I have never felt less like cooking than right now

379. Loin of pork with bay leaves
380. Rhubarb custard

These two recipes are from the first menu in the Dinner chapter. There is supposed to be a Casesar salad as a starter, but I was tired and it was cold, and I couldn't be bothered going out to buy fresh free-range eggs for the dressing (they're supposed to be eaten almost raw, so really fresh eggs are necessary).

I cooked this all after I returned home from work.

The pork loin is rubbed with a mixture of olive oil, bay leaves, peppercorns and garlic. (Mum, thankfully, went out to buy the pork for me during the day - I am so grateful.)


marinated pork

Then you place thinly sliced onions around the pork, and bake it at 200C until done.

While it was baking, I made the rhubarb custard - the final of How to Eat's many rhubarb recipes. The recipe says to stew some fresh rhubarb, but I had a bag of frozen pulp in the freezer, which I defrosted for the recipe. To make it, you whisk up eggs, egg yolks and sugar, then add pour over warmed milk and the rhubarb pulp. Pour it into a dish, and it needs to be baked in a waterbath at 160C for 1 hour (or until set). I did this in our rickety old microwave convection oven (which lives in the pantry and is hardly ever used for the oven purpose).


raw custard

So this is the cooked pork... mmm... golden and crunchy.


cooked pork

As it was resting, I made the side dish - tinned butter beans (Nigella says to soak and cook pulses from dried, but I was seriously not in the mood), warmed through with oil and garlic. Then I made the sauce by deglazing the pan with white wine and water.

You serve the pork slices with sauce drizzled over and surrounded by bay leaves.


pork slices


butter beans

Dessert time. This is what the rhubarb custard looks like when cooked.


cooked custard

Now, although it seemed quite set and not-liquid when I shook the dish, when we cut into it, most of the inside was still liquid.


mmm soupy

The edges, however, were set, and the liquid centre was warm and tasted like ordinary pouring custard (i.e. DELICIOUS), with the soft fragrance of rhubarb permeating through. It was quite lovely indeed.

Rhubarb, Meringue, Rhubarb Meringue Pies

Remember how I said yesterday, in justification of my excessive new year’s eve baking and cooking, “sometimes your inner domestic goddess just needs to be let loose!”??

Well, today, my inner domestic goddess went into deranged superwoman overdrive.

Firstly, for breakfast, I made Nigella’s Arabian Mornings (from Feast). In the afternoon, I decided to make mini rhubarb meringue pies with the leftover pastry, rhubarb pulp, and egg-and-sugar mixture from yesterday. And instead of making the meringue from the rhubarb meringue pie recipe again, I made the recipe for meringues from the Basics etc. chapter (it’s slightly different, no cream of tartar), topping the pies with half the meringue mixture, and making actual meringues with the rest.

233. Meringues (Basics etc.)

Making the pies was just the same as making the big pie for Symone, but in miniature. (This obviously meant reducing the cooking times. I wasn’t exactly sure by how much I should reduce the times, so I went by eye).

Roll out the pastry, and blind bake it. Let cool, and fill with rhubarb pulp…


pastry cases filled with rhubarb

Then top with the egg-sugar-orange-juice mixture…


filled with egg

Bake until set, and then top with meringue mixture.


cooked and being topped

Then bake until the meringue is brown and puffed. While they were in the oven, I clumsily piped the rest of the meringue mixture into almost-snail shapes. And when the pies came out 5 minutes later, I turned the oven down from 200C to 140C and shoved the meringues straight in. They take about 40 minutes in total. Now, I know you’re only supposed to do them in a cool oven, but I was afraid that they’d collapse on me if I waited for the oven to cool down.

I let the pies cool in their little tins for a while before prising them out with a skewer. One of them stuck to the tin and broke a little bit, because the filling oozed through a hole the pastry and baked onto the tin. However, once I put it on a plate and wodged it back together, it looked presentable.


