frangipane

This is a lovely filling to use in a fruit tart. Sometime I have ground the nuts myself which makes for a more textured filling with a lovely fresh taste. Most of the time though, I use ground almonds from Hassoons, which has them in the deli section. It's important to use fresh ground nuts, not ones that have been sitting around in a supermarket for ages. As for the sugar, well white sugar gives a paler colour and is good for delicate flavours but brown sugar is nice too.

I've given quantities for one for two tarts. As the mixture keeps for a few days in the fridge or you can be frozen, I tend to make the bigger mix. Which works better in the kenwood. And means I can make another tart with half the faffing.

You will need

1x
125g butter
150g caster or brown sugar
200g ground almonds
2 eggs
flavouring such as finely chopped orange or lemon rind, 3 tablespoons of brandy or some other liquor.

2x
250g butter
300g caster or brown sugar
400g ground almonds
4 eggs
flavouring such as finely chopped orange or lemon rind, 6 tablespoons of brandy or some other liquor.

To make

• Cream the butter and sugar and add any flavourings
• Beat in the eggs
• Mix in the ground almonds
• Tarts filled with frangipane should be baked at 180C until the top is golden and the centre feels cooked (or nearly cooked if you don't mind a slightly gooey tart).

roast garlic paste

This was a staple when we had the cafe. I'd like to say it was my idea, or my creation, but it wasn't. One of our cooks suggested this and once we tasted it, we never stopped making it. It can be used in so many ways. We used to add about a teaspoon to each stir fry, it's nice on dry biscuits and toast if you like garlic, you can add it soups. But perhaps my favourite use is on pizza bases. Which was what got me thinking about making it the other week. I was making a potato and rosemary pizza with mushrooms and olives and found myself thinking, now if I just had some parmesan cheese and roast garlic paste....

So anyway, I was at Hassoons where I buy a few vegies that don't come in the box and they had some lovely purple garlic. Big pungent cloves. It was from Mexico and so not local, but it was a lot nicer than the wimpy garlic from China which is very tedious to make garlic paste from.

Ingredients

at least 4 heads of garlic
lemon juice
fresh chili
olive oil

To make

Cut the tops of the garlic heads (don't worry if some cloves are exposed and some aren't) and place the heads in a roasting tray. Sprinkle with salt. Roast at about 170C - 180C until the garlic is soft and brown carmelly bits are emerging from the garlic cloves. Allow to cool. Peel each clove and place in a bucket or food processor. This bit can either be very sticky and fiddly or quite easy depending on the garlic. Sticky is more annoying but you will have a better product in the end. Resist the temptation to just squish the garlic out, you will only get half as much paste that way.

Once you have all the garlic, add some chopped chili, a squeeze of lemon and a small slosh of olive oil (for four big heads of garlic I would probably use about half a hot chili and half a lemon). Blend to a paste with a bamix or in a food processor. Scrape into a container and refrigerate. Keeps for a good while, not sure how long - we've never had it around long enough to go off.

Andrew's short crust recipe

This recipe was given to me by a chef I worked with when we had the kitchen. Making proper pastry didn't come naturally to me, kind people said it was because I had warm hands better suited to breadmaking. Anyway, with the demands of running a cafe kitchen as well as cooking, I never really had the time to learn. This recipe is different to proper pastry, it's made by creaming butter and sugar and not at all temperamental. It can be quite hard which means that it doesn't go soggy as quickly, which means that for tarts they will stay nice enough for a couple of days.

As this recipe freezes really well, I tend to make the larger quantity and freeze tart size portions. From memory it's enough for 4 domestic size tarts. Being untemperamental this mixture can be microvaved to thaw it out. It also makes quite nice biscuits, either plain or with passionfruit icing. But that's another story.


You will need

small quantity

• 250g butter
• 250g caster sugar (sometimes I use brown sugar which turns out OK)
• 350g flour (about 1/4 self raising and the rest plain)

larger quantity

• 500g butter
• 500 g caster sugar
• 500g plain flour
• 200 g self-raising flour

To make

• Chop the butter into pieces and soften slightly in the microwave if really hard.
• Cream butter and sugar with electric beater on high.
• Add about three quarters of the flour and mix on low speed. (Andrew used to insist on it being mixed by hand, but I don't think it makes a difference if you use a slow speed) Add the rest of the flour until you have a moist but slightly crumbly dough. Most of the time you will need all the flour, but it can vary.
• Knead just enough for the dough to cohere. If you accidentally add too much flour, add just enough cold water to bring the dough together. It will still be fine.

To make a pie or tart crust

• Press into tin, making sure that you don't make the corners too thick. Trim.
• Bake at 180C until crust puffs up a little and maybe starts to colour, depending on how tough, er crisp, you like your crust. Remove from oven and press out the puffy bits with the back of a spoon.
• Fill with tart filling and bake as per filling recipe.

To make biscuits

• Roll out quite thinly.
• Cut biscuit shapes.
• Bake at 180C until just brown.
• Ice or not.

Ersatz marscapone

Commonly referred to around here as fake marscapone, this tastes almost as good as the real thing and can be used in all situations I can think of that require marscapone: as a topping, as a stuffing, as a filling, in tiramasu. And it is much cheaper. I was given this recipe, or rather method, by a woman I admired as a top notch Italian cook about 15 years ago. It's been part of my repertoire ever since.

You basically whip cream and cream cheese together. I use pure or pouring cream (the kind without vegetarian offending gelatine) and philly cheese. The key is in the mixing. It helps to chop the philly into pieces and microwave for 30 seconds. Beat the cream cheese on its own with electric beaters on high until all the lumps disappear. This can take a while (if the cream was mixed in at this stage you might end up with butter and cream cheese). Then add the whipped cream cheese to the cream and beat with electric beaters until you have a smooth consistency. And voila, ersatz marscapone.