Pommes de Terre Braytoises - Cheese & Ham Stuffed Potatoes

As a cheese and bacon addict, I often have leftover cheese in my fridge, not to mention the stash in my freezer. There's often half a tub of sour cream or crème fraiche hanging around too, a few rashers of bacon leftover from a weekend brunch and half a bottle of mustard languishing in the cupboard.

And even though our harvest of home-grown potatoes was the lowest for several years, there are nearly always potatoes lurking in a dark corner of the kitchen.

So this pommes de terre Braytoises recipe adapted from Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow book was a perfect choice to counter the cold weather outside, be frugal with leftover ingredients and try something from a new cookery book too!

We adapted the recipe to 2 people, changing some of the ingredients and instructions to suit us better.

Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow

Diana Henry is a cook and food writer with six books under her belt including Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, Cook Simple and Food from Plenty. She also writes for the Telegraph and it's magazine, Stella, presents food television programmes such as Market Kitchen and broadcasts on Radio 4.

I'd read good feedback on her book of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and North African dishes (Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons) and likewise, for her latest title, Food from Plenty, which aims to share recipes made from "the plentiful, the seasonal and the leftover".

But I'd not really seen a great deal of discussion about her previous book, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, originally published by Mitchell Beazley (an Octopus publishing imprint) in 2009, but with a new edition released in November 2011.

Having grown up in Northern Ireland, she adores snow, "its crystalline freshness, the silent mesmeric way it falls, the way it blankets you in a white, self-contained world". For this book, she travelled to several other cold climate locations, compiling a collection of recipes that represent winter food.

As for the name of the book, a passage in her introduction partially explains:

"On dark afternoons, my fifth-year teacher read us the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the simple snowy world of the American mid-west found in Little House in the Big Woods, an orange and a handful of nuts in the toe of a sock on Christmas day seemed as alluring as the seeds from a crimson pomegranate; fat pumpkins gathered in the autumn and stored in the attic were fairy tale vegetables. But it was the story of maple syrup that intrigued me most: how you could tap the sap of maple trees when there was a 'sugar snow' (snowy conditions in which the temperature goes below freezing at night but above freezing during the day), boil the sap down to a sticky amber syrup and pour it on to snow. There it set to a cobwebby toffee. Here was a magical food that you could get from inside a tree and make into sweets. I got my first bottle of maple syrup soon after being read this passage and have loved it ever since."

In a similar vein, throughout the book are passages from poems and books as varied as Robert Frost's Evening in a sugar orchard, Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney, Figs by D H Lawrence, Wild Fruits by Henry David Thoreau and Hans Christian Andersen's The Fir Tree.

Photography, by Jason Lowe, is beautiful and evocative. There are images of big hearty dishes, ingredients and scenes from the places whose food Henry brings together. That said, many of the recipes – I'd say well over half – don't have an accompany photograph, so this may not suit those who prefer to see what all finished dishes look like.

Oddly enough, whilst I really loved reading this book, flicking from recipe to recipe, reading the introductions and stories about the places, ingredients and dishes, I found that there were only a handful of recipes I want to actually cook. Partly, this is because there's a Northern European preponderance of walnuts and pecans, poppy seeds and cinnamon, dill, prunes, cranberries and juniper berries, chestnuts, dried mushrooms and smoked fish. Some of those ingredients I like, in some contexts, but less so in cooking. Others, I'm simply not a fan of. I like this book but can't see me using it very often.

That said, there are still many recipes that appeal as great comfort for a cold day – Antico Risotto Sabaudo (a Fontina-rich risotto), Poulet Suissesse (chicken with crème fraiche, mustard and cheese), Sobronade (an every day version of cassoulet without the duck), Beef Pie with wild mushrooms and claret (billed as better than cleavage for its seductive powers), Dublin Coddle (a layered bake of sausages, bacon, onions, potatoes and chicken stock), Poires Savoyards (cream, butter and sugar baked pears), Hot Lightning (featuring apples, pears and bacon), Apple Bread, Roast Figs and Plums in Vodka with cardamom cream and Scandinavian Pepparkakor (Christmas biscuits).