Pies

While the pies were cooling down, I had to think of what to do with the remaining rhubarb pulp. Yes, one 21cm pie and 4 miniature pies down, and there was still approximately half a cupful of rhubarb pulp left. Not enough fruit to warrant making more pastry, yet too much to throw away nonchalantly, and having been frozen and defrosted twice in the past week, I didn’t think it was up to more dramatic temperature changes.

So, with my fabulous breakfast still fresh in my mind, I decided to make a breakfast-type dish. Inspired both by Nigella’s raspberry and oatmeal swirls, and the rhubarb compote and muesli snacks that are sold at my fave café on campus, I layered the rhubarb pulp with Greek yogurt, light muscovado sugar and Andy’s Fairfield granola. My brother and I shared it for a snack, and it was brilliant. This is highly recommended for anyone wanting to use up rhubarb pulp or granola, or anyone looking for an excuse to make them!

And in the afternoon, I was feeling a bit peckish, so I had one of my mini-pies while it was still faintly warm.


pie & tea

My immediate reaction (which I said out loud): Fuck me, this is good!

Apologies for the crudeness, but this pie was seriously the best thing I have ever eaten. The pastry was light and flaky (probably a fluke, but who cares?), and the plain, unsweetened base was the perfect foil for the tart filling and sweet and crunchy topping. I know that many food writers often liken food to sex, (especially Nigel Slater writing about pommes dauphinoise or sausages), but I’ve always tended to dismiss it as tawdry sensationalism rather than an actual response to the food.

But these pies, these pies! They’re more than just sex… this is love.


Wow!

When the members of my family tried their own individual pies later that night, they all had pretty much the same reaction.

Now, back to the meringues. You’re supposed to let them cool in the oven, because they’ll crack if you take them out too suddenly. I baked them this afternoon, and took them out when I came home from work at 1:00am, and they didn’t crack.


Meringues

I think they’re a bit brown because the oven was too hot to begin with. I know what you’re thinking, they look kinda dodgy. But my mum had one, and she says that they taste much, much better than what you think they look like.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year, everybody! We had some quiet new year's eve celebrations, with Daniel & I going to our friend Symone's house for drinks and nibbles. For my contribution to the nibbles side of things, I decided to wade deep into the land of dinkiness, with canapés (from How to Eat) and cupcakes (from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook). Additionally, seeing as it was quite close to Christmas, I thought I'd make her a pie as well, just as a gift. What can I say, sometimes your inner domestic goddess just needs to be let loose.

231. Rhubarb meringue pie (Weekend Lunch)
232. Beans wrapped in prosciutto (Dinner)

I made the cupcakes the day before, and iced them in the afternoon. Then I got started on the pie. It's not really that hard, it's just very time consuming, and involves a lot of steps.

1. Make the pastry and blind-bake it - It's just Nigella's simple shortcrust pastry, with orange juice in place of the water.


blind baked

2. Fill with poached rhubarb - rhubarb's not exactly in season now, but I had a pulpy bag of cooked rhubarb in the freezer, probably from the rhubarb ice-cream, which I happily used.


rhubarb filling

3. Top with a mixture of egg yolks, sugar, and orange juice


egg filling

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until set


cooked filling

5. Make a meringue - Spread it over the hot filling, before baking again for 15 minutes until brown


Raw Meringue


Cooked Pie

I know that Symone loves rhubarb, so I typed out the recipe for her... it took a whole page of single-spaced size 10 font. Don't you just love Nigella's eloquent verbosity?

And then the beans. Nigella writes that this is her "most-relied-upon-starter-stand-in". This dish is quite easy too - just top and tail some green beans (Nigella stipulates "French" beans but I honestly don't know what that means), cook them in boiling water, then dip them in balsamic vinegar and wrap in prosciutto. As I said, it's nothing complicated, but watch out, as you will most likely end up with balsamic vinegar splashed all over the kitchen. Which is bad at anytime of year, but spectacularly gross on a 43 degree day (that's 113 Farenheit). Bloody hell.


beans wrapped in prosciuto

So then it was a simple matter of getting myself ready, packing things carefully on plates and in tins and boxes, and going to Symone's.


ready for transport


Food


Symone with beans

The beans were lovely, and I give all the credit for that to the lovely prosciutto which we purchased (or should I say, "sourced") from Cardamone's supermarket for lunch on Friday. And I must admit, they do look rather nice all piled up on a big white plate. We didn't eat the pie last night, but I will update you on the verdict as soon as I hear about it.

