Recipe: Almond Marquises

Elegant, light, dinner-partyable, and delicious. As a dessert form, marquises went out of fashion ages ago - I think the last time I saw a recipe for one was in one of Michel Guerard's books, more than twenty years ago - and IMHO they are long overdue for a comeback. This particular version comes from a collection of recipes from Normandy published in 1976 by somebody called Ray Compas (no idea who he or she was, since beyond this particular collection, there was just one other book of dessert recipes, and that constituted the full Compas oeuvre).

My one word of warning concerns the quality of the langues de chat used to line the ramekins - there are plenty of versions of these biscuits commercially available, and I've found that some of them are so light in construction that they effectively dissolve into the marquise filling, and when you come to unmould the marquises, the biscuit 'casing' has disappeared. Not a complete disaster, but the appearance of the marquises is compromised somewhat, and you lose the 'bite' of the biscuit shell, in comparison with the smoothness of the filling. If you can't find good quality langues, then making them is not difficult - Julia Child has a perfectly reliable recipe in Volume 2 of Mastering the Art .

For four individual Marquises:

Ingredients: 125g Butter; 125g Sugar; 125g Ground Almonds; 250 ml Milk; 1 tsp Vanilla essence; 3 Egg Yolks; approx 150g langues de chats

Method:

1. Cream the Butter with the Sugar (I use an elctric whisk for this); once properly creamed, add to this the Almonds and continue beating until thoroughly amalgamated.

2. In a separate pan (or simmertopf), heat the Milk with the Vanilla, then pour onto the beaten egg yolks in a bowl; mix together, then return the mixture to the pan and continue cooking gently, to make a light custard. Leave to cool, then mix into this the almond-butter-sugar mixture.

4. Grease 4 individual ramekins, and then line the base and sides of each one with langues de chat (cut the ends off with a knife if necessary, before lining the ramekins, in order to have a good clean fit and to ensure the ends of the biscuits don't stand proud of the side of the ramekin).

5. Fill each lined ramekin with the almond mixture; cover the base with remaining biscuits, then place in the fridge for several hours to firm.

6. Run a small knife round the edge of each marquise in order to loosen from the ramekin before unmoulding onto individual serving plates.

And the last Day of Christmas...

...was in fact yesterday, but since today is Ebufana and therefore another public holiday, it feels as though this is still the final gasp of the Christmas break. The tree will come down today, to go out in the garden to be planted, and then that's it for another year.

Now is the best time to buy Christmas decorations, so I've just gone online to find replacements for the ones which didn't survive this year's festive season (breakages which were nothing to do with me, I hasten to add!). And we're still wondering what happened to the ones I bought last January, which we both remember unwrapping when they arrived, but when it came down to it, neither of us could recall where they were then put for safekeeping- some rather beautiful crystal droplets, I remember, that would have looked splendid on the tree (and possibly might yet, another year, if we ever find them again)

Much Christmas largesse, in the form of books by various lesser-known (or not published in the last few decades, at any rate) food writers: Allan Bay; Ray Compas; Simone Beck; Sonia Stevenson (two from her!); Alain Ducasse (which I mentioned in an earlier post); and Elisabeth Luard. The Technical Department must be feeling seriously in need of greater variety in dinner menus. Last night's supper included two new dishes: a starter of poached egg on a potato galette, dressed with a leek-cream sauce.....and dessert was individual almond marquises...both of which were excellent - so, I suppose his strategy works.

Perfect! - the sun is coming out, so I can let the junior four-footed out into the garden, and get on with transplanting things...half a dozen roses are getting a new home, and I need to move one of the smaller peach trees from one side of the North Lawn to the other.

No pictures in this post, as my camera and computer don't want to talk to each other at the moment, and the thought of trying to locate the instruction book for either, right now, is not something I can even bear to contemplate.

Tonight's Dinner:

Pain de Laitue

Shepherds Pie (made with the last of the half-lamb which we bought as a complete carcase from one fo the farmers in Belforte, and roast for dinner over New Year)

Lemon Cream.