Pommes de Terre Braytoises
Cheese and Ham Stuffed Baked Potatoes

Adapted from Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow

Ingredients (for 2)
2 baking potatoes
25 grams butter
Salt and pepper
125 grams Camembert
4 thick rashers of bacon or about 60 grams ham, cut into small pieces
4 tablespoons sour cream or crème fraiche
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 egg
50-75 grams Comte, grated

Note: We used left over bacon, fried in a pan, so we added the bacon fat to the mix too.

Method

• Prick and bake the potatoes (180 C fan oven) for approximately an hour, or until tender all the way through.

• Cut each potato in half, scoop out most of the flesh, careful not to pierce the skin.
• Mash the potato flesh with butter and season with salt and pepper.

• Roughly chop the Camembert and the bacon or ham. Mix with the mashed potato flesh, along with half the sour cream or crème fraiche, the mustard and the egg. Henry suggests discarding the rind of the Camembert before using, but we chose to use it.

• Divide the mixture between the 4 potato skins. Mix the rest of the sour cream or crème fraiche with the grated Comte and spread over the top of each potato.

• Bake for 10-15 minutes until the tops of the potatoes are golden and bubbling (180 C fan oven).

We really enjoyed these potatoes, they made for a very comforting and delicious week day dinner and were very easy to make.

We so often have cheese, bacon and sour cream or crème fraiche left over, we have already made these a couple of times and will certainly be making them again soon.

I'm submitting this post to Family Friendly Fridays, a monthly blog event hosted by Fabulicious Food.

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Diana Henry's Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is currently available from Amazon UK for £10.55 (RRP £15.99).

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Garlic & Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

I can't recall where I first read about Garlic & Sapphires but it must have been a positive review as I immediately added the book to my Amazon wishlist. Thanks to kind friends, it popped through my letterbox over Christmas and I tore through it during the first two days of the new year.

The fourth book by former restaurant critic Ruth Reichl, Garlic And Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Food Critic is a wonderfully entertaining meander through Reichl's working life at The New York Times. Essentially a string of anecdotes strung together with a simplified personal narrative, it's almost always amusing, often enlightening and occasionally touching too.

Tales of creating deliciously audacious disguises with wigs, wardrobes and wicked backstories are interspersed with stories of visiting many of New York's best known restaurants, and many lesser known places as well. These chapters include the restaurant reviews as they were published in the paper, giving a great insight into how Reichl translated the multiple visits she made to each restaurant into succinct and pithy pieces for print.

Keen cooks may also appreciate the seventeen recipes Reichl has shared; related to events in the book, they range from New York cheesecake to hash browns to vanilla cake to spaghetti carbonara.

At first, Reichl revels in her new role, relishing the chance to transform herself into an increasing number of alter egos which we too can giggle and gasp over. But just as the reader pales of the endless parade of new characters, so does Reichl, increasingly dissatisfied with these deceptions and her own changes in behaviour as a result.

It's not a deep book, by any means, and yet we do go on a journey with the author from start to finish.

An enjoyable read; perfect for a long hot soak in the tub or whiling away the time in the airport lounge or on the train.

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Garlic And Sapphires by Ruth Reichl is currently available in paperback on Amazon for £5.30 (RRP £8.99).

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Twelve I have, Eighteen I want: Confessions of a Food Book Addict

Long lists of ingredients – some familiar, some exotic; instructions on how to transform them into delicious treats; vivid and tantalising photographs and even an insight into other cultures and cuisines… I love cookery books!

I kinda, sorta agreed, about a year or two back, to a moratorium on the purchase of new cookery books. Of course, I found loopholes – finding bargains in second hand shops and boot sales, receiving them as gifts (it's no accident that my Amazon wish list is full of cookery book suggestions) and being sent them to review by kind publishers and PRs.

You understand, though, right? I mean, it's an addiction. I have to have them. I need to have them. My precious!

Here are twelve I've been enjoying using this year and eighteen (out of 100s) on my current wish list:

Twelve I have

The Ultimate Recipe Book

I've recently rediscovered The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen. Published by BBC Books in 2007, it's based on her popular Ultimate series in which she chose a classic recipe, researched variations, garnered advice from fellow industry experts and then experimented until she achieved her ultimate version.