Wishing everyone all the best for a wonderful year ahead!

PORK

Warning: VERY LONG POST

If you don’t like long, detailed, food-related, stream-of-consciousness type posts (then may I ask, what on earth are you doing reading this blog?) then feel free to simply scroll down to the bottom and look at the photos of today’s most wonderful lunch.

Introduction:

As I’ve mentioned many times previously, for about 6 years I totally avoided eating pork, or any pork product, and was very strict about it. It was only this year in August (the 6th, to be exact), that I re-introduced pork into my diet, with the decidedly uninspiring braised pheasant with mushroom and bacon. Since then, I have, on various occasions, eaten prosciutto, bacon, ham, and small slices of suckling pig. But I still hadn’t worked my way up to cooking or eating a huge hunk o’ pig – like a roast pork, or one of Nigella’s many hams. Until today.


Planning the lunch:

My good friend Liam happened to pop over last week, and when he did, I pounced on the opportunity to schedule him in for a meal at my house. (As I keep mentioning, it’s bloody hard to organize a free evening or afternoon when each member of my family is free, let alone outsiders!) So Thursday was the day. And the thing about Liam is – he is the King of Pig. By which I mean he loves pork products in all their forms, and has a massive appetite. It was time for Sarah to cook a huge hunk of pig.

Two nights ago, my friend DG (in England) and I spent a late night chatting on MSN trying to plan this bloody menu. You see, Liam, bless his cotton socks, is one of the fussiest fuckers I know. Well, I don’t know if “fussy” is the right word – he just seems to have a limited range of foods that he really likes and that he eats often. For example, rice, spices, Asian food, vegetables and apple pie all definitely do not feature in the Liam diet. So I chose the plainest of plain roast porks (no spices, no herbs, just salt and a bit of mustard powder), crackling, with mashed potatoes (at Liam’s request), and cabbage (for the rest of us), with the microwaved chocolate pudding from the Fast Food chapter for an easy, crowd-pleasing dessert.


The day before:

I went down to Rendinas Butchery (I practically live there now) and got a massive pork leg. I asked for “a pork leg for a roast”, and the butcher came out with this huge fuck-off hunk of pork. I suddenly got scared.

Me: Er, how many’s that gonna feed?
Butcher: About 10 people, easily.
Me: Ok, I’ve only got 5 people so could I have half of that?
Butcher: Yeah, no problem!

Even when he halved it, it looked worryingly large. I just had to keep reminding myself, "Liam is a big eater, and it is the Nigella way to never knowingly undercater". I also got the butcher to score the rind, and cut it off and drape it over the pig. Now, I’m not usually super keen on the smell of pork, but I have to admit, this fresh, free-range, properly reared Otway Pork did smell pretty darn good.

Later that night it was time for another convo with DG on MSN.


Sarah says: Should I make a sauce or something?

DG says: Yeah, some people can’t eat meat without sauce.

Sarah says: Ok, apple sauce?

DG says: Wait, I think there’s a Swedish rhubarb sauce somewhere in HTE.

Sarah says: No there’s not.

DG says: yeah, there is, I’m sure of it.

Sarah says: Nah, there isn’t. Look, I’ve read HTE back to front, and I’m sure there’s no recipe for rhubarb sauce with pork.

DG says: Wait, I’m gonna look for it.

Sarah says: Ok, whatever. You’re crazy.

10 minutes later…

Sarah says: I told you it’s not in there.

DG says: yeah it is I’m still looking for it!

30 minutes later…

Sarah says: Just give up!

