Crème Brûlée Tart

This little number haunted my dreams and kept me awake last night, teasing me with it's buttery base, velvet vanilla filling and cracked caramel. I found the recipe right before bed time it just wouldn't leave me. Needless to say, this tart found it's way into the kitchen today. It has all the attributes of a good custard tart - which are ridiculously hard to come by - and a crème brûlée. The recipe was originally created by Michael McCarty of Michael's Santa Monica as an interpretation of the french classic crème brûlée and proved to be one of his most popular desserts. The crisp toffee top that makes a hollow 'crack' when tapped with the back of the spoon, releasing the creamy custard, is the gilding on this lily.

If you do not have a food processor - don't be put off by the homemade pastry. Cut the butter up into tiny dice and rub it in with your fingertips to keep it as cold as possible. A blow torch is handy to have for the brûlée, but if you don't have one of these, chill the tart thoroughly before putting under a very hot grill for a few seconds. The dough can me made up to a week beforehand and kept in the fridge, and the whole tart made 1 day ahead without caramelising the sugar.

Crème Brûlée Tart

Pastry:
1 1/4 cups plain flour
2 tabs sugar
1/4 tsp salt
120g cold butter, cut into 8mm cubes
3 to 5 tabs ice water

Custard:
1/2 vanilla bean (or one bean that has been used already)
1 1/4 cups cream
2/3 cup milk
4 egg yolks
1 egg
6 tabs sugar
pinch of salt

Topping:
2 tabs sugar

To make the pastry:  Combine the flour, sugar, salt and butter in a bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs with some larger chunks. Add 3 tabs of the water and stir in. Grab a handful of the mix and squeeze to see if it will hold together. If not, add 1 tab of water at a time until it holds. Roll out gently, and fold over on itself a couple of times to stretch out the butter. Be careful not to overwork or the pasty will be tough. Shape into a ball, wrap in Gladwrap and press into a 5" disk. Chill for 30mins or until firm. Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Roll out the dough into a 13" circle between 2 layers of Gladwrap or baking paper. Peel off one layer of wrap and fit into a 9" removable base tart pan. Peel off second layer of wrap, fold overhanging pastry back inwards to reinforce the sides, and chill again for 30mins. Lightly prick bottom of shell with a fork, line the pastry with foil or baking paper and fill with pie weights or a thin layer of rice. Cook for 25-30 minutes or until edges are light golden. Remove foil and weights and cook a further 10-15 minutes until golden. Reduce oven to 150C/300F. (Keep an eye on it - it transitions from golden to dark very quickly - as mine did.)

To make the custard: While the pastry is cooking, scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and add to a heavy based saucepan along with the bean, milk and cream. Heat gently until hot, turn off the heat and steep for 30 minutes. Whisk the yolks, egg, sugar and salt together and add to the cream mixture. Strain and pour into a jug. Put the tart shell, still in its tin, onto a baking tray, and place in the oven. Pour in the custard mix and cook for 30-35 minutes until just set, but still wobbly in the middle. Cool for 30mins and then remove the base and let stand until it reaches room temperature.

Finishing: Immediately before serving, sprinkle sugar over the tart evenly and using a blowtorch, pass the flame backwards and forwards over the sugar is caramelised and lightly colored. Serve on it's own or with some fresh berries and chantilly cream.

Flavoured Butters - Savoury and Sweet

countryliving.com

There you are, staring down at the piece of raw meat on your bench and it's just laying there awaiting it's fate without the decency to even suggest what might be done with it. So many possibilities, but if you've left dinner until the last minute and have no idea what to do with it - give these little gems a go. If you have good quality meat, you'll need little more than some flavoured butter to kick it up a notch. You can trick up some butter ahead of time to have stored in the freezer ready to roll. Savoury butters are fantastic on a roast, steak, chicken, fish, pork, vegetables, sauces and anywhere you would usually use plain butter. Sweet butters are great on cakes, pancakes, toast, fresh homemade bread, muffins and to use in pastries, biscuit doughs etc.

The method for these is mostly all the same. Soften the butter, blend in the other ingredients with a fork or a mixer, put the butter onto some gladwrap and roll up into a log shape, twisting the ends to keep it tight. Store in the fridge for a few days or the freezer for a month or so. Just slice off medallions into single serves or melt it all down to garnish a whole dish.

Savoury Butters:
Roasted Capsicum & Basil Butter - 100g butter, 1 small roasted red capsicum peeled, 1 tbs lemon juice, 1 tbs chopped basil, salt & pepper. Spread on crusty bread or focaccia, melt over a meaty fish or as a vegetable garnish.

Mai'tre D'Hotel Butter - 100g butter, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tbs lemon juice, 1/2 tbs parsley chopped. This is a classic French butter served with fish, meat and vegetables.

Caper & Anchovy Butter - 100g butter, 30g anchovies, few capers, dash lemon juice. Be sure to rinse the salt off the anchovies and capers. Use with grilled fish or cold white meat.

Trick it up some more: try thyme and lemon with fish, sundried tomato and olive on bruschetta, caremelised onion and balsamic or worcestershire and tabasco on steak, or a mixture of your favorite herbs to use on almost anything.

Sweet Butters:
Brown Sugar & Cinnamon Butter - 100g butter, 2 tbs brown sugar, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Great for making cinnamon toast, baked apples, brushing over tea cakes or melting over pancakes.