Here's my post on Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine.

The Scandinavian Cookbook

The Scandinavian Cookbook by Trina Hahnemann is one of the front-runners in a growing library of books on this increasingly popular cuisine. Published by Quadrille in 2008, it presents the recipes by calendar month, leading us gently through a year of changing seasons and ingredients. The photography, by Danish photographer, Lars Ranek, really draws me in.

Ever a lover of cheese tarts, here's my post about the book and Trina's recipe for Swedish Cheese Tart.

Fifty Recipes To Stake Your Life On

Many know Charles Campion as a food critic but have forgotten that he was once a hotelier and restaurateur. Fifty Recipes To Stake Your Life On, published by Timewell Press, is both cookery book and culinary memoir and thus fulfils the role of entertainment as well as cookery book. His recipe for banana cake is my absolute favourite.

Real Fast Food & The Kitchen Diaries

I know, I know, that's two books but they're both by Nigel Slater so I'm listing them together! I really like Slater's approach to food – he clearly adores food but he's not a snob about it; he appreciates eating well but understands that people don't always want to spend hours preparing and cooking and he's very much a proponent of adapting a core recipe or idea based on what's in the fridge and store cupboard.

Real Fast Food, as its name suggests, focuses on recipes and suggestions for preparing tasty meals quickly and easily. The beef stroganov recipe is one we cook regularly.

The Kitchen Diaries is half recipe book, half food diary. Presented seasonally, there are plenty of great recipes that fit the changing seasons and available ingredients. We have enjoyed making (and eating) a number of recipes from this book since we bought it a couple of years ago, so I'm resolved to rectify my omission in not having blogged any yet!

(Different editions of Slater's books are printed by a range of publishers).

Cuisinier Gascon

Pascal Aussignac is the Michelin-starred chef proprietor of London restaurant, Club Gascon. Cuisinier Gascon, his first book, was published by Absolute Press in 2009. It's a really beautiful book, full of mouth-watering recipes and beautiful images, not just of some of the dishes but also of life in Gascony and I love how it celebrates the food traditions, culture and recipes of his home region. I made the braised ox cheeks Bordelaise earlier this year.

Eggs & Sauces

Michel Roux's Eggs, as you might expect, is a collection of classic egg recipes from omelettes, poached and fried eggs to sauces, custards and soufflés, the book provides a 100 recipes. I blogged baked eggs and scotch quails' eggs.

Sauces is, in some ways, an even better reference book, providing recipes and techniques for over 200 classic sauces. Roux has updated the 2009 edition to reflect today's tastes for healthier, lighter sauces without sacrificing flavour or texture. We were happy with the sauce suprême with sherry and mushrooms, which required a number of steps but was not difficult to achieve.

Hix Oyster & Chop House

Mark Hix' book, Hix Oyster & Chop House, was published by Quadrille a few months ago. Just the one recipe I've cooked so far, the Baked Parsnips with Lancashire Cheese, is enough to earn it a place on this list! I am also keen to try the shipwrecked tart, especially as I've had a pre-Christmas delivery of walnuts from my friends in Limousin.

Complete Book of Preserves & Pickles

I only started preserving last summer and now I'm somewhat addicted to making jam, pickles, ketchups and chutneys… I found the Complete Book of Preserves & Pickles by Catherine Atkinson and Maggie Mayhew a huge help on understanding the basic techniques and giving me a starting point for recipes. Published by Lorenz.

The River Cottage Meat Book

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's The River Cottage Meat Book is a hefty tome. First, the book introduces you to meat – understanding it's provenance, the food chain and the impact of our own purchasing choices. This it does without preaching or patronising. Next comes guidance on how to cook, broken down by method (from roasting to slow cooking to preserving and more). Although I've read quite a bit of the first section, I want to delve more into the cooking chapters. Thus far, we've really appreciated the incredibly simple but tasty suggestion for leftover roast chicken croquettes.

