Lex Culinaria

EotMEoTE 8: Quail Egg and Prosciutto Pizza

Surprisingly, Samantha had slept straight through the night despite the thunderstorms. Now Nicholas had roused her from her dreams to watch the glorious, rainbow-ed sunrise. At first she’d been grumbly about having been woken from such a deep sleep. Now she was pleased: the sunrise was breathtaking.

She stretched her long tanned legs in front of her on the porch floor and nursed the cup of coffee Nicholas had offered her, steaming, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. They’d been up so late taking about nothing and everything. She was watching Nicholas serve up breakfast – it looked like eggs and bacon on a pizza base (surely she was wrong) - and trying her hardest to disguise how much she enjoyed watching him do these little meaningless things. She didn’t know which she found more compelling, the pink and orange sunrise or the muscles on the back of Nicholas’ arm as he dished up breakfast.

He looked sideways at her over his muscle-y shoulder. "I hope you like quails eggs on pizza. I know it’s not exactly a traditional romantic getaway breakfast, but I really don’t eat any non-pizza foods."

That was one of the things she liked so much about Nicholas. He was not afraid to be weird. Weird and smouldering at the same time. She could feel her breath catching in her chest as he worked at the tea table.

When would he put the egg and bacon pizza down and walk over to her, sweeping her up into his brawny arms?

She watched, intently as he walked across the porch to he, bearing his love offering, his pizza. And she knew everything was perfect.

" Samantha? Do you like my egg pizza?" he whispered as he crossed the white painted floor.

His voice wafted through her, like the early morning mist over the ground, and she shivered in the warm sunrise air.

“Yes" she said, softly. "I love it."

Carefully, he put aside the pizza, and her shiver turned to a flush of heat as he swept her into his arms and out into the dewy pink and gold  morning, covering her with eggy kisses.

It is the end of the month and yet I see no signs of the friendly and irreverent EotMEoTE entries that make me laugh until I pee my pants. I can find no limericks, no haikus, no Smith's lyrics. Where are all the other EotMEoTE-ers? Where are all the witty poems? Short dramatic works? Are we all egged out by this month's IMBB?

Anthony promised me that the June editition of EotMEoTE would be the Mills & Boon edition, and my quivering orbs of yolky delight have been heaving with anticipation all month. But alas, I fear I am alone in my love of the egg and the toast (or-other-similarly-bready-and-at-least-heated-if-not-toasted-carbohydrate) this month. Sigh.

I had a dozen quail eggs left over from Sunday's upside down caviar and I needed a quick supper for friends. I also thought it would be a cute twist on the Aussie favourite -fried egg topped pizza. I've been in an Aussie food frame of mind for a few days after we had the pleasure of having a couple of fair-dinkum aussies over for a barbie last Friday night. Waz and Lenny live in the apartment next door to a mate of mine, and I'd never ever met them until Waz emailed me after Judy Schultz of the Journal wrote an article about food blogging featuring Lex Culinaria.

What could be more Aussie than egg on a pizza? Alright, maybe egg on a burger.

I love pizzas best without the tomato sauce base (Makes the dough too doughy) so I just brushed the (partially pre-cooked) dough with olive oil and sprinkled on lots of fresh chopped garlic. I topped it with slices of gorgeous ripe tomato, sliced smoked mozzarella, shredded basil leaves and pieces of prosciutto. I baked it in a 400F/200C oven for about 15 minutes - until the cheese melted and the edges got brown. Then I removed it from the oven, grated over some fresh reggiano and cracked a half dozen quails eggs onto each pizza. I popped them back in the oven for 5 minutes, and Bob's your mother's brother.

Bannock and wild blueberry jam

I had no idea, when I emailed Jennifer with the idea to have a Canada Day food blog event, that it would turn into such a popular event! I am so pleased that so many people are so passionate about the taste of their Canada. I am very much looking forward to seeing what Canada tastes like to everyone! Happy Canada Day all.

My Canada is the True North Strong and Free. It is the wild rice fields of the Northern lakes. It is the call of the loon on a summer night that never ends because the sun never goes down. It is the smell of a birch bark canoe and the cold and quiet early morning water it glides through.

It is water snakes, crayfish, wild blueberries and tiny wild strawberries. It is the feel of soft moss under my bare feet. The chatter of a squirrel. It is the smell of the smoke-tanned deer skin, decorated with beads. It is the fresh water smell of a just-caught fish and sand between my toes. It is the crackle of a campfire.