Recipe: Cream & Walnut Tart

I've been playing with this recipe for some time now, and it's taken quite a few attempts before being satisfied that I've worked out exactly how to get the result I want - which is a rich, but light cream tart, against the sweetness of which the slight but insistent bitterness of fresh walnuts works perfectly. This tart has all of the luxurious self-indulgence of a white chocolate ganache, but without the cloying richness which tends to make white chocolate tart heavy going after a mouthful or two.

The recipe is both simple and challenging at the same time: there are really only three steps involved, but the process of reducing the cream for the filling will differ depending entirely on the fat content of the cream you use - with italian cream, which is somewhere between single and double cream, I need to reduce it for an hour before I've got all of the water out; but with double cream, if I'm making this in the UK, then it will be sufficiently reduced in about half that time. The secret is to stand over the pan, the first time you make the tart, and keep an eagle eye on it: the cream will be sufficiently reduced at the point where it becomes very thick (the consistency of porridge, really) and starts, very slightly to change colour (which I imagine is the sugar within the mixture starting to caramelise, once all the water has been removed from the cream). At this point, the cream can be removed from the heat, as it will now set properly once it has been poured into the pastry shell, such that after several hours it can be cut into neat slices; if the water hasn't all been removed from the cream, then it will never thicken properly, and when you come to cut the tart, the filling will run all over the place.

It's worth getting it right - the result really is delicious. Even more so if served with a few fresh raspberries.

For an 8" diameter tart.

Ingredients: Shortcrust pastry, made with 125g Butter, 300g Flour, 50 ml cld water, & a large pinch of Salt; 750 ml Cream (see note above); 60g Sugar; 10 Walnuts, either in halves or in large pieces.

Method:

1. Grease an 8" false-bottomed tart tin, and line it with the rolled-out shortcrust pastry. Bake blind for ten or fifteen minutes in a 200 degree C oven, then remove the weights and finish baking it completely for another ten minutes or so, until the base of the pastry shell is crisp and golden brown. Leave aside to cool.

2. Put the Cream and Sugar into a saucepan and bring to the boil over a medium heat. As soon as the Cream begins to bubble, reduce the heat so that the Cream visibly simmers and keep it at that temperature as the liquid reduces, stirring frequently. (The level of heat required will again depend on the sort of Cream being used; in Italy, if I go down to the lowest flame, then the cream stops simmering, but with thicker cream, in London, not only does the flame have to be as low as possible, but I also have to put the pan over a heat-diffuser - the first time of doing it has to be a process of trial-and-error). Carry on reducing the Cream until it is very thick, and begins very slightly to colour. At this point, take the pan off the heat.

3. Arrange the Walnut pieces in the base of the cooked pastry shell. Transfer the Cream to a jug, and carefully pour it over the Walnuts, until the shell is filled (best to pour over the back of a spoon, as this diffuses the flow of the cream, and stops all of the walnut pieces from being pushed to the edge of the tart).

4. Leave to 'set' for at least four hours. Best left in a cool place to do this, although NOT in the fridge, as this will just make the pastry soggy.

Enjoy!

On the first day of Christmas...

It rained incessantly. The Technical Department gave me a copy of Alain Ducasse's weighty tome on pasta and vegetables (so, the unsubtle hints dropped at the start of December weren't entirely a waste of time), and we all went off to Mensano for a lunch-to-end-all-lunches: generous antipasti, of cheeses, crostini, frittata, prosciutto crudo, and onion salsa; a capon soup, with tagliatelle; papardelle, with an excellent duck sauce; bollito misto, of chicken, beef, and pork (some began to weaken at this stage....but we carried on regardless); roast pork, with a side dish of sformato di gobbo (which I was under the impression meant 'dwarf', but clearly not), and finally, a dolce di natale, which in fact resembled half a house-brick, topped with some rather sweet custard and assorted bits of colourful fruit(I've talked elsewhere and at length about the italian inability to understand desserts, beyond zabaglione and tiramisu...)

