Leek Tart

What fools those food writers think we be. Time and again I make a recipe and it is clear that there is twice as much sauce as should be, or stock, or sugar; time and again I look at a picture, and it is not what it claims to be. The latest offender is Maggie Beer. In her gorgeous if somewhat precious book, Maggie's Harvest, we have a full-page picture of a 'Pumpkin Picnic Loaf'. I asked my four year old to examine the photograph and tell me what was in the sandwich. 'Um, pumpkin,' she said. 'Feta or maybe chévre. Onions. Basil.'

Correct. My four year old can identify the ingredients in a photograph of a sandwich. And in the recipe, do we have feta or chévre? Onions? Basil?

No, we do not. Not a skerrick. The recipe calls for gruyere, not a white goats cheese; zucchini, not onions; and parsley. While the basil in the photograph could possibly be baby spinach leaves – also absent from the recipe – it could not by any stretch of the imagination be parsley.

Now, the recipe looks good. The sandwich looks better. But the disjunction between the two makes me mistrust the recipe and the writer, and I feel slightly miffed – how stupid do the editors think I am, that I can't identify the ingredients in a full-page photograph?

On the bright side, it gives me permission to make the sandwich the way I want – and when I make it, I will use chévre and onions.

As I think about not following recipes, I find myself recalling last night's leek tart and salivating. We had a dozen people for dinner, plus kids; so I made a green tart and a leek tart (doubling the pastry recipe to make two tart cases, of course), a cabbage and apple coleslaw, and a beet and pumpkin salad. Someone brought roast chickens, and that, plus 5 or 6 bottles of wine, formed the main course. Not too shabby for a Tuesday.

Every recipe I have seen for leek tart uses cream and, usually, egg yolks. As much as I love cream, I usually find it a bit rich in a savoury tart. So I made my tart with full cream milk and whole eggs, and it was simply delicious. The tart came out of the oven burnished gold, and the filling simply melted in the mouth. Perfect.

The recipe follows the Green Tart recipe almost exactly; even so, I will post it in full so you can follow it without referring to the Green Tart recipe.

Leek Tart For the pastry: - 120g flour - 50g unsalted butter - 3 tbs water - pinch salt For the filling: - 1 large, 2 medium or 4 skinny leeks - a skerrick of freshly grated nutmeg - 200g cheddar cheese - 5 eggs - 1 ½ cups milk Make the pastry: Place the flour, a pinch of salt and the butter in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds, or until the butter and flour are incorporated; there will be no loose flour flying around. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, and process for another 30 seconds to a minute or until the mixture resembles tiny soft pebbles. Flour the bench and a rolling pin. Tip the pastry onto the bench, and gently form into a flat disc with your hands. Roll it out, rolling from the centre to the edge and turning 90 degrees between each roll, until it fits your dish. (Mine is 25cm in diameter.) Drape the pastry over the rolling pin and lift it carefully into the dish. Pat into place. Trim the edges. Place the dish into the freezer, and leave it there until you need it. Preheat the oven to 180C. Top and tail your leek(s). Slice down the middle, and fan out under running water to remove any trapped dirt. Shake and pat dry. Slice into half moons about ½ cm wide. Melt 50g butter in a wide skillet. Add the leeks and a pinch of salt, and leave over medium-low heat to sweat for 30 or so minutes, or until the leeks are incredibly soft. Do not let them colour. Leave to cool slightly. Grate the cheese. Beat the eggs lightly, then whisk in the milk with a skerrick of nutmeg. Remove the tart shell from the freezer. Spread the grated cheese over the base. Spoon the leeks over the cheese, then gently pour the egg and milk over the leeks. Slip into the oven for 45 minutes or until the top is puffy and golden. Leave to cool for at least ten minutes, during which time it will set further, before serving. (Local: leeks, eggs, milk. Not particularly local: flour, butter, cheese, nutmeg, salt, pepper.)

 

Green Tart

Late in rainbow chard season, the leaves become extraordinarily wrinkly. I cut out the toughest part of the stem, wash the leaf, and find myself thinking always of old judges. The wet leaf hangs in my hand like a judge's wig, crimped and curled and ready to drape over head and shoulders. I think of red velvet robes and white ruffs; hooked noses and pinched faces with mouths like cats' bottoms, gavels held in gnarled and knobbly fists; or perhaps ruddy cheeks, a brandy-nose, and piggy eyes sunk deep in fat. I'm swimming in some Dickensian world of dark timber and ominous shadows; then the voice of one of my children breaks through, and I surface again to cook dinner.

