Cheese, onion, and cherry tomato quiche

I made up this easy recipe last night.

Ingredients:

• 250 g plain flour
• Salt and pepper
• Water
• Oil
• A handful of cherry tomatoes
• An onion
• 100g Gruyère cheese
• Two eggs
• 250ml milk or cream

Equipment:

• Cling film
• A 28 inch tart or flan tin
• Baking beans
• Tin foil

1. Mix 250g flour and a pinch of salt in a large bowl.
2. Heat 6 tablespoons water and 6 tablespoons oil until they combine. Don't overheat or you will burn yourself in the next step.
3. Pour the oil and water into the flour. Mix with a spoon at first and then with your hands until it forms into a ball of dough.
4. Wrap it in cling film and chill it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes (don't skip this step or the pastry will be too difficult to work with).
5. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
6. Put about 12-15 cherry tomatoes in a roasting dish, drizzle with olive oil and season.
7. Flour the work surface and the rolling pin, then roll out your pastry and use to line a 25cm flan tin (see pastry post for tips!).
8. Bake blind (prick all over base, line with foil and baking beans) for 10 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and bake for another 10 minutes. At the same time bake the tomatoes in the oven for 20 minutes.
9. Chop an onion and fry gently in some butter until it's golden and soft.
10. Grate about 100g Gruyère cheese.
11. Remove the case from the oven. Tip the onions into the case and spread them out. Arrange the tomatoes on top of the onion (using some tongs and making sure to not splash too much of the oily-watery liquid which the tomatoes will be sitting in into the case). Sprinkle the cheese over the top.
12. Mix 250ml milk or cream with 2 medium eggs in a jug. Season with salt and pepper. Pour this over the quiche filling.
13. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the filling is set.
14. Enjoy with salad, mashed potato, rice, or whatever you fancy!

This would also be great with some herbs. Basil, for example, goes really nicely with tomatoes, so you could either tear some basil leaves into the filling before you pour the egg mixture over, or just add some dried basil to the egg mixture.

I love my bread maker!

I've recently been given a second-hand bread maker by my mother. I love it! On Sunday I used it to make fresh bread in an hour to go with a yummy soup that I threw together from the vegetables lying around in the fridge (plus some stock, herbs, and seasoning); this morning we woke up to freshly-baked wholemeal for breakfast (having used the time-delay function overnight). For a basic loaf it uses strong white bread flour or wholemeal bread flour or a mixture of both, plus water, vegetable oil, sugar, salt, and dried yeast. You just measure and put it all in the tin, then it mixes, kneads, and bakes for you. It takes up quite a lot of room in our rather small kitchen, but it is so worth it for the amazing taste of the bread. It's pretty cheap to make your own bread, too, if you buy the bigger packets of flour and yeast in the supermarket. Yummy!

Easiest ever saumon en croute, and chocolate torte

Yesterday evening a few friends came round to celebrate Nick's birthday. We cooked a totally easy, foolproof dinner which everyone really enjoyed. These recipes are great for a weeknight dinner because the main course takes only a few minutes to prepare and the dessert can be made in advance.

Saumon en croute (salmon in puff pastry) - serves 4-5. This recipe was handed to me by my mother-in-law.

Ingredients

• 375g ready-rolled puff pastry
• 4-5 skinless salmon fillers
• A tub of Boursin or herby soft cheese such as Philadelphia.

1. Before preparing, get the pastry out of the fridge for 20 minutes - this makes it easier to work with. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
2. Unroll the pastry. If it doesn't look like it will be big enough to enclose the salmon fillets, roll it out a bit more.
3. Spread the tub of cheese on one half of the pastry, not going quite to the edge.
4. Place the salmon on top of the cheese.
5. Brush the edges of the other half of the pastry with milk, then fold over and seal the pastry edges together to make a parcel.
6. Score the top of the parcel lightly with a knife, and make two small holes in opposite corners to let steam escape.
7. Brush the top with milk.
8. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes, until the pastry is puffy and golden.
9. Serve with rice, roasted Mediterranean veg (see below), and salad.

Mediterranean vegetables

1. Roughly chop two carrots, two courgettes, two red onions, two peppers, and mix them in a roasting dish with cherry tomatoes, olive oil, pepper and some dried herbs such as oregano or thyme.
2. Bake for one hour, turning occasionally.

Chocolate torte - serves 8-10. This is a recipe from a book by Phil Vickery called 'Desserts'. I got it free with a tin of condensed milk. The recipes all have condensed milk in them - now there's a good marketing ploy!

