Summer Nights

Nigella's HIGH SUMMER AL FRESCO LUNCH FOR 8 is a table-borne eastern-Mediterranean style lunch to be eaten outside in the garden. We had this menu for dinner tonight, and thankfully, by dinner time, a cool change had come and we were actually able to eat outside!

227. Tabbouleh
228. Hummus with seared lamb and toasted pine nuts
229. Garlic chicken
230. Aubergine slices with pomegranate juice and mint

The day before you have to soak the chickpeas for the hummus in water with a halved onion, some garlic cloves and a bay leaf. Nigella says they need at least 24 hours soaking, and then 1-4 hours cooking, but the packet instructions were a lot more optimistic - they said 6-8 hours soaking and 45 minutes cooking. Having cooked chickpeas many times before, I figured that the actual cooking time would lie somewhere between the two.

Additionally, the chicken wings for the garlic chicken need to be put in their marinade the day before, and left in the fridge. The marinade is an unusual, yet simple one - boil some garlic cloves until soft, then slip them out of their skins, mash them up and add extra virgin olive oil to make a liquid gloop.

The rest of the preparations can be done on the day itself. I started by draining, rinsing and boiling the chickpeas. Surprisingly, they only took 50 minutes to be cooked - truly cooked, as Nigella insistently reminds you that they need to be. Once cooked, you just need to dump them in a processor, with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, tahini (it's called "tahini" in Australia, not "tahina", for whatever reason), cumin and Greek yogurt. Then you can spread it into a shallow serving plate, cover it, and leave it until it's time to eat.

Tabbouleh is (in case you didn't know already) a mixture of herbs, cracked wheat, spring onions and tomatoes (peeled, seeded and chopped), dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. The cracked wheat needs 30 minutes soaking in cold water, before being drained and stirred through the rest of the ingredients.

The aubergine slices are griddled (much like the ones we ate for lunch today), and sprinkled with salt, pomegranate juice, chopped mint and pomegranate seeds. I had a bit of a drama looking for pomegranates; they seemed to be everywhere the week before Christmas, but when I went shopping this morning, they were nowhere to be found. But by the time I realised there were no pomegranates, I'd already bought all the other ingredients! GRRRRR! I was going to substitute with diluted pomegranate molasses. But, at the last minute, I remembered that I had a little baggie of pomegranate seeds in my freezer! Hazaa! So I squeezed some seeds with my hands over the cooked aubergines, and reserved the rest for sprinkling over.

The chicken wings just need an hour in the oven while all this is going on.

And at the very last minute, you need to do the lamb for the hummus. Nigella says to stirfry little strips of lamb in garlic-infused oil, so I just used the remaining marinade from the chicken wings. Once cooked, you squeeze some lemon over and then pour the whole lot over the hummus.

Here's the table, with a bottle of champagne, some fresh tomatoes and chunked cucumber. We also had more of that pane di casa bread that we ate with lunch. Notice the rose petals I scattered over the table. They really added a nice touch as we were eating. I've never been one for decorations or table settings, but I think I'll have to start doing it more now.


Dinner


Eggplant


Garlic chicken - crispy and delicious


Hummus - this hummus is fucking awesome! It's seriously the best hummus I've ever had. It's creamy and soft and sharp and garlicky and full of wholesome chickpea goodness. It makes such a difference when you use dried and soaked chickpeas instead of canned! And the Greek yogurt makes it so light and smooth.


Tabbouleh


one plate

After those Christmas meals, you have no idea how good it feels to be eating so many green vegetables all at once.

This was a fantastic meal, and it was so lovely to eat it outside during the warm evening. The only criticism I have of it is that it takes a lot of work to put it all together, which could be annoying if you're trying to create a non-fussy, laid-back lunch for guests who don't necessarily appreciate or realise how much energy goes into creating it. However, I found a quiet afternoon of cooking be most enjoyable, and my parents were very appreciative of all the effort.


Quotes:

Dad: Well done. This is really fantastic. It's just as good as eating at Abla's. (The fabbest Lebanese restaurant in Melbourne!)

Mum: I'm really happy you're doing this project.

Summer Lovin'

Today, 5 days after Christmas, I finally dealt with the last of our leftovers. I discarded the excess stuffing, and removed the rest of the meat from the turkey carcass, before carefully packing it into a zip-lock freezer bag, duly labelling it as “turkey”, and shunting it into the freezer.