DG says: no no no, I’m not going crazy! I'm sure it's in here, where is this fucking thing?

20 minutes later…

DG says: OMG I FOUND IT I FOUND IT I FOUND IT! Page 314.

This Swedish sauce of rhubarb mixed with bottled horseradish sauce is mentioned in the last two sentences of the recipe for Apple Butterscotch Tart. How random.

After all that, I couldn’t exactly say no to making the rhubarb sauce now, could I?


On the day:

191. Roast Pork (Weekend Lunch)
192. Swedish Rhubarb and Horseradish Sauce (Weekend Lunch)
193. Seven-Minute Steamed Chocolate Pudding (Fast Food)

I got up at the crack of fucking dawn this morning to put the pork leg in the oven. Based on the guidelines of 55 minutes per kilo plus 25 minutes on top, I reckoned that my pork leg would need 4 hours in the oven. Four fucking hours! I got up at 8am, rubbed the rind with salt and mustard powder, shunted the pig in the oven, and went back to bed for an hour.

When I properly woke up at 9:30, I had breakfast, a shower and all that, and then went to my local grocers to get the rhubarb and horseradish cream for the sauce. It’s summer now, and we’re getting pretty evil-looking rhubarb, but it all worked out in the end, deliciously.

When I came home, it was about 11:00 o’clock. I boiled the potatoes, then made the rhubarb sauce. All you’ve got to do is cook the rhubarb in a bit of water until softened, then mash it up and stir the horseradish cream through it. It looked a bit like disgusting, and I was unsure of how it would taste.


khaki rhubarb

With the chocolate pudding, you just have to put all the ingredients in the processor, and then scrape the mixture into a buttered dish, and cover it with clingfilm. It can sit like this until you’re ready to cook. (It only takes about 5 minutes to cook).


choc mixture

Liam arrived at about 12:30, at which time I was mashing the potatoes. After that, I took the magnificent roast out of the oven to rest, and peeled off the crackling. I was about to, upon Nigella’s suggestion, put it back in the oven to crisp up, but was stopped by Liam.

Liam: Why? Why would you put that back in the oven?! It’s perfect! Look at the crispy outside and the chewy underside. Just leave it!

Liam is the roast pork master, so I trusted his decision.


crackling underside

Dad and Daniel happened to be out shopping at this time, which I’m sure was very frustrating for our hungry guest. I stirfried some cabbage in butter, oil and caraway seeds, and just as it was ready, Dad and Daniel came home, so it was time to carve!


Liam thumbs up


pork


pork on board - incidentally, this is the first time that Mum's let us use her wonderful Peer Sorensen chopping board for more than just displaying bread. Thank-you Mum!!


A picture of health

Now, I wasn't even going to make a gravy at all, as Nigella doesn't suggest making one... but when the pork came out of the oven, I noticed that there were a LOT of tasty-looking brown juices in the bottom of the pan, which would have gone to waste otherwise, so I boiled it up with a spoonful of flour to become a tasty tasty brown gravy.


Sarah, NOT kylie

I have to say, I am, in general, a pretty shite carver, but this pork was so tender and juicy, and my knife so sharp, that it was easy to carve the beast up into manageable slices.


LUNCH! Pork slices, stir-fried cabbage, rhubarb sauce, crackling, mashed potatoes


Pork slices


Meal

This was amazing!! The crackling was fab (even though I could only stomach a mouthful before I started worrying about my poor arteries), and Liam ate most of it. The pork was tender and juicy, and the mashed potatoes and cabbage were the perfect accompaniments. Bizzarely, my dad absolutely loved the rhubarb horseradish sauce, despite its feral pink colour!

Dad: This sauce is great with the pork! And the pork really good! I was afraid it was going to be really dry, but it's good!

When we got to the "langourous-picking-at-the-remains" stage, Daniel put on a DVD of The Office, which was brilliant. (Yes, we have a small TV and DVD player in the kitchen - I do spend most of my time in there, after all). This just totally added to the fun and relaxed atmosphere of the afternoon.