Ingredients

• 200g chocolate chip cookies
• About 45g butter
• 225g bitter (70%) dark chocolate
• 170g condensed milk (roughly half a tin)
• 142ml double cream
• Raspberries, to serve

1. Bash the chocolate chip cookies in a freezer bag with a rolling pin, or in a food processor, until finely crushed.
2. Melt the butter in a pan, then mix with the crushed biscuits. Press this over the base of a 7 or 8 inch loose-bottomed cake tin (8 inch will result in a thinner torte). Chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
3. Melt the chocolate with the condensed milk in the microwave for 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently.
4. Beat the chocolate with an electric hand whisk until smooth and glossy. Leave to cool for a few minutes.
5. Whisk in the double cream.
6. Pour over the biscuit base. Put it in the freezer for at least 4 hours, until you want to serve it.
7. At least an hour before serving, get it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge. To release from the tin, run a warm, dry palette knife round the edge, then push up the base and slide the torte off onto a serving plate.
8. Dust with icing sugar, and serve with raspberries and pouring cream.

Tarte aux Pommes

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine organised a pot-luck supper. It was my job to bring dessert, another friend brought a starter of hummus, roasted peppers, pitta, olives which was yummy, and our hostess made saumon en croute (salmon in puff pastry) for the main course. Another friend brought some wine. We all had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. These kinds of dinners are really fun!

I made a French apple tart (tarte aux pommes) as my contribution. Before making it, I hadn't realised what a mammoth task it would be - though it's not a difficult recipe, there are lots of stages which meant (for me) that it dragged out over the whole day! But I wouldn't want to put you off, because the result was really good. I originally got the recipe from Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook (again), but the version below is adapted to make the different stages easier to follow.

Tarte aux pommes - serves 8

Stage 1 - Apple compote - 30-40 minutes plus cooling

1. Melt about 90 g butter in a large saucepan. Add 1.5 kg of peeled, cored, and chopped cooking apples. (Note: you don't have to peel them, but I find it helps to spot any bad bits that need to be chopped out). Then add about 3 tbsp water and 3-4 tbsp caster sugar, stir to coat the apples, and cook, covered, very gently for 20-25 minutes.
2. When the apples are soft, put them into a sieve and rub them through the sieve into a clean pan. It's easiest to do this in stages.
3. If it looks really runny, cook it over a high heat for 10-20 minutes until it's thick.
4. Leave to cool. This recipe makes twice as much as you'll need; once it's cool, put half into a tub and freeze it until you next need some.

Stage 2 - Pastry making - 10-15 minutes plus 30 minutes chilling - do this while you are waiting for the compote to cook and cool.

1. Put 250 g plain flour into a bowl.
2. Rub in 125 g chilled, cubed butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Don't be disheartened if it seems to be taking ages - it will look right quite suddenly!
3. Stir in 125 g caster sugar.
4. Add 4 egg yolks (from medium eggs) and mix together with your (clean) hands to make a soft dough.
5. Wrap it in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.

Stage 3 - Blind baking - 30 minutes plus cooling - do this while the compote is cooling.

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees.
2. Flour the work surface and rolling pin, then roll out the pastry and use to line the flan tin (see separate post on tips for using pastry).
3. Bake blind - prick the base of the pastry all over with a fork, line with foil, pile in baking beans, bake for 10-15 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and bake for a further 5 minutes until lightly brown. Cool.

Stage 4 - Chopped apples -10 minutes - do this after the pastry case has cooled (about 1 hour).

1. Peel, core, quarter and chop 4 small to medium eating apples. Don't make the slices too thin - about 0.5 cm should be about right. As you do each one, put the slices into a bowl, splash over some lemon juice, and toss to coat the apples - this stops them going brown.

Stage 5 - Assembly - 10 minutes - and final bake - 30-40 minutes

1. Spoon the cooled apple compote into the cooled pastry shell.
2. Arrange the apple slices on top in circles.
3. Sprinkle all over with 1 tbsp caster sugar.
4. Bake in the oven, still at 190 degrees, for 30-40 minutes until the apples are tender and lightly browned at the edges.

Adding up all the time this might seem like a long recipe. But if you make the pastry while the apples are stewing, chill it and bake it while the apples are cooling, wait a while, chop the apples and assemble the whole thing, it isn't really so bad! We ate it with creme fraiche, and with smiles on our faces!

Addendum, 11/01/2010

Over Christmas my husband's French grandmother made us a tarte aux pommes while we were staying with her in Brittany. She doesn't use compote, but just slices a lot more apples and puts them in the tart tin standing on their sides so that they are nicely packed in together. When it's baked, the apples start to go mushy underneath. The effect is really good and it's a lot less effort.

