Wednesday 16 May 2012

Matthew's Lemon Tart

I had bookmarked this from Matthew Fort ages ago because it sounded just my sort of thing. And it sounded easy. The family turned up for a couple of impromptu barbecues last weekend. The weather has been so terrible this year that I think impromptu is probably the only way to go. It is the 15th of May today and it is raining again. It had all better stop for the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics. And it would be nice if it was dry for the First Test against the Windies which starts at Lord's this week. My cooking fairy had obviously been on a bender on Saturday night because everything I touched whilst making this pie went wrong. I made bad decisions throughout. I did not have a metal flan tin. I don't know why because I used to have several. They may have gone rusty and been thrown out when I had the new kitchen. Or maybe the cooking fairy hid them somewhere last night. So I had to use a ceramic dish and knew that the pastry needed to be baked blind if so. Wrong. It tasted like cardboard. But it was defrosted (homemade) shortcrust and I'm not sure how long it had been in the freezer. I also managed to set the fan oven too low. Heaven knows an electric to fan conversion is easy enough but apparently not. So after half an hour it still looked pale, yellow and soggy. Needless to say I then overcompensated. The filling sank, defeated.
But here's the funny thing. It tasted bloody gorgeous. Like a cross between a lemon meringue pie and a treacle tart. I shall buy myself a new flan tin before I make it again though. Chris's only comment was "Whatever have you done to this pastry"? And I promise you I wrote this in neat paragraphs. No, I don't know where they've gone either. Must be that fairy again.

3 comments:

  1. Ah so the taste is good enough to have another go to overcome the mistakes? Good to know, I bookmarked that recipe from his site too...

    Thanks for your comment on my blog today... if you're on twitter give me a shout so I can connect with you. I think we may live locally to each other...

    Kavey

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    1. Kavey I actually had another go at it yesterday, see my next post. It was much more successful although still not quite there.

      Will do re Twitter.

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  2. Ahaah, so we've been chatting a while on twitter, hadn't connected... how come you don't have your blog link in your twitter profile? :-)

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