When I was small, we lived in the far North of Canada. First in the North West Territories, then in Lac LaRonge. My mum and dad taught school all over the North, both before and after my sister and I were born. After so many years living in the North, sometimes as one of the few non-aboriginal families in whatever place they were in, my mother and father learned what Canada meant to the first people.

When I was not even a year old we moved to Lac LaRonge so my parents could live their dream of running a fly-in fishing camp. My dad and Isaac, the camp guide, would take the men out fishing all day and my mum and the girls, Isaac's daughters, got up early and made bread and breakfast for the men.

My sister and I ran around the island, fell off the dock, almost drowned, got bit by Junebugs the size of small dogs, made forts out of sticks and moss and climbed trees. We ate berries straight off the bushes, still warm from the sunshine. We ate the bear and caribou and deer meat that our father hunted in winter. We learned to peel birch bark and make it into baskets. We learned to love the land and the water and the sky. The greatest gift my mum and dad gave to me and my sister was the gift of the true Canada. The Canada that the first people knew and still know. The Canada that feeds them with its gifts of berries and deer and fish. The Canada that feeds us all whether we realise it or not.

After my dad died and mum had to sell the fishing camp, she moved us down to Saskatoon to be closer to her family. It was hard for her so far up north with two small children on her own. It was equally hard for her to leave the North behind.

We never really did leave the North. Mum bought a cottage on Lac LaRonge, and we spent every summer of my childhood there. We'd collect wild blueberries, cranberries and goose berries. Mum would make pancakes and put our hand fulls of blueberries in. We'd make traditional Cree bannock over the campfire - the bread rich with a smoky taste of wood, lavished with butter and fresh berry jam. We'd eat fresh caught perch or trout, filleted and dusted lightly with pancake mix before being pan-fried. Some nights mum would send us out with foil-wrapped apples, cored and stuffed with brown sugar, to put in the glowing coals of the evening's fire.

My Canada tastes like smoky bannock, pan-fried perch, clear lake water, and berries, warm from the sun.

My Canada also tastes like my Ukrainian and Mennonite Grandmas' jams and pickles. Life on the prairies was hard, and cold. Settlers survived by canning and pickling and preserving food for the winter in any way that they could. Both Grandmas had enormous gardens and both canned and pickled furiously all summer, just like all the other prairie grandmas.

My Canada tastes like bannock and wild blueberry jam

For the Bannock:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 cup water

Sift together dry ingredients and cut in butter the same as you would for pastry or baking powder biscuits. When mixture resembles crumbs, add in enough water to make a dough heavier than drop scones or biscuits, but lighter than rolled scones or biscuits. The dough should not be overly sticky. Separate dough into 2 balls. pat each ball out into an oval shape, about a half centimetre thick and drape each oval over the clean end of a long birch branch thick enough to support the weight of the dough. Cook the dough in a campfire by holding it near the glowing coals until the dough is puffy and cooked. If you're lazy, of if it looks like your dough might fall off the stick, you can lay it on top of a grill, or fashion a grid out of smaller birch branches, woven together.

Eat the bannock hot with butter and blueberry jam.

For the wild blueberry jam:

• 1 + 1/4 cups wild blueberries
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 + 3/4 cups sugar
• 1/ 2 envelope liquid pectin

Pick over fruit, removing any stems and leaves.

Put into a large heavy pot. Add lemon juice and sugar. Mix well. Heat over high, stirring, and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat; stir in pectin at once. Skim off foam, stir and skim off foam again.

Ladle into hot, sterilized jars and seal. This jam will keep for a month or so if finished like this. If you want the jam to keep for a longer time, I recommend you process the jam in the jars for at least ten minutes.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

IMBB 16: Upside down caviar

Thanks to Viv at Seattle Bon Vivant for naming eggs as the guest of honour for the June edition of IMBB.

I was so pleased to finally have a chance to flip through the copy of Georgeanne Brennan's Holiday Eggs which I bought second-hand for $12 a couple years ago. At the time my husband said, "A whole book about eggs? Who needs a whole book about eggs?" I bought it entirely for the photos (it is a gorgeous book) and have paged through it from time to time, but have never specifically made anything out of it before.

