Martha Stewart's lemon curd tart

This is amazing, the curd very tart, a fantastic pudding after a rich meaty main course, eased down with a nice chilled Sauternes.

You'll need six egg yolks, beaten, 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, 1/4 lb of unsalted butter, 1 tablespoon of lemon zest.

To make the tart, buy some short crust pastry, roll it out and line a shallow baking tray (round thing) for tarts, prick the base with a fork and cook for 30 mins or so at 150C (I think).  Remove and leave to cool.

To make the lemon curd beat the eggs then strain through a sieve into a medium sized heavy saucepan, Add the sugar and lemon and cook over a low heat stirring constantly to combine.  Keep stirring until the sauce thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon, it's a bit of a fag as it seems to take ages (10 - 15 mins approx).  Remove from heat and allow to cool a bit, then stir in the sticks of butter a little at a time.  Then stir in the lemon zest and allow the mix to cool completely.

Pour into the pastry tart and refrigerate.  When you want to eat it dust with icing sugar and adorn with a sprig of mint, serve with clotted cream.

Peckham - Autumn

Scotland - October 2011

Wet, but beautiful autumn colours

Uranus Pizza

Bit of a weird name for a pizza parlour!

Ow!

I love this

Stuffing for roast chicken

No pictures with this post as I don't think the body cavity of an uncooked chicken is particularly interesting.  Usually we lob half a lemon, some crushed cloves of garlic, a chicken stock cube and a glass of water inside our chicken, which makes for a delicious and succulent bird.  But last weekend I had a hankering for some good old fashioned stuffing.  I always remember my mother making a nice breadcrumb and parsley stuffing, so I decided to do a variation on that theme.

We've had a good season in the garden despite my harvested garlic cloves being smaller than the things I planted, they are very tasty though.  So I gathered together some bread (we only had wholemeal brown (soooo healthy) in the cupboard), one of my tiny whole heads of garlic, a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of tarragon, a couple of leaves of sage, a bay leaf and a bunch of thyme and oregano.  I whizzed all this up with the bread in the old magimix, then added the juice of a lemon, a chicken stock cube and a couple of shavings of lemon zest.  Then I whizzed it up again.

I have to say it smelled jolly delicious.

I mixed in some softened butter, added a wee bit of salt (no pepper - the kids freak out) and shoved the whole lot up the chicken's arse.

I then roasted the bird according to normal convention with butter slavered on top and a few whole cloves of garlic dotted about, and we ate it with roast spuds, broccoli and carrots.

The stuffing was sublime, so zesty and tart. It helped keep the bird moist too.

Dorset flowers

The garden is about to bear fruit

Cucumbers, pumpkins, garlic, runner beans, french beans and some beautiful black dahlias

More Dorset Summer time pictures

Scenes of Summer in Dorset

Wheat fields

 Castle Cove

Views of Dorset coast towards Golden Cap

 Flowers

 Supper

Some flower pics from Spring

New potatoes, harvested today

Lovely new potatoes fresh from the ground this morning - v thrilling!

Running through fountains - Mallorca May 2011

Motorbike mirror

Scenes from Mallorca

A wonderful four days based in Port de Soller, exploring the mountains, swimming in the chilly Med, eating fish, drinking Rioja, coke, fanta, San Miguel.