With that, I said “goodbye” to all the delicious, yet totally seasonally inappropriate Christmas meals we’ve been having, and “hello” to Nigella’s warmer-weather menus!

It was 38 degrees today, and I’d already planned one of Nigella’s summer lunches for our dinner (see next post!). However, when Dad and I went shopping for the ingredients this morning, I realised that we could do yet another menu for lunch.

In the introduction to the Weekend Lunch chapter, Nigella writes about her relaxed approach to sociable weekend lunches, where the focus is most definitely on the eating, rather than the cooking. In the introduction, she suggests many of the little bits and pieces you can buy to put together a delicious and laid-back lunch.

“And if you don’t want to cook it, you don’t have to. Saturday lunch can be at its most relaxed and pleasurable when it is just an indoor picnic. What matters, then, is what you buy. These days shopping is nobly recast as ‘sourcing’ – and clever you for finding the best chilli-marinaded olives, French sourdough bread or air-dried beef: certainly no shame for not clattering about with your own pots and pans instead”.

With that in mind, I decided on a slightly edited version of...

ANOTHER SPRING LUNCH FOR 6-8

Prosciutto, mozzarella and basil, or fresh ricotta
Griddled courgettes or roast asparagus
Salad and bread
Rhubarb meringue pie

I chose mozzarella instead of fresh ricotta (both are relatively simple to find here) with basil oil, griddled courgettes and roast asparagus, and bread. I decided against a salad or the pie, (too much effort on a hot day), and supplemented the menu with griddled eggplant slices and chilli-marinaded olives. And yes, clever me for finding the best chilli-marinaded olives in Melbourne. They're at the fabulous deli in Cardamone's supermarket on High street in Fairfield, where we also sourced the prosciutto, the buffallo mozarella, and the pane di casa loaf of bread. At the deli counter, you can see into the kitchen behind, which is where they make up all the deli produce, and fresh lasagne and other ready to eat meals, like pasta, soups and so on. No wonder it's one of our favourite food places!

226. Basil Oil

The only actual recipe in the menu is the basil oil, which you drizzle over the buffalo mozzarella. To make the oil, you simply blanch a bunch of basil leaves in boiling water, refresh them in ice-water, drain, and then process with olive oil.


Shopping

So when we came home, it was a simple matter of setting everything up. First the basil oil, then the asparagus (roasted with oil and salt in a hot hot oven), griddling the eggplant and zucchini, and putting everything on plates.

Table

Grilled veg - zucchini, eggplant, asparagus

Prosciutto


Olives


Cheese with basil oil and beautiful red tomatoes


my plate

When we ate, it was the hottest point of the day, and it was too blazingly hot to even consider venturing outside. So, we ate in the air-conditioned comfort of the kitchen. Everything was wonderful. I suppose that when you start with high-quality ingredients, it's quite hard to screw things up. And I loved the companiable nature of the meal - passing around the plates, slicing the tomatoes and bread as we wanted them and so on.

I absolutely adore the classic insalata caprese combination of mozzarella, tomato and basil. You might call it a clichéd combination if it weren't so damned delicious. I would have sliced up the tomatoes and arranged them in concentric circles with the mozzarella, but I'm sure that there is no way Nigella would ever approve of such a non-monochromatic side salad.

And this photo is just to show one reason why I love an insalata caprese so much.


This is a photo of me, eating an insalata caprese sandwich last year, on holiday in Capri.

Aah memories...

One more post about leftovers...

Last night Aunty Wendy and Uncle Francis came over to hang out, and Mum offered Aunty Wendy one of my star-topped mince pies. She had one and said, "Hey, this is good". I thought she was just being polite, until 5 minutes later when she looked at the jar again and said, "ooh I think I might have another one!" Score.

Later that evening I was quite hungry, but had no idea what to eat for dinner. So I grabbed some more turkey, and placed it between two slices of plastic white bread, with cranberry sauce, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, lettuce and some slices of tomato. Then I toasted it, and ate it. It totally rocked. This might sound like a silly thing to say, but fresh turkey is so much better then the processed stuff!


turkey sandwich

And, as I later found out, my dad enjoyed the leftover turkey meat as well - in a bagel. He had it with bread sauce, cranberry sauce, mustard and lettuce I think. Bread sauce! In a sandwich! How inspired!