Lunch eventually over, we emerged into darkened streets, that were further obscured by a heavy mist which had gathered as we were at table. As we walked through the deserted village, christmas lights emerged eerily from the mist, and rainwater dripped heavily from the eaves. En route back to the car, we passed by Mensano's beautiful and very plain romanesque church; empty and candlelit, the crusader capitals brooded from on top of the heavy, squat columns which line the nave.

And then, back home. To an evening of Pasolini on DVD - we watched 'The Canterbury Tales', which was an appropriately decadent ending to a thoroughly self-indulgent day.

Tonight's dinner (we'll be eight):

Flamiche (made with fresh leeks from the garden)

Capon, boned and roast, with Pommes Maximes.

Crepes Suzettes.

We made it!

Finally, after days of endlessly searching airline timetables, and repeated - but fruitless - trips to the airport, we escaped! It was slightly unnerving, sitting in Gatwick North terminal on Wednesday evening, to see a delay posted against our flight to Amsterdam...but it wasn't extended, and the flight actually departed only about an hour and a half later than scheduled. After the experience of the past week, I didn't trust it not to turn round in mid-air, and it was only as we touched down in Schipol that we could be certain we'd made it - we'd actually got away!

We spent the night in a rather strange hotel attached to the airport (a triumph of design over functionality, in practice...and when somebody at dinner last night told us the place had a reputation as a 'rendezvous' hotel, it made sense, since about the only horizontal surface in the small room was an extremely over-sized bed!) and then we caught a pre-dawn flight down to Pisa. A very wet Pisa, but an extremely welcome sight for all that. All the snow from last week has disappeared, leaving very little trace, apart from broken branches around the place - and three of the supports for the fruit cage have snapped, which is quite impressive, given that they're a good three inches in diameter. We had worried that the romitorio roof might not stand up to the weight of the snow, but it shows no sign of having succumbed.

No point in hanging around in Pisa, since we were due down in Belforte for Christmas weekend, anyway. With slight misgivings, we arranged that the four-footeds would stay in Calci until Monday (their boarding fees since we left have already racked up to equal the national debt of a small country, so a few more days won't make much difference) and we high-tailed it to Belforte in time for tea and then pre-dinner drinks before a blazing fire. The weather's terrible, but who cares...

Tonight's dinner:

Fettucine with rosemary sauce.

Loin of Veal; celeriac, roast in cinta fat.

Chocolate tart.

Easyjet Nightmare continues..

There was a glimmer of hope...not through any efforts on the part of easyjet, of course (four hours hanging on the phone on Sunday, in the vain hope that they might actually answer their laughingly termed 'Customer Service' helpline - they didn't - and still no option online either to transfer or to get a refund from our cancelled booking last Saturday). No seats from London to get home to Pisa on any airline this side of Christmas, and so we decided to try through Amsterdam, and shelled out for tickets for the 8.15 flight today (on easyjet.....through gritted teeth, since nothing else was available) in order to connect with the early afternoon Transavia flight.

Up at 5.15 this morning, to head out to Victoria...and by 5.17 a check online confirmed that indeed easyjet had cancelled the 8.15 to Amsterdam 'due to bad weather' - which is strange, since you'd think the same bad weather would also have caused them to cancel the earlier 6.15 flight to the same destination. Which they hadn't. A trawl through other options revealed there were two seats left on the BA to Amsterdam at 9.00 this morning, and so we went for them. Except that by the time the online booking got through to processing the payment, it flashed up a message that they'd been sold even as I was workiing the keyboard.

And now? We can transfer our Transavia ticket (at no charge - easyjet, please note) to their dawn flight on Thursday...and have flights booked on various airlines both on Wednesday evening and on Thursday morning.

The four-footeds are in Pisa; we're stuck here...and Christmas increasingly recedes into the distance...

The Easyjet Nightmare!

Ok, so there was snow - which didn't help. But then, there was downright incompetence. Ignorance, as well...but mostly just plain old-fashioned incompetence. Bucketloads of it....and most of it on the part of easyjet staff.