It doesn't say much for my view of the judiciary. Perhaps I ought to accompany my husband – a lawyer – to court one day and see a young modern judge wearing slacks. But then where's the fun?

This week rainbow chard, beet leaves and warrigal greens made their way into a tart sort-of-thing. It's what I make when the egg carton's full and warrigal greens are surging over the garden path.

Green Tart For the pastry: - 120g flour - 50g unsalted butter - 3 tbs water - pinch salt For the filling: - a bunch of greens. (This week I used about 500g greens, a combination of rainbow chard, beet leaves and warrigal greens*.) - 6 anchovies (optional but good) - a few strips of lemon zest, chopped very finely - 200g cheddar cheese - 6 eggs - 2 cups milk - a sprinkling of pine nuts (also optional, also good) Make the pastry: (This is exactly the same base as Onion Tart.) Place the flour, a pinch of salt and the butter in a food processor. Process for 30 seconds, or until the butter and flour are incorporated; there will be no loose flour flying around. Add the water a tablespoon at a time, and process for another 30 seconds to a minute or until the mixture resembles tiny soft pebbles. Flour the bench and a rolling pin. Tip the pastry onto the bench, and gently form into a flat disc with your hands. Roll it out, rolling from the centre to the edge and turning 90 degrees between each roll, until it fits your dish. (Mine is 25cm in diameter.) Drape the pastry over the rolling pin and lift it carefully into the dish. Pat into place. Trim the edges. Place the dish into the freezer, and leave it there until you need it. Preheat the oven to 180C. Boil a pot of water. Wash your greens well, and chop coarsely. Blanch the greens in several batches, cooking each batch for a minute then scooping out to drain in a colander. Warm a swirl of olive oil in a wide skillet with the anchovies. Push them around until they are a sizzling paste, then add the greens and the lemon zest. Stir to combine, then leave to cool. If you are worried about someone getting a chunk of anchovy, briefly pulse-chop the mixture in a food processor until combined, but before it is sludge. Grate the cheese. Beat the eggs lightly, then whisk in the milk. Remove the tart shell from the freezer. Spread the grated cheese over the base. Spoon the green mixture over the cheese, then gently pour the egg and milk over the greens. Strew pine nuts over the top, then slip into the oven for 45 minutes or until the top is puffy and there is just a very slight wobble in the centre. Leave to cool for at least ten minutes, during which time it will set further, before serving. *If you are using warrigal greens, also known as New Zealand spinach or tetragon, it is absolutely imperative that you blanch them first. They contain high levels of oxalates, which can cause a tightening of the throat, nausea and worse when consumed in large quantities. Blanching removes the soluble oxalates and also some of the salts. Leave the lid off the saucepan while blanching so that condensation does not drop back into the saucepan, and discard the blanching liquid. For more on warrigal greens, see Wild Lime: Cooking from the bushfood garden. This book is out of print, so hard to find; but the author has more recently written the glossier Wild Food: 100 Recipes Using Australian Ingredients, no doubt also worth a look. (Local: greens, lemon, eggs, milk. Not particularly local: flour, butter, cheese, anchovies, pine nuts, salt, pepper.)

Broad beans and chicory

 

Each year I plant broad beans. Each year I realise with dismay that yet again I haven't planted a quarter the plants I need to feed a family, and have to top up our harvest with store bought beans.

Broad beans are ready to pick just when the mint goes ballistic. For all the dire warnings I received about mint – that it would invade our garden and I'd never be able to contain it – I lost a dozen plants before I hit on the outlandish idea of growing it in an old bathtub filled with potting mix and compost. The tub provides room for their roots to go deep. I can dump in a bucket of water from time to time to keep it moist. When it's looking seedy I throw in a handful of desiccated chook poo and it takes off again. And, because every mint plant I've ever grown naked has been quite literally munched to death, the lot is draped over with small gauge bird netting, so small that no butterfly or cabbage moth can get in and lay their dratted eggs.