Ginger & Orange Butter -  100g butter, 1tbs orange juice, 1tsp orange rind, 1tbs crystallised ginger chopped finely. Awesome on fresh bread, scones, fruitcake and used as the butter in a fruit crumble.

Citron Butter - 100g butter, 1 tbs lemon/lime/orange/grapefruit juice and 1tsp of the juice, add icing sugar to taste. Perfect for pancakes, on top of an orange cake, etc.


More: Mix butter with ground almonds for making cakes and pastries or cinnamon/nutmeg/allspice for stewed fruit desserts.

Just think about your flavours and view it as a glorified seasoning. The combinations are infinite, and there isn't much out there that can't be made better with the addition of some creamy butter.

Man Salad

"Salad is rabbit food", Salad doesn't fill me up", "Do we have to have salad again?", "I need meat for dinner", "Salad is girls food". Sigh. Fear not salad warriors, here's one that will suffice as a cruisy main meal and leave the menfolk feeling free to dig in for seconds worrying not for their reputations as carnivorous beer scullers. The kidlets are even bound to like something about this salad. It's chunky, it's crunchy, it's warm, it's overloaded with flavour, it's made with sage and garlic roasted organic free range chicken for crying out loud - it has to be good.

The best part? The 'croutons'. These aren't your average dried out fried bread cubes. Torn up crusty bread is added to the chicken roasting tray about 5 minutes before the chicken comes out. The bottom bits soak up the cooking juices, while the tops turn a crispy hue of gold. Gold!

Man Salad

1 whole, free range, organic chicken
4 sage leaves
2 garlic cloves, crush
50g butter
extra butter or duck fat to baste
Half a cob loaf (or any crusty bread), torn up roughly
700g sweet potato, peeled, roughly chopped
80g pine nuts, lightly toasted
200g baby spinach leaves
200g cheese (feta/cheddar/whatever you want), cubed or crumbled
5 free range eggs, hardboiled, halved

Pat chicken dry inside and out. Push your finger under the skin of the breast from the cavity end making a pocket each side of the breastbone. Stuff in the sage leaves and the butter and crushed garlic. Rub chicken over with butter or fat and season with salt and pepper. Cook in a hot oven (about 190-200c) until juices from the thigh area run clear when pricked.

Roast the sweet potato at the same time with a little butter and salt and pepper. Just before taking chicken out add the torn up bread to the roasting pan to crisp and colour up. Set aside to cool slightly before tearing up chicken into big masculine chunks. Add all the ingredients in together and toss together.

Dressings: Either a homemade (or bought will do in a pinch) whole egg mayo manned up with some wholegrain mustard, anchovies, lemon juice etc or a zingy dressing: one part acid like lemon juice/balsamic vinegar/white wine vinegar etc to two parts oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, honey, dijon mustard or whatever.

Plonk that down on the table at your next BBQ and see what happens. Good luck warriors!

Tarted Up Bread and Butter Pudding

Can you picture your your first dessert memory? The anticipation of that tiny frame of time after being made to eat "just three more mouthfuls" of grey-hued beans, but before being sent off to bed to let the grown ups talk? For me, that short amount of time was all about bread and butter pudding. Even now, the salivary glands kick into gear, the eyes glaze over and I can feel the firm squidginess that was essentially stale bread in custard. Twenty something years on and it's a regular in my own home, for my own family.

Mum's old recipe was designed to be filling, economical and somewhat healthy. The bread was always (at best) 'day old' from the local bakery which was given away to whoever wanted it. Whatever was leftover from the weeks school and work lunches would be used for pudding. The eggs came from our own free ranging, happy girls (who also ate the day old bread and kitchen scraps). The custard was always made with milk, imitation vanilla essence, and the most exotic ingredient by far was the nutmeg sprinkled over the top. But it was wonderful, and boy, did we eat it by the oversized family-of-sixteen-children-style pyrex casserole dish.

But times have changed, it's cheap to use heavy cream, real vanilla, rich brioche or spicy fruit toast to tart up this old fashioned classic. God knows it's well worth the extra dollar or so. If you go to the extent of using a whole vanilla bean, after using it in this recipe, put it in a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar. Replace the sugar (not the bean) as you use it. I'm sure even mother would approve of using a $5 bean to get that kind of longevity out of it! Use the sugar for meringues, hot drinks, biscuits etc.

So, if you're in the need for a comforting, warming, groan worthy (and who isn't?) dessert - give it a go!

Tarted Up Bread & Butter Pudding
Serves 4

4 cups torn up bread/brioche/fruit toast
60g butter, melted
1 cup milk
4 eggs (free range please!)
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract or seeds from 1 vanilla bean
1 3/4 cups cream

Toast bread in a moderate oven until crisp but not coloured. Pour melted butter over the bread and mix up to coat evenly, and transfer to a casserole dish. Whisk up remaining ingredients and pour over the bread. Chill for an hour. Bake at 180c until *just* set - about 50 minutes.

I usually have mine hot from the oven, drowned in cold milk (old family tradition), but cream or icecream are great choices.

Tart it up further: infuse the milk with citrus zest or the whole vanilla pod, dip the bread into marmalade or apricot jam, add chocolate chips, sprinkle the top with nutmeg or mixed spice, use donuts in place of the bread... you get the idea.