My husband, Doubting Thomas that he was at the time of purchase, was cheering for the oeufs a la niege - poached sweet meringues floating, well, float-ily, on top of a pool of pale yellow creme anglaise and topped with fresh berries. He still might get that sometime soon, just not in time for IMBB.

Alas, the oeufs a la niege were not to be...as I was instantly smitten when I saw the recipe for quails eggs and caviar.

I love caviar (which are eggs too, now that I think about it) but the traditional sour cream/onion/toast/caviar combination topped with minced hard-cooked eggs seems so trite and boring. But if you turn it upside down, by using the caviar as a topping for the eggs...well now we're talking!

Also, I especially love that quail eggs look so cute. I have always had a soft spot for miniature anythings. A childhood trait I must have forgotten to outgrow. I came to love quail eggs when I was living in Melbourne and ever since then, one of my favourite party snacks has been hard cooked quails' eggs rolled in a mixture of sea salt and toasted ground cumin. Simple, but amazingly good.

These little caviar-topped beauties are just as simple and ever more cute than the cumin rolled ones. It's a shame that they disappear so quickly.

The secret to this, and any other hard cooked egg recipe, is to cook the eggs exactly long enough to avoid both the uncooked squishy yolk (blech) and the overcooked and highly unappealing grey yolk (double blech). Fortunately, there is a foolproof method for hard cooking both chicken and quail eggs. The method for quails eggs is contained in the recipe below. For perfect hard cooked chicken eggs, place the eggs in a pot of cool salted water, bring it to a boil over high heat, immediately remove the boiling pot from the heat and cover it. After 10 minutes, pour off the hot water and immerse the eggs in cold water. Does everybody already know this? I only learnt this last year (when I was in a hard cooked egg phase) and was shocked to find that I had been suffering through years of grey yolks for no good reason at all. I strongly suspect that I am the last person on the planet to have discovered this method.

When choosing your quails eggs remember that, at the best of times they are difficult to peel as they are quite delicate. Older eggs will peel better than fresh ones, so check the best before date on the cartons at the store and choose less fresh ones, or buy the eggs at least a week ahead and le t them sit in the refrigerator to age.

Quails eggs and caviar

• 12 quails eggs
• 1/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup finely minced yellow onion
• 1 small jar black lump fish caviar

Place eggs in pot of cool salted water and bring the pot to a boil over high heat. Allow the eggs to boil for exactly one minute, before removing the pot from the heat, pouring out the hot water and immersing the eggs in cold water. Leave the eggs in the cold water until you are ready to peel them. You can boil the eggs up to a day ahead.

Peel the quail eggs carefully, making sure not to tear the egg white from the yolk as you do.  rinse and dry the peeled eggs to ensure that there are no microscopic pieces of shell on the eggs. Slice each egg in half lengthwise and place on a plate. top each egg with a tiny dollop of sour cream, a few pieces of minced onion and a dollop of caviar. you'll have quite a lot of each topping left over when you are done as each egg half uses only a microscopic amount.

Inaugural Random Recipe Night: Jambalaya

Like absolutely everyone else out there who has the responsibility of providing meals for their family (in my case, one perpetually hungry husband and two small fuzzy kitties), sometimes, I just flat run out of ideas and can't, for the life of me, find anything I feel like cooking.

Today is one of those days.

Luckily, over the years, I have developed deep and abiding personal relationship with Epicurious, a recipe and food information database run by the nice folks who publish Gourmet Magazine and Bon Appetit. Some might call it a dependency. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love my cookbooks and adore my subscription to Donna Hay Magazine (despite the horrific $114 price tag for 6 issues for an overseas subscription).

But, I do find myself turning more and more to Epicurious in search of recipes. This amazing database of all-conceivable-ways-to-cook-every-imaginable-ingredient is a staple amongst food bloggers. Want to know what you can make with onions, cheese, breadcrumbs, and a donkey? Just fill in the handy search form and up will spring recipes for Shrimp, Scallop and Cod Lasagna or Scalloped Onions Leeks and Shallots, plus a few more. I was just kidding about the donkey.

Curious about carpaccio? Use the search function to turn up no less than 6 carpaccio recipes, or use the on line food terminology dictionary to find out what carpaccio is, if you didn't already know!

As many of my regular readers will know, I have what might best be described as an aversion to following recipes. I tend to use OPR (other people's recipes) more as a guide or a springboard for my own creations. I really am a chuck-some-stuff-into-a-pot-and-see-what-comes-out kind of cook. Despite this, my first port of call in deciding what to make is almost always Epicurious.

