Kitchen Diaries: Lime Tart

We’ve got a few relationships which involve swapping desserts, and last night we went to one couple’s house for beef. Last time Sallie came 'round she made the most incredible blueberry cheesecake, so it was the perfect excuse to make Nigel's Lime Tart.

Nigel says it’s easy, but it’s rather a lot of work. I thought I’d be able to do it without a problem in the two hours between when we got back from a visit to Arundel Castle and when we were supposed to be at their house, but it took about two and a half hours to make and cook.

The pastry is very very delicate, like homemade sugar cookies without the baking soda, so it needs loads of resting time. It can’t be rolled, so it gets logged and sliced and pressed.

The lime innards are very eggy, reminding me of a Bakewell tart, and yes, they are easy to prepare, but it takes 45 minutes to bake. I bow my head in shame at my lack of reading ahead.

The crust Nigel says to prepare is extremely buttery, and takes at least 10 minutes longer to pre-bake (and become “dry to the touch”) than he recommends. By that point, the edges were browner than a discerning pie crust maker would like, and there was still another chunk of time in the oven with the insides. I had to rush through this part, which means that the tops were overly cooked and the crust’s insides were still too soggy to stand up on their own.

At least two cookbooks have assured me that pie crusts do not burn after being pre-baked. They both lie.

As for the tasting, the tart came after a particularly lovely pot roast and was a huge success. There were general calls for seconds all around. We practically licked the tin clean. It was a perfect mixture of custardy and sour. Very moist and not too gooey. Next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll plan ahead and clear my schedule for the afternoon.

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own Lime Tart.

Kitchen Diaries: Sweet and sticky chicken wings

M was upstairs putting the finishing touches on his first (and last) schoolwork essay in a decade and our house was practically devoid of any foodstuffs. I’d discovered a couple of chicken wings in the freezer which I was glad I hadn’t thrown into the last pot of stock I made. Those plus the remaining tortellini from the night before (plus the leftover bacon from the haddock dinner a few nights ago) made a dinner-like meal.

I was really surprised to see chicken wings in Kitchen Diaries. It’s not normally a part of the bird people eat in the UK (although in the States they’re practically a staple). I liked the idea of sweet and sticky, calling to mind my favourite US treat, buffalo wings, and once again a quick rummage assured me I had all the ingredients. Marvellous.

This is preposterously simple recipe. It’s almost embarrassing: Honey + Mustard + Garlic. Mix n’ Pour. Shove in oven. Flip once. Remove and eat. Delicious. Really good. I wished I had more. I can now do this in my sleep.

Nigel admits that it’s not got any spice and I would have liked a bit of heat, so next time I’ll throw in some cayenne or a sliced up fresh chilli from the plant. Because I only made 4 wings, I didn’t need to put them in for quite as long as he suggests. I’d have liked a bit more gooeyness, but that could have been remedied by pulling them out about 10 minutes earlier.

Really good – and tasty. Unfortunately it comes with a price. The cleanup is an absolute ‘mare.


Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own sweet and sticky chicken wings.

Kitchen Diaries: Baked haddock with bacon and parsley

I OD’d on salmon late last year, and while I still love the fish I have tried to branch out into other sub-oceanic wonders recently. Haddock is one such foray. But, like Elvis, once I find a foodstuff I like I don’t wander too far off the rail. Sadly, I’m beginning to have my fill of this fish too.

But bonus, the last fillet in the fridge gave me the perfect excuse to nose around the new Sainsbury’s which opened last week to great fanfare within the Brighton community. Hey, we’ve got the Pier, we’ve got the Pavilion. We’ve got Gehry towers growing, and a virtual pier rising. We get excited about things.

The fish was blindingly simple, yet ridiculously easy to overcook on all (fish, bacon) accounts. It’s not got much in it other than the fish, the bacon and the parsley, and which I’m not a sauce-fanatic, it was a bit dry. The bacon and parsley element, for example, could have used a smidge of white wine or something to pad it out. Still, unfettered and - yes - tasty.

I’ve noticed Nigel’s not so keen on carbohydrate accompaniments to his dishes, and this one is no different. He recommends a watercress, pear and fennel salad to go with it, and if that hadn’t been there this would have been a “meh” – tasty, but not spectacular. The salad, however, was divine. I mean, really excellent.

I don’t experiment with my greens course very often, but this has inspired me to move away from the Romaine and cucumber and towards the spicier leaves, the sweeter fruits and fennel – oh, fennel. The dressing he recommends – a very simple lime and olive oil concoction – deserves another half a lime than he suggests, to give it a bit of ting, but this is what saved this meal. I’ll be visiting the salad many times again.

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own baked haddock with bacon and parsley.

Kitchen Diaries: Treacle Tart

My book arrived two days ago and I immediately noticed how heavy the thing is. Seriously heavy.

The baptismal recipe was created for last night’s Girls’ Night pot-luck and clothes swap at Ruth’s house. Bonus: except for the white bread, I already had everything I needed for it in the house.

I had no idea that there was 200g of white bread in treacle tart. I thought the treacle was made of, well I don’t know what I thought the treacle was made of, but not bread. I don’t eat much bread so was bothered by the fact that the only bread the local shop had on offer was an 800g loaf. After the tart’s share, that’d leave me with a whole 600g of waste. Rubbish. So I bought 400g of the Polski Sklep's finest. Only problem – it wasn’t so fresh.

The pastry was easy. I used some of the stuff I’d already made from The Joy of Cooking ‘cause the recipe was the same. Processing the bread into crumbs was easy. Adding the lemon (a rather antiquated lemon-like specimen I found in the door of the fridge) was easy. Getting 8 tablespoons of golden syrup out of the tin was not so easy. Verrry messy.

The bread/lemon/syrup mixing went much more smoothly than I imagined it would, but the resulting goo was rather shallow in the pie tin. There was about a half an inch between the beginning of the crust and the top of the treacle.

When I pulled the tart out at the agreed time, it looked damp and squalid, and too "formed". pulled a few bits off to taste and they just tasted like a bit of hot sweet bread. Not like treacle tart, in other words.

I added another two tablespoons of golden syrup to the top of the tart, shoved it back in the oven for 10 minutes, and then it looked more like something you’d want to eat. However, the "treacle" was still a lump of self-contained product inside the crust, and it was toasted on top. Just like in the book. Reared on Mr. Kipling, I had expected it to be much more gooey.

I took it ‘round to Ruth’s with a tub of vanilla, but because no one had organised who was bringing savoury or sweet we had five desserts to eat after a dinner of garlic bread and crisps. My treacle tart unfortunately didn’t make the cut.

So re-warmed today and eaten with a cup of rooibos tea, the tart is OK. I honestly don’t think it would have made a difference if we’d eaten it last night or not. M thinks it's good, but I’m convinced it’s not great. It definitely needs ice cream or something else cold and creamy to go alongside. Worst feature: you can taste the bread. Best feature: the golden syrup sticks to my teeth.

Things I’d change next time:

Lemon rind to replace 1/4 tsp of the juice
More golden syrup
Really really fresh plain white bread. It shouldn’t be too salty ‘cause that comes out in the finished product.
Maybe some cinnamon or nutmeg to add depth
Thicker crust

Buy the book cheap through our Amazon store and you can make your own treacle tart.