Look, it's leftovers!

And so begins the post-Christmas culinary clean up. The massive plates of chunked turkey, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce and brussels sprouts in the fridge have been staring at us through their gladwrap, but thankfully Nigella has a solution which extends beyond microwaving them to a bad cover version of Christmas dinner. (Although, truth be told, I have done the microwave thang, and they haven't been too shabby as a quick meal, especially to take to work for my break).

224. Bubble & Squeak

I made this for my lunch on Boxing Day, and never having made or eaten it before, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'd read references to bubble and squeak in cookbooks over the years, and had gotten the impression that it was a very British dish, a sort of mish-mash of random fried leftovers, most suited for a hangover breakfast.

In her instructions for Christmas bubble and squeak, Nigella says to chop and then fry leftover brussels sprouts with an onion and mashed potato, and to top it with a fried or poached egg and optionally some crispy bacon. We didn't have any mashed potatoes with our christmas dinner, but we did have some mashed potato stuffing left over from the roast goose, which provided the perfect amount of potato for a single serving bubble & squeak.

I followed Nigella's instructions, and topped it with a fried egg. (The idea of poaching eggs just gives me a headache, so I never bother).


Bubble and Squeak


Topped with a fried egg

I really liked it! By Boxing Day I was no longer hungover, but for whatever reason, it really it the spot. I'm a huge fan of cabbage, and the fried Brussels sprouts tasted deliciously of fried cabbage, with the chestnuts from the same original dish providing a lovely sweet and mealy contrast.


225. Ed Victor's Turkey Hash

I made Ed Victor's Turkey Hash on the 27th of December, for lunch for my parents and myself. After having made 224 recipes from How to Eat, (and numerous ones from Nigella's other books and columns), I immodestly say that I know a thing or two about Nigella recipes. And as such, I feel qulified to say that this recipe seems out of place in the Nigella opus. First off, it includes green peppers, which Nigella often writes that she never uses. Secondly, it has a pretty random combination of ingredients in there... that is, too random even for Nigella.

Pitted ripe black olives?... Toasted almonds?... Mixed together and added to the aforementioned green pepper, an onion, leftover turkey meat and stuffing, and then bound with beaten eggs and double cream? I wasn't exactly looking forward to the prospect.


cooking

After cooking and warming all those unattractive-sounding ingredients in a pan, Ed says to finish it off with grated parmesan on top and brown it under the griller... resulting in an equally unattractive-looking hash.


in pan

The smell, however, was most attractive. This is when I realised why the recipe was included in the book, despite declassé ingredients (pitted and sliced black olives in brine, from a jar, thank-you very much), and odd flavour combinations - it's delicious. And even in the 35 degree heat, (totally inappropriate for turkey, goose, stuffing, bubble & squeak, brussels sprouts, mince pies or hash of any description), we very much enjoyed the hash. It was kind of like a frittata-cum-Chinese-style-omelette, only with a lot more fillings.


With condiments

I have made Nigella's Masalan omelette (Nigella Bites) in the past, and remembered her suggesting HP sauce to go with. The hash smelled vaguely similar, so I went with HP sauce, and my dad went with Worcesteshire sauce. And since we had no reason to worry about culinary image or snobbery, I liberally drowned my serving in Crystal hot sauce.

Merry Christmas

This is going to be a long post. Perhaps the longest post I’ve done so far. However, I make no apologies for this, as it was a very long day. I hope you’ve all had wonderful Christmasses, and enjoy reading!

Before I start, I have to say that this is the first Christmas that we’ve spent at home in ages. For the past 8 years, we’ve spent Christmas and New Years in Malaysia at a beach resort, so the only Christmas “traditions” that we’ve developed have been lying on the beach all day, sipping cocktails, and then eating the supposedly traditional Christmas roasts at the buffet dinner.

This year, however, was different. My dad’s working in Melbourne for Christmas this year, so we’re at home, and it was time for us to establish some family Christmas traditions. In the Christmasses prior to our annual trips to Malaysia, we always used to host the Christmas lunch for extended family at our house. I remember the plastic Christmas tree, the smell of the tinsel, the bought roast chickens, and most importantly, the stress that my mother felt at being obliged to accommodate everyone, and the stress that my dad felt watching her run around like a headless chook for not very much appreciation. I wanted this Christmas to be different. I wanted the food to be fabulous, I wanted it to be a relaxed day and I wanted it to be fun! I knew it could be done, especially with Nigella’s Christmas section from How to Eat to guide me through the culinary part.