We were loaded onto a plane on Friday morning, bound for Pisa. Slightly frustrating to be told almost immediately that we wouldn't be able to take off for nearly two hours, as Pisa airport was closed due to a snowfall. Annoying, but there you go - these things happen. So, we sat, and patiently waited. Time passed. Nothing happened. More time passed; the two hour delay was long finished. The Brancolis were with us, and they thought to check on their ipad what the Pisa airport website had to say...which was that the airport was still closed. Then, the Technical Department thought to call Davide who works as an electrician in the control tower at Pisa airport, and he confirmed that the place was closed and wasn't likely to open again that day.

Some passengers demanded to be let off the plane, and the cabin crew grudgingly said that they could, although they wouldn't be let back on, and would lose any chance of a refund on their fares. About a dozen still insisted on doing it. And then, they couldn't get off anyway, as it turned out there was nobody available to man the exit door from the outside... and so we all sat there, effectively imprisoned.
The cabin crew handed out cups of water and packets of crisps - grumbling that they'd be losing their commission on all of it - and still we sat there.

Eventually, they found somebody to open the door, and those people left who were buying their liberty at the cost of their plane ticket. Around 3.30, the crew were out of time, and were replaced by another crew. The replacement pilot blithely announced that we were eleventh in the queue for de-icing, but that we should be airborne shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Pisa airport announced that it would be closed until at least eleven in the evening. We pointed this fact out to the blonde (in every sense) stewardess who came past; she said she'd pass it on the captain, but almost immediately we heard her saying to somebody else that we could expect to be arriving in Pisa at around 6.30. They obviously don't hire them on the basis of their IQ.

An american in front of us spoke to his italian wife inLucca, who had also spoken directly to Pisa airport. Yup, it was definitely closed. Confirmed by somebody else who had a friend waiting for her at Pisa, and who had sent an SMS, to say that it was be closed until late in the evening. The TD went to have a word with the pilot, who seemed surprised to hear that Pisa airport was closed. Nobody had said anything to him about it; he'd check.
As more announcements regularly followed to give us updates on our imminent departure, unrest was growing in our part of the plane, where it was generally known that there was no way the plane was going to be taking off at all. Given that it had nowhere to go to. After another hour, and having checked once more with Davide, TD went to see what was going on. "Oh", the pilot said "I put in a call to head office about an hour ago to check whether or not Pisa was open, and they haven't got back to me yet." So, it isn't just the cabin crew who aren't hired on the basis of their brain power.

Eventually....finally....almost seven and a half hours after we'd boarded, there was an announcement that - shock! horror! What a surprise!- Pisa airport was, in fact closed, and so the flight wouldn't be leaving after all. We gathered ourselves together, and got off the plane. But the nightmare, even for that day, wasn't yet over. Instead of taking us to the baggage hall, some idiot took everybody back into the main departures lounge, and then abandoned the passengers there for over half an hour, while they presumably tried to sort themselves out. We were eventually then taken where we should have gone in the first place - which involved walking most of the way back to the gate we'd just left - and then waited for the best part of an hour, while they tried to find out what had happened to the luggage. In all, it took almost two hours after we'd got off the plane before we were finally free of the place.

The Brancolis decided to make other plans, and not bother to try and travel on a replacement easyjet flight. They'd just had enough of the whole thing, and if they couldn't sort out a flight on BA, then they probably wouldn't bother to go at all. With the four-footeds to collect, however, we didn't have that luxury - but at least while all the other passengers were put up for the night at some Gatwick hotel, we could go back to a decent fireside and dinner in London, which is what we did.

As soon as we got in, I looked online, and found that we'd automatically been re-booked on a Saturday flight at 11.00....and with some misgivings, we decided to go for it. Gluttons for punishment, we headed for Gatwick, and for another day of misery. The snow came down, and Gatwick was closed, which involved another six hour wait in the departure lounge...but as soon as the runway looked set to open, easyjet called us all forward....and then THEY DID IT AGAIN!
Unbelievably, THEY DID IT AGAIN!

