Sam's Tart

Now, to be clear and up front, I am not talking about Sam's girlfriend, who if you are reading this, we all know you're a very nice girl. I'm talking about Sam's other tart - the apple one we made. It was nice too, but in a different way.

It sort of started as a 'we're bored and procrastinating' project. We both had other stuff to do, but just didn't feel like it. Out of guilt, we decided to do something constructive. So tart it was.

We made it up as we went along, and it was really good. Because we used a whole lemon in it, it's quite tart (no pun intended), and if you prefer it less so, just swap some water for lemon juice and don't use quite as much zest along the way. If you prefer almond to hazelnut, that would also work, but I had hazelnut meal in my pantry so that's what we used in the filling.

Also, probably leave the pastry in the fridge for about an hour. We left it half an hour out of sheer impatience and it was harder to keep in one piece when we rolled it, although as you'll see, it worked out just fine.

Sam and I cut this right down the middle and he took half home. I hear anecdotally that it mostly didn't make it home. Of course Tim wondered (out aloud) whether I'd just eaten half the tart in one sitting. My answer, now official, is no. No I did not.

Ingredients:

For crust:

2 cups plain white or spelt flour (I used spelt - the special needs thing)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 tsp cinamon

115g softened (not melted) butter

juice of one lemon

zest of one lemon (finely zested)

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl, sifted, plus about half of the zest. Cut up the butter into blocks and rub it in until the mixture is crumbly with no big chunks of butter left. Then pour in the lemon juice bit by bit, until you hae a working pastry mixture. If you need some more liquid, just use water, but don't make it too sloppy.

Knead it together very gently and don't overwork it. Wrap the ball of pastry in plastic and put in the fridge for an hour. When it's nice and firm, roll it out on a floured surface and line a 23cm tart tin with it. Put it back in the fridge for about 10 mins or so - just give it a chance to cool down a little bit. Turn the oven on to 180º.

Blind bake the pastry shell - for heaven's sake, put some baking paper down before you use your beans, weights or whatever! I forgot to last time (see Lemons & Limes) and it was a disaster! Thankfully, I got my act together on this occasion.

Bake until just a bit brown.

For filling:

1 cup hazelnut meal

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 tbsp cinamon

50g butter

2 large apples - peeled, cored and sliced

1 tbsp lightly pan-roasted pecan pieces

remainder lemon zest from above

1 tsp caster sugar

In a pan on low heat, mix these ingredients together until a paste starts to form. If you want it sweeter, mix in some more brown sugar.

Spread this in the baked tart shell. It won' be a thick layer but that's ok. There's enough going on with this one to make up for scant nut filling. Arrange the apple slices on top, sprinkle with the caster sugar, lemon zest and pecan pieces. Again, if you want it less zesty, forgo the extra lemon zest on top.

Bake until it's all starting to go brown, but don't overdo it. It doesn't matter if the apple isn't completely soft and mushy. The only place for mushy apple is in a pie or in a jar of baby food.

Serve this tart with something plain, like unsweetened cream, vanilla ice cream or custard. I think the custard works particularly well.

Thanks Sam!