The database at Epicurious is an amazing tool. It provides absolutely unprecedented access to the sorts of things only those of us lucky enough to own the very expensive (for a cookbook, anyway, at around $80) Larousse Gastronomique have long known – there are limitless ways to cook almost everything, including all the ingredients you never knew existed!

Epicurious is where I turn when faced, as today, with a cooking mental block. I call it "Random Recipe Night". I select a course (main), and a main ingredient (tomatoes- just continuing the theme folks) in the Epicurious "advanced search" form and up pop 707 recipes. I look for one that speaks to me. Luckily, I just had a conversation this morning with our office manager about how much I love New Orleans, so the fourth hit, jambalaya, seems to me to be the perfect thing.

Whenever I do such a broad search I always find one recipe, for some totally random reason (like my conversation this morning), pops out at me. I guess it's the cooking equivalent of those word or ink spot association games popular with psychologists. I have no idea what my well-documented fascination with gelatin and tomatoes says about me. I probably don't want to know either!

Sometimes, a search will return 6 or 7 recipes, as with carpaccio. Sometimes, like tonight, it turns up hundreds. Then you're faced with the problem of which one to choose and how to choose it out of hundreds of possible candidates.

If you yourself baffled by the number of recipes that come up, or simply don't know which one might be good, click through a few and read the "Cook's Comments" at the bottom. Epicurious allows people write in to tell others how the recipe turned out for them and whether they'd recommend substitutions or changes. Pay attention to these comments. The people who leave them are just like you and me. Maybe they can't get tomatillos at their local supermarket, but found that green tomatoes do just as well. Maybe the recipe calls for too much or too little of one thing. As far as I can tell Epicurious does not censor these comments. I've seen some pretty brutal ones. Sometimes they even say "this is the worst recipe ever."

In addition to the comments, Epicurious has a "Fork Rating" system. This allows people to rate the recipe from zero (abysmal) to four (fantastic) forks and to state whether they would use the recipe again. The best way to take advantage of this ratings system is by using the "sort results" function and selecting "sort by Fork Rating".  The results of your search will then be displayed from the best rating to the worst. I don't even bother looking at recipes with less than 3 forks. Why waste time on something that doesn't taste good?

For tonight's supper, I didn't end up using the jambalaya recipe from Epicurious, rather I adapted one that was given to me by a fantastic native New Orlenian (although his partner would dispute the native New Orlenian part I'm sure. I gather this has something to do with the side of the river he grew up on?), Mr. Randall Saizan. As always, I rejigged it for my own preferences. Don't tell Randy. I promised to always follow his recipes to a T.

Because I like my dishes, especially those with tomatoes, to taste fresher, I added the tomatoes much later in the recipe than most jambalaya recipes, including Randy's, call for. I also added more parsley and cooked the vegetables for a shorter time period.

Jambalaya (makes 8 generous servings)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 + 1/2 cups chopped onion (about 1 medium to large)
• 1 + 1/4 cups chopped celery (about 3 large ribs)
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 5 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 cups sliced spicy sausage (like andouille or chorizo)
• 1 cup diced smoked ham
• 2 teaspoons of the darkest Hungarian paprika you can find. (mine is a deep scarlet colour)
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 boned and skinned chicken breast, cubed
• 5 cups chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 2 + 1/2  cups long grain rice
• 5 cups diced tomatoes (I used yellow, orange and red)
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley (plus more for garnish)

Heat oil in large (8 to 10 litre) dutch oven until hot. Add onion,celery, red pepper and garlic. Cook and stir over medium heat until softened and browned, about 8 minutes.  Add sausage, ham, paprika,and pepper flakes and black pepper. Continue cooking over medium to high heat, stirring frequently until for a further 10 minutes. Stir in chicken, chicken stock and rice and combine thoroughly. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 20 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Check several times during the 20 minutes cooking time to make sure there is still enough liquid. If the liquid absorbs too quickly, and the rice starts sticking to the bottom of the pot, pour in 1/4 cup or so of water to stop the rice from sticking.

This is a perfectly yummy one dish meal. Just spicy enough and absolutely packed with fresh, tangy veggies and loaded with spicy meat! 

After the 20 minutes is up, stir in the tomatoes and parsley. Cover and, turn off heat and allow to stand on burner 5 minutes. Garnish servings with more chopped parsley.