For the last few years we've had the biggest mint harvest in Brunswick, I am sure – a bathtubful. We eat it in tabouleh, we use it in drinks, we toss it through salads. And, of course, we use it to flavour broad beans.

This broad bean and chicory mix is delicious served atop bruschetta: thick sourdough bread brushed with olive oil and grilled on a hot cast iron ridge pan until criss-crossed with char lines. In the absence of a cast iron griddle, you can also serve it atop a nice thick piece of toast.

Broad beans with chicory - 1 kg broad beans in their pods - 500g chicory or other strong green, washed and chopped coarsely - 8 to 10 stalks mint - 2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced - 6 to 8 anchovies - a lemon - olive oil - salt, pepper Pod the broad beans. Bring a pot of water to the boil. Cook the broad beans and mint for 5 or so minutes – less for very young beans, more for very old ones. Drain. If the beans are very large, pop them out of their grey skins. Otherwise, leave them as they are. Drizzle with olive oil. Warm a good swirl of olive oil over medium heat in a wide skillet. Add the anchovies and garlic, and sprinkle with salt. Stir constantly until you have a paste; but take care not to scorch the garlic. Add the chicory, and stir. Clap the lid on, and leave it to wilt. When the chicory has wilted, add the broad beans. Stir well to combine. Dress with lemon juice, and a drizzle with a little more olive oil if you wish. Serve. Simplified and adapted from a recipe in The River Cafe Green Cook Book. (Local: broad beans, chicory, mint, garlic, olive oil, lemon. Not local: anchovies, salt, pepper.) Photo shows chicory with borlotti beans, another good option!

Hollandaise Sauce

Some couples come back from their tenth wedding anniversary pregnant. Us, we came home with an assignation. And a couple of weeks later, as arranged, my four-year-old and I headed up country and met with an eccentric man wearing a gaudy apron; we came home with four chickens.

Now these ladies are pecking and preening their way around our garden. They gobble up slugs with relish; they eye off the weed seeds and strip them clean; they endlessly turn over the compost heap; they peer in our windows and check what we're up to; they follow us around as we work in the garden. And they lay eggs.

We are totally smitten. My four-year-old spends hours each day carrying one chook or the other, or sitting on a little wooden chair in the run and chatting with them as they peck around her ankles. My six-year-old came home from school yesterday. 'I'm tired and cross,' she announced, then went and read with the chickens. She came in an hour later much refreshed. And I stand at the kitchen sink, looking out and laughing at the little heads peeking out from behind a flowerpot or popping up from a clump of grass.

All of us, young and old, crow with delight when we find an egg. It's like finding treasure two or three times a day. And I find myself wondering, what took me so long?

I can castigate myself for putting it off. Or, better, I can celebrate that we have an abundance of fresh eggs just as asparagus comes into season. Between asparagus, eggs, and a lemon from the neighbour's tree, we're most of the way to poached eggs and asparagus with hollandaise sauce.

I trim the asparagus and simmer it for a few minutes in a wide skillet until just cooked – not squishy, but not crisp either; meanwhile, I poach eggs in another skillet. And in a breathtaking feat of kitchen management, while the asparagus and eggs are cooking I whip up this hollandaise sauce ready to blanket the lot.

For more on how to poach an egg, click here.

Hollandaise Sauce - 2 egg yolks (freeze the whites for meringue) - 2 tbs cream or top milk (that is, the first bit of a bottle of unhomogenized unshaken milk) - 1 tbs lemon juice, or to taste - 4 tbs unsalted butter - salt, pepper Put the 4 tbs butter somewhere in easy reach. Place the yolks, cream, lemon juice and salt into a deep pan. Whisk together. Heat over a medium flame. Holding the saucepan with one hand, whisk rapidly and continuously with the other. Make sure you whisk right to the edges of the pan. The instant it thickens, take the saucepan off the stove – keep whisking – and walk to the butter. Throw it in, and whisk and stir until it is combined. Serve. Precautions: Do not stop whisking or you'll end up with scrambled egg yolks. If you are timid, you can make it over a double boiler (or a bowl resting over a saucepan of simmering water), but the double boiler method usually results in a thin undercooked sauce. Using direct heat is riskier, but as long as you remain observant it is easy and quick. Adapted from a recipe in Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb, reviewed here. (Local: eggs, cream, lemon, asparagus. Not local: butter, salt.)