And here’s what I did.

Our big Christmas dinner was planned for the evening of the 25th. I know that a Christmas Eve dinner, or Christmas day lunch is more traditional, but my dad and my brother were working at both those times. I also decided to limit the numbers, for the sake of my sanity. So, it was just the four of us, plus my good friend An.

I went out with work friends on Christmas Eve. I never realized that Christmas Eve is a big night for going out. Logically this would be true; the next day is a public holiday, so of course people would go out partying the night before. We had a huge night, and after all the drinking, dancing, and other associated shenanigans, I didn’t get home until 6am. Whoops. I thought I’d be able to sleep in until I had to start cooking, but no… my dad woke me up at 10am for PRESENTS!

I had no idea we were even doing gifts. But from my parents I got a set of Living Kitchen serving platters, a set of mixing bowls, and Jamie Oliver’s new book, Jamie’s Italy. Woohoo!


Mixing bowls – they’re SO cute!

My dad left at 11am for work, and my mum went with him. Dan and I then watched a DVD of Only Fools and Horses, which I’d never seen before. It was awesome! That is SO becoming a Christmas day tradition!

So anyway, after lunch (truffle oil pasta), I started the cooking.

215. Lidgate’s Cranberry and Orange Stuffing
216. Turkey
217. Gravy
218. Roast Potatoes
219. Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts
220. Bread Sauce
221. Cranberry Sauce
222. Brandy Butter
223. Iced Rum Sauce

I started off by setting up the kitchen – bringing out the boards and knives, setting up the food processor and filling the sink with water and detergent. I’m not usually this efficient, but I felt that if I were to make a Christmas dinner all by myself, and without a clipboard, that I would need my kitchen to be clean and well set up.


mise en place

The first recipe I made was the cranberry and orange stuffing, which is very simple. You simmer some cranberries (I used tinned because I couldn’t find any fresh or frozen, anywhere!) with some orange juice and zest, then stir in butter off the heat followed by breadcrumbs.

Daniel: Hey, what’s happening in the kitchen? It smells like cat!

Thanks Daniel. Well, with both stuffings made (I’d made the chestnut stuffing ages ago and frozen it), I had a bit of free time, so Dan took me out for pancakes. Ok, the “buying pancakes for Sarah” thing definitely needs to become a Christmas tradition!

After we came home, I made the sauces for the puddings, and got to break in my new mixing bowls!

The iced rum sauce “is a sort of rum-sodden and syrupy egg-nog with cream that’s kept in the freezer until about an hour before eating. You put it on the searing hot pudding and it melts on impact”, apparently. To make it, you mix some golden syrup, egg yolks and rum (I used Bundaberg Rum, go Aussie!), and then fold it into whipped double cream. I'll admit here that at this point in time, alcohol was the last thing I wanted to be around, and that the smell was totally turning me off. But, I persevered through this, through the brandy butter, and through the gravy, and by the time dinner came around I was fine.


egg in egg


rum sauce

You put it in the freezer and can forget about it until dinner. After this, I made the brandy butter (although prefer the term “hard sauce”), which is just butter beaten with icing sugar, ground almonds and brandy. I stored this one in the fridge.

It was 3:30 now, so time to deal with the turkey. Nigella says to stuff the neck end with the chestnut stuffing, and the other end with the cranberry one. I bought my turkey, a 5 kilo beauty, about a month ago, from Prahran Market at the same time as the goose, and froze it. I suppose the more conventional thing to do would have been to order one in advance, and pick up a fresh one closer to the day, but that seemed like way too much work. It's always a mission to go down to Prahran Market. And I was already there, so why not? I remember the butcher saying to me that he'd been freshly slaughtered that morning, and would keep in the fridge for a whole week, or in the freezer for month. He looked gorgeous and plump (the turkey that is, not the butcher), and I was extremely excited. I named my turkey Gordon.

I transferred Gordon from the freezer to the fridge 2 days before Christmas, and took him out shortly after waking up so that he could get to room temperature.