I drink I'm thunk: The true story of a girl and a chocolate martini

Chocolate and alcohol.

Apparently mix very well thank you.

As Cakes was off doing secret boy stuff for most of Saturday, I was left to my own devices. I only have one word to say on the matter: Shopping.

I popped in at Condon Barr, a local restaurant supply store I have been meaning to visit for, oh, about 12 months now. I pounced on and purchased, totally impulsively, six gorgeous little double-handled soup bowls. They are now sitting prettily in my glass fronted cupboard. Expect a soup recipe soon.

I supplemented the soup bowls with a few other trinkets, but after 20 minutes, I ran out of stuff to look at. Condon Barr's selection of small wares is well…small. Most of the space is taken up by industrial restaurant dishwashers and other big metal stuff that I find boring.

I was just about on my way to the cash register and out the door when a kind lady stopped me to ask if I would like a chocolate martini. Really. I recalled that this was the weekend of their advertised "bar wares sale". Apparently, their promotion involved plying their customers with full-size, yummy, yummy chocolate martinis. The martini was very good. And chocolaty. And alcoholic. At 1 pm on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe these people are Australian.

Because I had just drunk at least 2 ounces of alcohol, and hadn't eaten a thing all day, I thought I'd better stick around and see whether I would be okay to drive. Big mistake. So there I was: unchaperoned, slightly drunk, a wallet full of plastic, and trapped, for at least 20 minutes, in a store selling kitchen thingies. Predictably, the small collection of items in my shopping basket swelled. I bought things I didn't know I needed. I bought things I didn't recognize and probably won't ever be able to figure out how to use.

Note to self: Hide bill from Cakes and swear no more drunken shopping.

The martinis were divine though. Try them. You'll see. Just don't do any shopping for at least an hour after drinking one, lest you find yourself kitted out with a Peruvian frog-leg skinner or 6-foot pink fiberglass whisk.

Condon Barr's Illegal Chocolate Please-Buy-More-Random-Kitchen-Gadgetry Martinis

Serves 2

• 3 oz. chilled vodka
• 1.5 oz chilled clear crème de cacao
• 1/4 oz Cointreau
• 2 chunks milk chocolate (CB used Hershey's Kisses, but I think Hershey's Kisses are foul… although, it is at the bottom of a martini, and I don't recall any hesitation on my part in eating the kiss after drinking the booze!)

I may well be drunk every single day until the end of the spanky new bottle of clear creme de cacao in my cupboard...

P.S. As I've had a bit to drink I feel comfortable pointing out that there was a fancy article about me in a fancy newspaper on June 15th. Shhhh.

Have another martini, darls.

Too many kitties. Too little time.

Several food bloggers with kitties are all posting about the kitties, as opposed to food this weekend.

I could forgive you for thinking that we adopted 7 or 8 kittens, when in fact, we adopted two.

You see, these two kittens make enough smell for at least 8, and they have acquired enough toys in the 10 short days that we have had them, to support an veritable army of kittens. They are cute though.

Which is good. Because they stink. A lot.

They are also getting fat. Which, I suppose, could be expected of any kitty in my house. Do you think I would feed them ordinary cat food? Nope. They get range fed, organic, raw, ground human grade elk and beef. I have never actually seen cats (of which I have owned a few) dance they way they do at meal time. They love this stuff. They'd practically rip your arm off for it, so it must be good.

I eat well. I don't see why my kitties shouldn't. For the reason why my cats get pure meat,  click here.

Without further ado. Fitzy and Matty, 10 days in to their adoption, and a half pound heavier apiece:

Happy Birthday to Anthony!

Late Thursday night I was having an email war with Anthony and the dear lad let it slip that it was his birthday on Saturday (Aussie time that is). I think he may have been drunk at the time.

I lamented that I would be happy to bake him a cake, but that I didn't think Australian Quarantine would like that a whole bunch (they confiscated a beautiful lacquered Thai serving tray from me once because it may or may not have had a bottom woven from banana leaves -- that were lacquered, folks!). I jokingly offered to send him a photo of a cake that I baked in honour of his birthday.

That was the first piece in a fatalist baking puzzle of the sort that Sam went through in respect of her Sugar High Friday Bakewell tart. A series of events had begun to conspire to convince me that I must make this cake.