Now, about dessert.

Liam once said to me, “Sarah, we both love food. But you love quality, and I love quantity. Oh yeah, I love quantity”.

Of the seven-minute steamed chocolate pudding, Nigella writes, "This recipe comes from Barbara Kafka's Microwave Gourmet and I have kept to her quantities for 8 people because I am greedy. If you - unlike me - think 4 people won't eat enough for 8, then halve quantities". I knew that we would have no trouble eating this. Liam is the only human being I know who was able to eat 2 slices of Nigella's enormous Chocolate Fudge Cake (Nigella Bites) in the one go. In fact, I remember one time I made this cake, Liam was already onto his second slice while my friend Nathan and I (with more conventional appetites) were slowly working our way through our first piece.

Anyway, about the pudding. Once we'd finished lunch, I stuck the pudding in the microwave for 5 minutes, then pulled it out, stabbed the clingfilm with a knife and covered the dish with a plate (to keep it hot, apparently), and let it set for 10 minutes. In the meantime, we cleared the table and set it up for dessert.


pudding

This pudding totally rocks! I can't believe how easy it is! It's a thousand times easier than the chocolate surprise pudding (Weekend Lunch chapter) and even tastier, in my opinion (no crusty top though, which isn't a huge loss). It does look a bit unnatractive though, hence the dredging of icing sugar over the top. Nigella suggests crème fraiche as an accompaniment, which I duly followed. However, after the first mouthful, we all concurred that vanilla ice-cream would indeed be a superior choice.


pudding and icecream

After the dessert, Daniel, Liam and I staggered over to the loungeroom and lazily watched a few hilarious episodes of Futurama before I had to leave for work in the evening. What a perfect way to extend the afternoon!

By the way, there were lots of leftovers, so I packed Liam a doggy-bag for later.


Care pack - pork, mash, gravy

Later that evening, I went to work and proudly showed my co-workers the photos of my fab lunch. (I'd been crapping on about it to anyone who would listen the day before). I think they thought it was a bit odd that I take photos of food, but I'm beyond being embarassed about that sort of thing by now. And anyway, the general response was, "That's making me hungry. You made that today and THEN came to work? WOW!" And so on, and so on.

Sharin' the fish pie love

My parents went for a wine-tasting session with Uncle Mike tonight (one of my parents’ oldest friends, he of steak and kidney pie fame), and I offered to cook for them afterwards.

I emailed him a couple of days ago...

Subject: Wine tasting and Fish Pie

Hi Uncle Mike,
Dad tells me that you and my parents are going to a wine tasting on Tuesday.
Unfortunately I can't attend (university, you see), but if you're free, would you like to come over for dinner afterwards? I was thinking of making a fish pie and possibly a crumble.
Cheers,
Sarah

He replied the next day…

Sarah,
Yes, I would love to partake.
Helen says that like you she will not be going to the wine tasting
But wonders if she is asked to the fish pie and crumble tasting?
Mike.

Sweet, Aunty Helen wanted to come over for my pie too. She must have liked my steak and kidney pie when she ate it.

123. Blakean Fish Pie (Dinner)
124. Rhubarb Crumble with custard, damn straight (Basics etc.)

Look at this menu, all about reverting to Uncle Mike’s English childhood. I certainly didn’t have one!

I was excited about making this fish pie, because I tasted fish pie (Nigella’s Fish and Porcini) for the first time in June, and absolutely loved it.

“Blakean” because of its yellow interior (it’s a literary reference, apparently), the pie has three elements – seafood, a white sauce tinted yellow with saffron, and a mashed potato topping. Nigella says to use salmon, prawns, cod and haddock. I used salmon, prawns, flake and dory (all from the supermarket). I figured that once they were drowned in white sauce and covered with potato, it really wouldn’t matter what fish you used.

