Tag Archives: tart

Smoked Salmon Quiche

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Smoked Salmon Quiche

As we Aga cooks all know, cooking a quiche in an Aga couldn’t be easier because there is no blind baking required. You just have to add the filling to your pastry-lined tin and place the whole thing on the floor of the roasting oven to bake for 30 minutes or less. The pastry will cook from underneath avoiding a “soggy bottom”, as Mary Berry would tell you. The top will be golden brown.

The classic quiche is Quiche Lorraine made with bacon and Gruyère cheese, but there are so many variations you could try. For example, Diana Henry’s delicious salmon and crab tart with Thai flavours which I wrote about here.

Yesterday I made a simple smoked salmon quiche based on a Delia Smith recipe from her Complete Cookery Course. It was for a picnic for my husband and two friends who have been spending today salmon and trout fishing on the Usk. They also took with them roast asparagus dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, some mini pork pies (not homemade, I’m afraid), strawberries, rock cakes (my own), cinnamon buns (our favourite ones from Hart’s Bakery) and flasks of tea and coffee. They will not starve. I think I spotted a bottle of wine in the picnic basket too.

Smoked Salmon Quiche

Quantities here are for a 20cm fluted quiche tin, ideally with a loose bottom. Yesterday I doubled the quantities and used a 28cm tin. 

Ingredients

For the pastry:

  • 110g plain flour
  • 25g lard
  • 25g butter
  • a pinch of salt
  • cold water, to mix

For the filling:

  • 175 smoked salmon, chopped
  • 2 large eggs
  • 275ml double cream
  • freshly grated nutmeg
  • a dash of cayenne pepper
  • Salt and black pepper

Method

  • Lightly grease your tin
  • Make up the pastry by rubbing the fats into the flour and salt with your fingertips and adding a little cold water to combine. Rest it in the fridge wrapped in clingfilm for at least half an hour. Alternatively, use shop-bought pastry; I don’t mind one bit
  • Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and line your tin with it
  • Arrange the smoked salmon over the pastry base in the tin
  • Beat the eggs with the cream and add salt, pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg to taste
  • Pour the filling into the tin and sprinkle over a little cayenne pepper
  • Carefully slide the tin onto the floor of the roasting oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. Check it at 20 minutes and turn it round. When the pastry is golden and the filling is firm and golden brown, it is ready

 

Baking with Raspberries

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I don’t see myself as much of a maker of puddings or desserts; I’m nervous about pastry and anyway, during the week there simply isn’t time to make a dessert.  In all honesty I’d rather bake a cake to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon and then just eat some chocolate to satisfy my sweet tooth at the end of a meal.  But, as I wrote here, I’m not eating chocolate anymore.

On Sundays, as I think I’ve mentioned before, my mother-in-law usually makes a pudding for us all.  I’ll make one if we have friends round or to take to friends if we’re invited to lunch or supper.  I’ll also make a dessert when it’s my turn to host book club or film club.

Raspberry and Cinnamon Torte

The raspberry and cinnamon torte I wrote about in my tumblr days is one of our favourites:

https://www.tumblr.com/annettehardy/124165468337/raspberry-and-cinnamon-torte-i-made-two-of-these

Bakewell Cake

This bakewell cake by Fay Ripley, which my Twitter friend @lesleyj28 alerted me to recently, could serve as a dessert or a teatime cake.  I pounced on the recipe because it contains everything that’s delicious and good about a bakewell tart (almonds, raspberry jam!) but no pastry.  I love pastry but (see above) don’t love making it.  Without the need to make pastry, this cake is mixed and baked in no time.  I used to watch Fay Ripley in Cold Feet on the telly (LOVED it) and had heard about her recipes but had not tried them before.  As I began to make this, I realised how similar it is to my torte.  It is a little more “cake-y” (two eggs instead of one), has jam in it and doesn’t contain cinnamon but apart from that it’s the same.  In fact, if I made it again, I’d probably replace the vanilla extract with cinnamon, but that’s just my personal preference.  Also – a small point – I didn’t have any flaked almonds in the cupboard so scattered over chopped almonds instead: a poor compromise on Fay’s recipe, we later all agreed.