The second piece of the puzzle revealed itself in the form of a tart too good to make it to the office. I'd promised to bring baking to work and was actually thinking of bringing the chocolate tart I made for Sugar High Friday. I realized, after the tart came out of the oven and Cakes and I snuck the first piece, that the tart was never going to make it into the office.

I remembered my email conversation with Anthony and started idly flipping through cookbooks looking for inspiration. My first instinct was to make some sort of meat-based cake as Anthony is an Aussie bloke and therefore partial to meat and averse to all remotely girly foods. That is how they are over there. They even have meat raffles. I know! It's crazy.

I realized though, that a meat cake might not go down too well at work for morning tea.

So I picked up Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. It practically fell open to a recipe for flour-less chocolate cake that calls for a 435 gram tin of chestnut paste. "Lo, what is this I have in my cupboard?", I said to myself, "Could it be a 439 gram tin of chestnut paste that I bought in March not knowing what I would do with it but vaguely thinking I might eventually use it to make a chocolate cake?" In fact. It was.

This cake is perfect for Anthony. Dark, bitter chocolate, rich, but not too sweet. And positively FUDGY! A real blokey cake if there ever was one. I couldn't help myself from dusting it with sparkly cake decorating powder though - the food equivalent of body glitter! Sorry mate.

Happy Birthday Anthony! Here is a photo of some random (office mates of mine really, so not totally random as say, people off the street or anything like that) people eating a birthday cake I baked for you!

SHF #9: Dark Chocolate Tart

I love an excuse to bake. Even more, I love an excuse to bake this tart! So when Life in Flow (the host of Food Porn Watch) announced that this month's Sugar High Friday's theme was tarts, I was pretty happy. As was Cakes. He knew that I'd be making this tart almost before I did.

It's from Tamasin Day-Lewis' 2000 book Art of the Tart. And believe me, it is a work of art. I bought Ms. Day-Lewis' (Daniel Day-Lewis' sister, by the way!) book a few years ago when I was going through an all-tarts-all-the-time phase. I first made it for a Monday night Sex and the City party at Veronica and Niki's place and the girls all loved it. It is very rich though, so watch it. A 25 cm tart will feed at least 8 chocoholic girls. Ms. Day-Lewis attributes her recipe to Simon Hopkinson (of Roast Chicken and Other Stories fame).

I've adapted the recipe a little bit as I can't seem to help myself from adding cinnamon and cardamom to anything with chocolate these days.

For the Pastry:

• 180g butter
• 75g granulated sugar
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 225g pastry flour

Process all the ingredients in into a homogenous paste, roll into a ball and chill in the fridge, covered in cling flim, for a hour. Roll out between two sheets of clingfilm, and line a 25cm tart tin with the pastry. Trim. Blind bake for 25 minutes at 180C (350F). Set aside.

For Filling:

• 2 eggs
• 3 yolks
• 45g granulated sugar
• 150g butter
• 200g dark chocolate, in pieces

Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler, or in a metal bowl over a pot of simmering water, stirring occasionally. While the chocolate is melting, beat together the other ingredients until they mixture becomes thick and fluffy. Pour chocolate into the egg mixture and beat until combined. Pour into tart shell and return to the hot (180C/350F)oven for 5 minutes. The tart won't look set, but trust me, it is as cooked as it should be.  Set the cooked tart aside to cool completely. Serve with cinnamon whipped cream.

This is so seriously good. I've never had another chocolate tart that even comes close to this one!

Three-Tomato and Edam Tart

I still love tomatoes today. I finished the tomato jam on the last piece of crusty French bread for supper, so I had to satisfy my tomato craving with something else. The theme for this month's Sugar High Friday has me thinking about tarts - so I indulged myself while Cakes was out with the boys tonight.

I reckon a nicely made, simple tart looks far more difficult than it is. To me it is the perfect stay at home supper as it involves baking, the home-iest kind of cooking you can engage in.

When I bake, whether it's bread, or sweets or, like tonight, a tart, I feel the strongest possible connection to the women in my family.

For generations, my mother, and aunties and grandmother and their aunties and grandmothers, have fed their familes well, and with love. Their whole raison d'etre was the home they kept and the food they made for their families.

When Mum would leave me at Gram's house for an afternoon off, I'd sit on the floor of Gram's kitchen, blue melamine countertop miles above me, sunlight streaming in the sheer white and pale blue polka-dot curtains. Gram sewed those curtains herself and they were still pristine after 30 years when Gramps died and she sold the house.