To begin, I made the crumble topping and stashed it in the freezer. Then I started the fish pie - boiling the potatoes for the topping. Whilst they were cooking, I poached the fish in Noilly Prat, carrot, water and a bouquet garni, then made a white sauce using flour, butter and the drained poaching liquid mixed with cream. I used random proportions of double cream, single cream and water to get up to the required 450ml mark. And I finally got to break open my packet of Italian 00 flour, (a.k.a. farina tipo “00”).

And on a random note, I remember seeing a commis chef at my old work making a white sauce once. She sucked balls, it was all lumpy and feral. To make conversation, I asked her what she was making, and she very patronizingly explained to me that it was “called a roux” to make a “white sauce, do you know what is a white sauce?”. HRMPH. As if I didn’t know! She was a qualified chef, and her white sauce looked like vomit. I know she had a million things to make at once, and in very little time, but a professional chef really should be able to handle pressure. (You may think me a bitch, but do we remember how crap my old job was??)

Anyway, here’s my smooth white sauce. I made it, relaxed, in the peace and quiet of my own kitchen, away from screaming chefs.


White sauce

Add a generous pinch of saffron powder ($14.70 for 2 grams) and it becomes…


Blakean sauce - How sunnily cheerful!

After doing this I mashed up the now-cooked potatoes and made the custard to go with dessert.

I had started cooking, leisurely, in the afternoon, with the expectation that my dad would call me when the wine tasting finished. This way I’d have enough time to whack the pie in the oven, and have it ready when they arrived home. Well, at seven o’clock, on the dot, with no prior warning, three wine-soused adults rocked up to my house whilst I still had all my pie parts sitting in random pots around the kitchen. ARGH! I’d almost had enough time to recover when Aunty Helen arrived too. (Breathe Sarah, breathe!)

So, as I rapidly put the seafood, the sauce and the potatoes in the dish, and chucked the pie in the oven. I then gave them a bottle of chardonnay, and poured myself a glass as well. Luckily, no-one was rushed or super-hungry, so it was all good.

And 34 minutes later…


Fish pie

After pulling out the fish pie, I chucked the crumble in. (The fruit had been cut up last night.)


Rhubarb – with light muscovado and vanilla sugars, and orange zest


Pre-oven crumble

Ok, so with the crumble in the oven, we could relax and get back to my fish pie…


Golden yellow

Peas and a generous serve of fish pie. Nothing better. (Except if you add ketchup - heaven!)

Like the fish and porcini pie, this one is fab too. It’s not strongly flavoured, (I would have preferred a fishier taste, actually) so be prepared to add quite a bit of salt.

Aunty Helen: Your mashed potato looks wonderful. What's the secret, lots of butter?
Me: Yes.

And a little bit after dinner was finished, the crumble was ready.


Cooked crumble

Served with my custard (yeah baby, yeah), it was fabulous. Cold custard + hot crumble = dessert heaven. I love making custard now. I don't even need the recipe any more!

The crumble tasted great - the rhubarb was fruitily fragrant, and the crumble topping was light and crumbly (duh). The only problem was that some of the thicker rhubarb pieces weren't cooked fully!! How annoying! Like the recipe says to do, I'd cut the rhubarb into 5cm pieces, but I should have cut them lengthways as well. Ah well... we just avoided all the hard pieces when scooping it out and took all the good and mushy ones.


Uncle Mike's – the man obviously loves custard


Uncle Mike (that's Aunty Helen's shoulder in the background)

Even though it's Spring, the weather was freezing today, like 16 degrees, so this menu was very appropriate.

Oh God, this post took me sooo much longer than I expected. Well, there’s a warning for you kiddies, don’t drink and blog.

Dinner to Lift the Spirits

Today was the first time in ages that all four of us have been home together for a meal. What with university, and varying work timetables for myself, my brother and my father, organising a family meal sometimes seems like a military operation.