We'd called Davide directly, around two in the afternoon, and he said that Pisa airport was closed still, until at least six in the evening. I checked on the airport website, which said that it wouldn't be open until at least seven...but still, easyjet were boarding the plane. The same plane as the day before, at the same gate. Talk about groundhog day! At the gate, I asked why they were boarding the plane, since Pisa wasn't open...."Oh?" They said. "Nobody's said anything to us" I got slightly irritated, and for my pains, was held until last, so that somebody could come and see if I was the same person from our group of passengers who had apparently thumped one of their staff the evening before. I hadn't been, in fact...but I do wish I'd seen it!
As I stood there, reading the paper, and waiting to be 'identified' I listened to a well-padded girl (not built for speed) called Hannah, who was checking people in, give them a whole string of not-quite-lies just to get them to move along and get on the plane, and out of her hair: "Yes, you'll be taking off almost immediately", "Oh, definitely... in less than an hour"; "You'll be there, oh, by 7.30, for sure". And eventually, having pointed out to them that since I had three witnesses to the fact that they couldn't pin an assault-and-battery charge on me, I was allowed to board...I was given the option of not boarding, of course, but as with the previous day, it would have meant forfeiting my not insubstantial fare. Easyjet do love their bottom line!

Oh, Lord! I feel weary just at the memory. Same plane, slightly fewer people (since some had fallen by the wayside). Announcements about imminent departure. Then, the fact that actually Pisa airport, it appeared was closed, but that it would be open again in time for our arrival. Then, that the departure time was being put back.....a little. In fact, relatively speaking, the pain was not great, since this time we sat on the plane for less than two hours before they acknowledged that Pisa wasn't going to be opening again any time soon, and that the flight had been cancelled.

The passengers were brilliant. Well-behaved, restrained, due medals all-round. So, it was a surprise and deeply inappropriate that the ground handling staff met the offloaded passengers behind a security cordon of uniformed police. The staff then said that nobody would be able to leave the gate area until all duty-free that any passengers might have bought had been handed in. Despite the fact that there isn't any duty free between the UK and Italy; hasn't been for years. "Oh, yes there is", they assured us confidently when this fact was pointed out. Where, in God's name, do they find these people?

Back to the baggage hall (en route, I had the pleasure of passing well-padded Hannah, who looked green as I commented to her that it was a 'shame she'd screwed it up again...'). It was only at the point when the luggage appeared to have been lost, that some of the italians started to lose it. Not in a major way, but perhaps more emotionally than the anglo-saxons would have done. And that was when the uniformed police decided to wade in, perhaps rather unwisely. As they tried to lead two italian women away, the cries of 'No', and 'Shame!' and booing from the rest of the passengers turned into shouts and became more insistent; and the whole thing looked to become really quite nasty, when it was announced that the luggage was arriving on a carousel at the other end of the baggage hall, and everybody immediately rushed over there, and the italian women were allowed to go with them.

We retrieved our luggage, and it was only as we were on the train back to Victoria that it occurred to me that no announcement had been made about hotel accommodation and about further flight arrangements. For the simple reason that there were none. Unlike the previous evening, no re-booking had been made, and the passengers had simply been abandoned to their fate. Many of them with babies and young children; nowhere to stay; no alternative flight arrangements made; and no available seats on any airline to Pisa this side of Christmas. (And, btw, easyjet are required by EU law to provide accommodation for people who are stranded like this, who are their responsibility; they seem to have decided to ignore this detail)

First thing this morning, I found that I'd received an e-mail at 2.00, saying that I could either re-book my flight or have a refund by choosing the appropriate option on their website. Of course, when I went to try to do one or the other, neither option actually exists. The TD has just been on hold for over two hours (at 10p a minute) to try to speak to somebody at easyjet, before he gave up; that wasn't a long answering-queue, it was just somebody at easyjet having decided not to bother.

Yes, there was snow. But that was only a small part of the problem. The misery we and all of our fellow passengers endured in the past two days was almost entirely due to mismanagement by easyjet. Had they had proper communication of information about conditions at Pisa, then we wouldn't have been trapped for eight hours on the plane on Friday, and nor would we have wasted the whole day at Gatwick yesterday, since they would have known to cancel the flight much earlier in the day. How unimpressive is it that on both occasions the passengers in the back of the plane were much better informed than the people in uniform at the front?

That isn't the way to run a whelk stall, let alone an airline!