Gram would let me help with the weekend baking and I'd sit cross-legged on her floor kneading bread dough in her enormous steel mixing bowl. I'm sure I could have sat in the bowl, it was that big. When my five-year-old arms got tired, Gram would take my little fists in her hands and knead with me. That was how I learned to make bread, how I learned to tell whether the dough was kneaded enough, how I learned that baking was more about my Gram's love for us than anything else.

That is why, when I was feeling a little blue tonight (all that rain and dark sky), and wanting to do something with the beautiful bright tomatoes on my table, I chose to make a tart. Gram taught me so much more than how to tell if dough is properly kneaded. She taught me it's okay to feel a little blue and that baking, anything, with love is the cure for all that ails you.

I adapted this tart recipe from one I found at Epicurious.

Tomato and Edam Tart for Gram

Enough for a 30 cm tart pan

for the Pastry
180 grams flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
90 grams butter
2 Tablespoons cold buttermilk (or more, depending on the flour you use)

Sift first three ingredients together. Cut cold, cubed butter into flour with a pastry cutter until it resembles crumbs. Slowly add the cold buttermilk until the dough sticks together into a ball. Refrigerate until well chilled. Sandwich the dough ball between two layers of cling film and roll out to the desired shape. Peel away one layer of the cling film and place the pastry gently over the tart tin, remaining cling film facing up. Remove the cling film from the top of the dough and press dough firmly, but gently into the tin, trimming the edges even with the top of the pan. Set lined tart tin aside in the refrigerator until required.

For the Filling:
1 large sweet onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tablesoon butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
200 grams edam cheese, shredded
5 ripe, firm juicy tomatoes, ends discarded and sliced into four or five slices each

Cook and stir onions, garlic and butter in a non-stick frying pan until golden and soft, (about 10 minutes) over medium heat, add salt. Arrange cooked onions in bottom of tart shell, covering the base evenly. Sprinkle shredded cheese evenly over the onion. Top onion with overlapping tomato slices. Bake tart in a 350F/190C oven for 60 minutes. Feed it to someone you love. Or me. Yes, feed it to me.

Cookbooks meme-orama

Tagged again for another meme. This time by Clare.

For those of you not familiar with memes, click here.

5 Favourite Books Meme

Like Reid and Clare, I've limited my selections to cookbooks or books about food, in keeping with the theme of my blog.

1. Total number of (cook/food) books I’ve owned:
Including the ones that have been culled over time and between continents... about 200 or 250
2. Last (cook/food) book(s) I bought:

3. Last (cook/food) book I read:
Tender at the bone: Ruth Reichl

4. Five (cook) books that mean a lot to me:

The Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook:this was the book that mum and I used to pore over together at the kitchen table so I could choose something to make for supper after mum went back to work when I was 8 and got to cook supper 2 nights a week.

How to Eat: Nigella Lawson. Nigella writes so easily and engagingly about food that you can't help but read this book like a novel.

Etiquette: Emily Post (1960's edition), not really about food, but more about the way people eat it. It really reinforces that at least half the equation in the enjoyment of any good meal is the atmosphere.

Donna Hay Magazine: I was not as big a fan of Donna's Cookbooks, but I love these magazines. I tend not to read them for the actual recipes, but more for presentation ideas and general themes. Her styling abilities are outstanding.

The Cowboy Cookbook: This was a 1960's reject from my the elementary school my mother taught at. Not even one child had ever checked it out, so she brought it home for me to read when I was in high school (I think. It might have been in the first few years of Uni). It was in a plain brown cover and contained recipes collected by some guy who went around and interviewed the last of the old chuck wagon cooks for their campfire recipes. The recipes were interspersed with true stories from the wild west as told by these gnarled little old men who made coffee in an old tin can over a fire  and under the stars. It also had the best recipe for refried beans I've ever made. It got culled from the collection in  the first intercontinental move in 1999, but I'll always remember it for starting me down the thought path towards the idea that the food we eat come from deep inside our cultural and personal histories. That our food and recipes represent so much more than what we eat for supper night after night. They represent who we are as a people and as individual persons. Alright. That's enough depth for today. I'm tapped out.

5. Which 5 people would you most like to see fill this out in their blog?

Provided they've not already been tapped:

Ana,  Stephanie, Rachael, Molly, Alice