Defrosted turkey – look at our new roasting tray! We finally got around to buying a proper roasting tray that can go from oven to hob!



I then, as per Nigella’s advice, stuffed Gordon, then rubbed his breasts with goosefat, flipped him over and placed him in the oven.


Stuffed turkey, ready to be flipped over


Goosefat, which I rendered from last week's roast goose.

As a 5.5kg bird (including stuffing), it would take 2.5 hours in total, 200C for the first 30 minutes and 180C for the rest of the time.

There was a bit of cranberry stuffing left over (I halved quantities), and quite a lot of chestnut stuffing left over so I put them in buttered dishes, ready to bake.


cran stuffing

I then infused the milk with a clove-studded onion and some bay leaves for the bread sauce, and made the giblet stock for the gravy. I only realized at this point that you’re supposed to let the stock simmer for 2 hours, whoops. It was too late to do anything about it, so I just let it boil until I was ready to make the gravy. The giblet stock is water, turkey neck, heart and gizzard, an onion, some peppercorns, carrot and celery, boiled. Then I boiled the potatoes for the roast potatoes, shook them in the pan and sprinkled them with semolina.

You have to flip the bird over for the last half hour, to bronze the breast. This was a two-woman job. I held the pan still, and mum did the heavy-duty lifting.

An arrived at about 7pm, when Gordon was ready to come out of the oven.


Turkey

We covered him in foil, I turned up the heat in the oven, and I put the potatoes in for their hour of cooking. (In goosefat).

An: Are they going to take an hour to cook?
Me: Yup.
An: looking hopeful... You know, when we cook potatoes at home, they only take like 20 minutes.
Mum: Yeah, did you parboil the potatoes?
Me: Yup.
Mum: Then they’ll probably take less than an hour to cook.
Me: LOOK, people. Nigella SAYS an hour, they’re taking an hour!

Besides, the time when the potatoes are in the oven is the perfect amount of time to organize everything else.

I added the breadcrumbs to the infused milk for the bread sauce, and did the gravy.


juices

I put the roasting dish, sans-turkey, straight onto the hob, whisked in some 00 flour, and let it thicken up, with An on stirring duty, before adding the giblet stock and marsala, and letting it boil some more.

An

Then I cooked up the Brussels sprouts (they were frozen, sorry. You just can’t get Brussels sprouts here in Summer), drained them and tossed them through some chestnuts which I’d turned in butter in the meantime.

And I had to fry livers for the gravy, chop them up, and add them to the dish (with An still stirring, phew!) After cooking them for a couple of minutes, I whizzed them up in the blender, and it was ready.

And then I fried some chipolatas in a frying pan. I wasn’t intending to serve them, but I had them in the freezer, (bought last month in a fit of efficiency), and I know An loves his sausages.

Me: Oh my God, all these Christmas recipes are so bloody fiddly. This is so much work! There’s always something else to be thinking about.

And finally, the oven dinged, we took the potatoes out, and Mum started carving. While she was carving, I put our pudding in the steamer, and transferred the rum sauce from freezer to fridge.


A Fortnum and Mason's pudding, baby! It was $44.95 at David Jones. EEEEEK.


Sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, baked stuffing, gravy in blue jug


Brussels sprouts and chestnuts - new Living Kitchen serving plate!


Cranberry sauce


family shot


From left to right, bread sauce, Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, chipolatas


chipolatas


Potatoes

Daniel: Sarah, these potatoes look superb.

And they were, indeed, superb. Here's a quote from the same roast potato recipe from Feast (Nigella's latest book), which perfectly describes this moment.

Boastfulness and vainglory are not attractive nor would I want to encourage them in you (or myself), but when you've cooked these and see them in all their golden glory on the table, I think you're allowed a quiet moment of silent pride.

my plate


An’s second helping. You want some meat with that gravy?

Everything was so perfect! And by that I mean that all the recipes turned out really well, with no duds (except maybe the cranberry stuffing). Go Nigella! As you can see, I'm not really the type to be faffing about with fancy table settings or centrepieces. For me, good food should be the focus of the meal.