Pastry tips

Here are a few tips about working with pastry that have helped me:

• Make sure you chill it well before you try to work with it. Otherwise it'll stick to everything.
• Flour your rolling pin, work surface, and hands.
• To get the pastry to roll evenly, work it into a nice round ball on the work surface, then roll it from the centre outwards, in all different directions. Roll the pin off the edge of the pastry each time, or it might stick to the pin and break.
• To get the pastry from the worktop to the tin, roll it onto the pin, then roll it off over the tin.
• Don't stretch the pastry too much in the tin. You want it to be tucked neatly into the corners of the tin, but if you stretch it too much the sides will shrink and whatever you're going to put in the pastry will overflow. Something that has worked for me is to make the sides of the pastry case a bit thicker than the base. I do this by pushing the pastry into the corners of the tin, then folding down the excess which is hanging over the edge of the tin to make a thick crust.
• Blind bake the pastry to stop it going soggy. The idea is that the blind-baking will dry out the bottom and prevent the filling soaking into the pastry. To blind bake, prick the base of the pastry all over with a fork, line the pastry case with foil or baking paper, fill it with baking beans or pasta or rice (concentrating especially on the edges), bake it for 5-10 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and bake for another 10 or so minutes until it is golden and cooked. When you're cooking the filled pastry, if the case looks like it's going too brown, lightly cover the tart with foil.
• If it all goes wrong, use uncooked sweet pastry as a topping for a fruit crumble, or savoury pastry on top of some vegetables for a crumble-like side dish.

The more times you use pastry, the easier it will become.

Supper for six - Part 2: Tarte au citron and culinary disaster no. 1

So, now for my first culinary disaster post. I decided to make a Tarte au Citron recipe by Mary Berry (whose books I love) to eat after the chilli. So, I made the pastry, blind baked it, made the filling (including NINE eggs!) - so far, so good. Then I mixed the filling together. I realised straight away that the recipe asks you to make WAY too much filling. But I thought, 'OK, I'll save the rest, make another pastry case when this one's done, then freeze it'. No problem. Actually, I never got the chance, because after I'd poured the filling into the pastry case, I was confronted by the problem of how to get a tart very full of very runny filling into the oven without spilling it. I gingerly lifted the tart and within about two seconds the whole filling had gone onto the floor. Disaster. Luckily the pastry case was intact and I still had half the filling left. So I was saved. And it tasted good. But a tip for anyone making this recipe: put the empty pastry case on the oven shelf, then use a jug to pour the filling inside. Don't try to transport a full pastry case from kitchen counter to oven. It'll never work.

Tarte au citron - serves 8-10. I originally used Mary Berry's lemon tart recipe, but found that the quantities were all over the place. This is my own version, with amended quantities. Sorry Mary.

Ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 125g butter, straight from the fridge
• 280g caster sugar
• 6 eggs
• 170ml double cream
• Zest and juice of 3-4 lemons

1. Make the pastry. Put the plain flour in a bowl. Cube the butter and add it to the flour. Rub it into the pastry with your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. This will take a little while. Make sure there are no lumps of butter remaining.
2. Stir in 60g of the caster sugar.
3. Whisk 1 egg in a small bowl, then add to the pastry and bind it all together.
4. Wrap it in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
5. Roll out the dough. Flour your work surface, flour your rolling pin, and roll it out until it's about 0.5 cm thick (or thinner, if you dare). Use this to line a 28cm fluted-edge loose-bottom flan tin. Mine's by John Lewis and it's ace.
6. Bake the pastry case blind. That means, prick the pastry case all over the base with a fork, line it with foil, then tip in baking beans or rice, ensuring that they cover the whole area, especially the edges as you don't want the case to shrink. Then bake it in the oven, preheated to 200 degrees (a little less if it's fan assisted, maybe 190 degrees) for 10 minutes. Then, remove the foil and beans and bake for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven. Reduce the oven temperature to 180/170 degrees.
7. Beat the remaining 5 eggs in a large bowl. Add the double cream, the lemon zest and juice, and the remaining 220g caster sugar. Stir until very smooth.
8. Put the flan dish on the oven shelf. Then pour the filling into the pastry case.
9. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the lemon filling is wobbly but not liquid. If the pastry begins to brown, cover loosely with foil, making sure the foil does not touch the filling.
10. Remove from the oven. Leave to cool, then dust with icing sugar (I use a tea strainer to do this).
11. Serve warm or at room temperature, with cream or creme fraiche if you like.