Pasta with Buttery Broccoli and Cauliflower

Once upon a time, before I knew myself much at all, I studied pure mathematics. I was entranced by the beauty of the world, and thought maths might be a way to understand it. Now I no longer need to understand, but instead want only to appreciate and celebrate what is before me; and I do this through words and people.

So I have forgotten almost everything I learned; but every now and then I still stumble across an intriguing mathematical observation. For example, I recently noticed that a cauliflower is a fractal. Simply put, this means that its large florets and small florets repeat elements of the same mathematical pattern.

Next time you have a cauliflower in your kitchen, take some time to look at it. Sit down, and examine the curd. Notice its whorls, how the florets are like little trees, from which smaller trees branch; notice how the branches cluster. Break off a floret, and compare its form to that of the whole you have just observed. Now break a little floret off the bigger floret, and compare the two. Continue until you cannot separate the florets without damage. If you have a magnifying glass handy, peer at the smallest floret, and see how it continues the pattern you have observed on the largest.

For a mathematical description of what is going on, click here.

Or, if you are more poetically inclined, merely murmur to yourself,

Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so ad infinitum.

(Which reminds me of a photograph of a flea I once saw, taken through an electron microscope. Upon its back, lodged in the crevices, one saw mites. As someone who has always been very attractive to fleas, mosquitoes and March flies, it was nice to know that, from time to time, justice prevails.)

By now, between the maths and the fleas, I have probably put everyone off their grub. Nevertheless, here’s a recipe. I have been eyeing off this suggestion by Deborah Madison for years, but have always been put off by the idea of cauliflower as a pasta sauce. That, and the inclusion of shallots. Madison uses three in her recipe; and she is referring to those tiny tight brown onions, insides tinged purple, whose texture is melting and flavour is sweet; but they are so hard to find.

However, with half a cauli and some broccoli in the fridge and my father coming for dinner, it was time to be brave. I tried the recipe sans shallots. It was delicious. The tiny pieces of cauliflower and broccoli were soft against the pasta; the Dijon and lemon gave character to the unctuous base; and the toasted breadcrumbs provided a delightfully contrasting crunch. I ate two big helpings, and would have gone a third except the men beat me to it.

Pasta with Buttery Broccoli and Cauliflower - ½ medium-sized head cauliflower - 1 medium or 2 small heads broccoli - 7 tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature - 2 tbs Dijon mustard - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 2 tsp balsamic vinegar, or to taste - 5 or 6 stalks flat-leaf parsley, chopped - zest of half a lemon, finely chopped - 1 cup bread crumbs (I chucked a very thick slice of slightly stale bread into the food processor and whizzed until I had an exciting combination of fine crumbs and little chunks.) - 4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped - 300g dried pasta (I used Powlett Hill’s spirals; Madison recommends wide handmade spinach or fresh herb noodles, but then she doesn’t have three young hungry children clamouring for dinner.) - salt - Parmesan (optional) Heat a large pot of water. While it is heating, break the cauliflower and broccoli into tiny florets. You should have 4 – 5 cups of florets. Place 4 tablespoons of the softened butter with the mustard, garlic, vinegar, parsley and lemon zest into a bowl, and blend using a fork. Melt the remaining butter in a wide skillet. Throw in the breadcrumbs, and toss and fry until they are golden and crisp. Scrape them into a bowl and set aside. Once the water is boiling, gently melt the flavoured butter in the same skillet you used for the breadcrumbs. Add the sun-dried tomatoes. Salt the water, and throw in the cauliflower and broccoli florets. Return to the boil and cook for 1 minute only. Scoop out the florets and place into the skillet with the butter and ¼ cup of the cooking water. Add the pasta to the boiling water, and cook. Drain the pasta immediately it is done, add it to the skillet and cook for another minute, stirring gently to combine. Serve sprinkled with a generous helping of breadcrumbs, and some grated Parmesan if you like. Adapted from a recipe by Deborah Madison in The Greens Cookbook. For some lovely observations on the onion, read The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon; I have reviewed it here. (Local: cauliflower, broccoli, garlic, parsley, lemon, pasta. Made locally from unspecified ingredients: butter, bread. Not local: Dijon, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, pepper, salt, parmesan.)