakes of seared salmon fillet; then, I produced spit-roast lamb shoulder, which had been stuffed with a  mixture of mint, garlic, beef suet, cream, and diced shallot flambeed in cognac, served with a lamb/cream/mustard sauce, and flageolets, warmed through with chopped sage and

shallots. The latter helped on its way by a splendid 2010 Torres Mas la Plana. And then, into the home strait, with a napoleon of chocolate crisps, interleaved with  layers of pears, poached and diced and mixed with honey, and garnished perfectly with a few leaves of nepetella, from the garden.

We were all so pleased with the general results and experience that we didn't bother awarding individual prizes, but just started to discuss what we might think of doing for next year's event (which will be the tenth anniversary of the first time we did it, and so requires particular effort).

Tonight's dinner (leftovers):

Feuillete of mushrooms, sauteed in butter with tarragon, with a poached egg and mustard hollandaise.

Grilled chicken legs; green salad

Crepes, with frangipane filling.

April 25th...

Liberation Day, in Italy. One of those many national holidays which jump up and catch the unwary, with the fact that everything is unexpectedly closed...but (after only thirteen years here) it has now sufficiently entered our consciousness that we're ready for it, when it comes round yet again. An unkind question would be to ask precisely from what it is that the Italians are celebrating having been liberated, given their somewhat chequered history during the early forties - and, as Charles says, there isn't an Italian from that period alive today who wouldn't swear on the grave of their father that they had all along been supporters of the allies, and had opposed to the death those awful, occupying (well, after the armistice, anyway...) Germans. Not a subject for dinner party chatter, when all's said and done.
The bells rang long and loud from Santa Caterina, this morning - I imagine for the annual Liberation Day service, when the small piazza in front of the church is populated every year with a variety of people in a variety of ruritanian military costumes; my favourites are the bersaglieri, with ostrich-plume hats dyed in dark colours that wouldn't have shamed Queen Alexandra at a Palace Garden Party circa 1908....except worn on this occasion generally by short, stocky men, strutting around like turkey cocks.
Strangely, since the bells usually drive him to distraction, the four-footed completely ignored them, this morning. And now they and the rest of town have subsided into holiday silence. Sadly, not as sunny today as it has been recently -although, even as I write, the sun is trying to break through.

The house has been swathed for days in heady scents from the garden: the courtyard is dense with clouds of jasmine in bloom; and the office terrace has a light carpet of blossoms which drift fitfully down from the orange tree which now towers above it; across the yard, pendant fat white wisteria flowers edge the roofline of the barn,  and elswhere in the garden various clematis montanas decorate the pergolas. The azaleas bloom generously, as the camellias (finally!) draw to a close, and the roses, industrially heavy with bud, are just now starting to open. Bearded irises are about to burst into flower, on all sides, and already the fruit is beginning to swell on the apricot trees. No photographs to show, sadly, as my camera has finally and conclusively given up the ghost, and the replacement won't be with me for several weeks.

Two nights ago, I saw the first firefly of the year. By mid-May, we shall be inundated with hundreds of thousands of the things...

Tonight's dinner:

Kerala stuffed pancakes (crepes stuffed with keema, breadcrumbed and fried, and then served with a tomato sauce)
Lamb cutlets in parmesan; courgettes with pancetta
Egg-white chocolate soufflé