Ingredients

  • 150g butter, softened
  • 150g golden caster sugar
  • 150g SR flour
  • 150g ground almonds
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 6 tsp raspberry jam
  • 150g raspberries (I used frozen because it was all I had)
  • 50g flaked almonds

Method

  • Grease a 22cm springform tin and base-line with bake-o-glide or baking parchment
  • In a mixer, food processor or with an electric hand whisk combine the butter, sugar, flour, almonds, eggs and vanilla extract (oh how I love the all-in-one method!)
  • Place half the mixture in the cake tin, smoothing it out, and dot the raspberry jam over, half a teaspoon at a time.  Scatter the raspberries over
  • Drop spoonfuls of the remaining mixture over the fruit but don’t worry if there are gaps; it will spread in the oven
  • Scatter over the flaked almonds
  • Bake for about 40 minutes in the Aga baking oven (or a little longer in a conventional oven at 180ºc).  Not easy to test this cake with a skewer because the raspberries make it a little wet in the middle.  It should be golden brown and springy to touch when done

Couldn’t be simpler.

 

IMG_2705

 

Raspberry Muffins

I love making raspberry muffins too, although I see them as more of a coffee or teatime thing than a dessert.  I also wrote about these on my tumblr:

https://www.tumblr.com/annettehardy/119691034322/muffins-not-cupcakes-this-time-but-im-rather

Weekend Cooking

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It’s probably very dull and predictable that I almost always go food shopping on a Friday to get what we need for the weekend.  I know I’m not alone in this because I invariably bump into friends doing the same thing.  In fact, Waitrose can be a very sociable place on a Friday morning!

Sometimes meals have been planned and I’ve drawn up a shopping list of ingredients (on my phone – I add to it throughout the week), but some weeks I hope I’ll be inspired by something I see at the butcher’s or in the supermarket.  Last Friday was one of those times.  I bought duck breasts, half a shoulder of lamb and a kilo of minced beef in case I changed my mind about the duck breasts.  When in doubt, make a bolognese or a chilli, is my motto.  The mince is now in the freezer and I slow-roasted the lamb on Sunday.

Duck Breasts 

Because we were going to be watching the Six Nations rugby on Saturday afternoon, I wanted to keep my duck breast recipe simple.  I used two duck breasts for three of us.  If your duck breasts are as large as ours were, you need less than a whole one per person.

Score the fat of your duck breasts and season.  Peel and cut into cubes one medium potato per person and place in a roasting tin in a single layer.  Place the breasts in a cold, non-stick frying pan on the Aga simmering plate (conventional: medium heat) skin side down.  Cook for 8 minutes, pouring the fat as you go along into the roasting tin into which you’ve placed the potatoes.  It would be sensible to line the tin with bake-o-glide (I forgot) because the potatoes might stick a little (as mine did).

After the 8 minutes, place the now golden breasts skin side up on a rack over the potatoes in the roasting tin and cook in the roasting oven (conventional 220ºc) for a further 15 minutes for a pink centre.  If you prefer them well done, increase this time by 5 minutes or so.  Make sure all the delicious fat from the frying pan has gone into the roasting tin.

While this is happening put the frying pan back on the simmering plate and add about a glass of red wine and a little stock (whatever you have to hand; I used Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder).  Let that bubble and thicken a little and then stir in some redcurrant jelly until melted.  I’m not giving you quantities here.  Just think of how many people you are serving; all you need is a little jus to pour over.

Pour the jus into a jug and keep this at the back of the Aga, take the duck breasts out of the oven and continue to cook the potatoes until they are golden brown, tender and crisp.  Keep the breasts warm; they need to rest for 5-10 minutes anyway before being sliced thickly and served.  We ate ours with buttered cabbage.

Best to slice it on a board before serving.
Served with buttered cabbage to serve.

 

If you like duck, I can also recommend this Chinese-style duck leg recipe by the excellent food blogger “Eat like a girl”.  It’s where I got the idea for the potatoes in the above dish.  I have made it many times, often for guests and a couple of times for 12 people: I just used two large Aga roasting tins in the roasting oven, one on the second set of rungs and one on the fourth, and swapped them over half way through cooking.  As I’ve probably mentioned before, I love dishes that can be cooked in one dish/pot/tin.  All you need to accompany this one is some pak choi stir-fried in a little oil with some soy sauce.

Tart

This weekend I also made this “Eat like a girl” Blueberry and Cardamom Frangipane Tart.  (More cardamom, I hear you say.  I’m not even going to apologise.)  She only posted the recipe this week so probably hasn’t had much feedback yet.  I can tell you we loved it.  It’s very Scandinavian and would work as a dessert, with morning coffee or afternoon tea.  I thoroughly recommend it.