SPRING LUNCH TO LIFT THE SPIRITS, FOR 6

120. Lemon linguine
121. Irish Tarte Tatin

I've been meaning to make this menu for a while, as it seemed both special-occasion-worthy and easy. A couple of days ago I realised we would all be eating together on Sunday night, so I decided this would be perfect. It's Spring too. I was working from 10:00am to 5:00pm today, constantly on my feet, and when I finally emerged from the maze-like staff area of Hoyts (the cinema where I work), it was windy and raining! Thank goodness I'd chosen a meal "to lift the spirits".

As soon as I came through the door, at 6:34PM, I started on the tarte.


Chop up some rhubarb, put in a pie dish and cover with sugar. (Nigella says 900g, but the bunches I got only ended up being 600g. Big deal, they fit perfectly in the dish, so I wasn't fussed).

Then make the scone dough/pastry base/topping thang. To do this, you simply rub butter into flour, sugar and baking powder, before adding milk and an egg. (I have to admit, though, that I started off rubbing in the butter manually, but gave up about 30 seconds into the operation and upgraded to the KitchenAid). It makes a very squishy, pliable dough, which is pretty easily rolled into a rough circle (I needed to add lots of flour) and then pressed over the rhubarb. Then you just have to brush it with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar, before putting it in the oven.


Pie ready for oven - I put it in on a tray, in anticipation of the filling bubbling up and spilling over. It didn't end up spilling, but you can't be too careful when it comes to avoiding cleaning the oven.

Once the tarte was in the oven, I made the (very simple) pasta. Just boil linguine (my favourite variety of pasta!), then drain and toss through some butter, then the sauce.


Sauce - double cream, parmesan cheese, egg yolk, lemon zest and juice, pepper and salt, beaten with a fork.


Lemon Linguine

This pasta is absolutely fabulous! You'd think it might be a bit heavy and rich with all the cream in it, but there's not a lot of cream for all the pasta, and the lemon gives it a light, fresh feel. I served it, as suggested, with a crisp green salad - again, an iceberg lettuce cut into wedges.

Dad: Do you know what would be good in here? Bacon! In small pieces and crunchy.
Daniel: Or thinly sliced prosciutto!

I am inclined to agree that bacon or prosciutto would indeed be a good addition. Next time, next time.

My family weren't really overflowing in their praise, but they obviously loved it, as we all just basically kept our heads down and ate until it was all gone. I had halved the recipe - Nigella says it serves 6, so I figured that half of it would feed the 4 of us generously. We weren't still hungry after it, but I have the feeling we could have eaten more if there was more. Good thing I restrained the portions though, as we still had dessert to come.

And speaking of dessert, the tarte finished baking as we were eating, so I took it out and let it cool down a bit. (If only I had a windowsill for such things...)


Baked tarte

Now was the test - could I flip it over without breaking the tarte or burning myself? Well, I passed this test. Twice! After I flipped it over the first time, it wouldn't come out! So I had to flip it back over, and loosen the dough from the sides with a knife, before flipping it over again. But it came out fine, and I wasn't burned. Phew.


Upside down tarte


Plate empty - lettuce in the background, cream and brown sugar in the dish on the right.

Excuse all the photos, but I thought it was just so gorgeous that I couldn't stop taking them!


Tarte #1: "Because of the sloping sides, the pie, when turned out, looks rather celebratory, as if it were holding up the rhubarb as an offering".


Tarte #2: served with cream and soft brown sugar, as suggested in the recipe.


Tarte #3: One slice with a small scoop of rhubarb ice-cream - a flavour sensation, I tell you!


Tarte #4: One slice of tarte with a dollop of cream and brown sugar.


Tarte #5: Aftermath

This is a good tarte. The base is nice and thick, but not too doughy, and the rhubarb is lovely and soft, the flavour intensified by the oven. Cream and sugar is an inspired accompaniment, but the rhubarb ice-cream is also fantastic, especially if you wanted to do something extra-fancy, for a dinner party, say.

We ate about half the tarte between ourselves. I've cut the rest into slices, wrapped it up and chucked it in the freezer. Our freezer is starting to overflow (again)... sigh!