The turkey wasn't too dry at all, and it went perfectly with the cranberry sauce, bread sauce and gravy. I'd never had bread sauce before, and it is absolutely awesome! Bread sauce, where have you been all my life!? The Brussels sprouts and chestnuts had a great contrast of flavour and colour, and were fine even though I'd made them from frozen. Chipolatas were a welcome addition. The cranberry stuffing that was cooked inside the turkey tasted nice, but I wouldn't bother trying the stuff I baked separately because it looks really dry. But the chestnut stuffing! The chestnut stuffing! It's so soft and mealy and fantastic. You can probably see that I was very careful about limiting portions of the non-turkey elements of the meal, which I think worked very well, because we weren't too stuffed afterwards.

I had a go at flambéeing the pudding, using vodka because Nigella says it burns for longer. Nigella says that Fanny (whoever that is,) boasts of keeping her pudding alight for 11 minutes at her spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, but mine only went for about 30 seconds. And I was too chicken to carry it still alight over to the table, so I just waited until the fire subsided. By the way, my brother actually took a video of the flames. If anyone wants to see that, let me know and I'll hook you up.


pudding


sauces - brandy butter on the left, iced rum sauce on the right

The iced rum sauce didn't quite "melt on impact", but perhaps that's because the pudding wasn't searing hot. We preferred the iced rum sauce to the brandy butter, but both were good. That Fortnum and Mason's pudding was totally amazing; even An, who's not into Christmas pudding, liked it.


pudding


pudding and sauces

After this, we had coffee and tea, and kinda spread out on the couch whilst my parents very kindly did the washing up. I collapsed in bed at about 1:30. What a fabulous day!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Eat my pie

After the dishes for dinner were cleared up, I started on my second batch of mince pies for the day.

214. Frangipane Mince Pies

The isntructions for these pies are a bit vague... "make them the usual size but out of almond pastry... and top with a dollop of frangipane... Cook at gas mark6/200C for about 10 minutes, then at gas mark 4/180C for about another 15-20 minutes". I can't say I was inspired with confidence, so I turned to my copy of How to be a Domestic Goddess for guidance.

Nigella certainly seemed to have changed her Christmas tune between How to Eat and How to be a Domestic Goddess. Far from suggesting (as she does in How to Eat) that we buy in our Christmas puddings and mincemeat, she seems to have been imbued with the Christmas spirit. There are 4 Christmas cake recipes, the Christmas pudding recipe, 3 sauces, 3 mincepie recipes, 2 recipes for mincemeat and various other biscuits, cupcakes and sweet treats. Maybe next year I will be similarly inspired.

But back to the mincepie recipe - I used the frangipane recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess with the almond pastry and mincemeat from How to Eat, and followed the cooking times and procedure from How to Eat. Also, after a whole day of baking, cooking, and washing dishes, I couldn't be arsed putting the fat and flour for the pastry in the deep freeze (as I normally would). So, I brazened it out by just chucking everything in the processor without the first chilling blast in the freezer. That probably wasn't the best idea, as the sweet almond pastry was an absolute biatch to work with, and certainly would have benefited from a pre-freeze. It kept breaking up on me, sticking to the bench and generally being quite messy. But I got there in the end, with careful and patient rolling and re-rolling.

The frangipane is much simpler than the fancy Italian name would have you believe - it's eggs, sugar, ground almonds and melted butter, lazily stirred together. Then you can just put a spoonful on top of each mince pie before scattering with flaked almonds. Easy.


In progress - mincemeat in yellow bowl at the back, frangipane in glass bowl at the front, random bowl behind tart tray.


prebaked minis

Once I actually got the first 12 in the oven, the idea of rolling and cutting another 12 of the buggers was more than I could bear. So, I pulled out my 20cm fluted tart tin and made, as is suggested in How to be a Domestic Goddess, "one sliceable Bakewellian pudding". I cooked this one for about 35 minutes in total.


Prebaked


bakewellian pudding


pies pies pies


3 styles of mince pies

Oh my God, the frangipane mince pies are insane! My dad had one, and immediately started effusively praising them.

Dad: Oh wow... these are good... these are soo good... you're good at baking... this is a Nigella recipe, right?... oh wow... fabulous, fabulous

The sweet pastry and the fragrant frangipane are just lovely, and have the most gorgeous crumbly texture. We were initially intending to take only half a pie each, but we ended up having 2. Each. Now that's what I'm talkin' about. The mini mini ones are good, but these are better. We haven't tried the big one yet, but I'll let you know how it goes.

xox Sarah-good-God-I-love-pie