The Billingsgate Market Cookbook

Written by C J Jackson, the Director of the Billingsgate Seafood Training School, the most useful aspect of The Billingsgate Market Cookbook for me is the reminders on exactly how to prepare fresh fish. Earlier this year, Pete and I learned how to scale, gut, skin, fillet and bone fish when we attended a course at the school and we bought this book as a primer on the skills we learned.

There are, of course, many more books on my cookery book shelf that I would happily recommend, but I have tried to focus on those I've used this year.

Eighteen I want

At Elizabeth David's Table

Elizabeth David is credited with changing the face of British cooking, introducing the nation to the delights of Mediterranean cuisine at a time when it was just coming out of a period of post-war austerity. This new collection of her recipes has been published on the 60th anniversary of her first cook book and, unlike previous titles, the recipes are illustrated with beautiful colour photographs. At Elizabeth David's Table: Her Very Best Everyday Recipes was published a couple of months ago by Michael Joseph.

Tender: Volumes I & II

Having grown more and more of our own vegetables over the last decade, we've just taken on a full size allotment plot. Now, more than ever, I think we'll be able to appreciate Slater's guides to eating vegetables and fruits, knowing that he also loves to grow his own. Volume I deals with vegetables and Volume II with fruit.

Pastry

Of course, having enjoyed Eggs and Sauces (see above), I'd like to complete the set with a copy of Michel Roux's Pastry, published by Quadrille. I imagine this will be another great reference guide to all the classic pastry recipes, from choux to shortcrust.

Saraban: A chef's journey through Persia

The latest opus by Greg and Lucy Malouf, Saraban: A chef's journey through Persia, has just been published by Hardie Grant. I picked up a copy at a friend's house last week and suddenly a few hours had raced by and I was on page 135! The book is a work of art – large, coffee table format; rich and vibrant photographs, bronze metallic pages with intricate fretwork windows at the start of each chapter. In reading the opening chapters I learned more about the history, religions, culture and food of historic Persia and modern day Iran than I have from years of following news and current affairs. Then came shorter chapters relating the Maloufs' experiences as they toured the country. And of course, lots of recipes. I am hoping to get my hands on my own copy of this beautiful book soon so I can finish reading the text and try making some of the recipes.

As we're going to Lebanon in April, I am also hoping to pick up the Maloufs' previous book, Saha: A Chef's Journey Through Lebanon and Syria.

How I Cook

Although I don't have Skye Gyngell's first two books (A Year in my Kitchen and My Favourite Ingredients) I have flicked through both recently, at a friend's house. Gyngell is the renowned chef behind Petersham Nurseries Café and many friends have praised her recipes to me. All three of Gyngell's books are published by Quadrille. My friend had also just got Skye's latest book, How I Cook, published by Quadrille, as are the others and it was this third book that most caught my eye.

Roast Chicken And Other Stories & Week In Week Out

I've long been intending to get a copy of Simon Hopkinson's much lauded Roast Chicken and Other Stories, published by Ebury. Of course, I've tried his roast chicken recipe and am a convert to his instruction to liberally apply butter all over the bird. I'm also very tempted by Week In Week Out with stories about and recipes for 52 ingredients.

Around My French Table

Dorie Greenspan is well known for her baking books of which there are several. However, I first came across her name relatively recently, in blog reviews for her latest book Around My French Table, published recently by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In this book, Dorie shares more than 300 recipes that she enjoys cooking in her Parisian kitchen. From the reviews I've come across, I think there's an emphasis on French cooking but with forays around the rest of the world too – Dorie herself describes the collection as eclectic. However you describe it, it looks good!

Potty

I'm very lazy at heart so I can't resist a book based on the premise of reducing washing up! Clarissa Dickson Wright's Potty, published earlier this year by Hodder & Stoughton, shares 100 recipes that can be cooked in one dish. And of course, as I associate Dickson Wright with full flavoured, comfort food, I figured they'd all taste good too.

Ottolenghi & Plenty

Late to the party, I don't yet have Yotam Ottolenghi's first book, despite the uniformly glowing reviews from friends and critics alike. And yet, I'm already pining for his latest offering, Plenty (both published by Ebury). Known for his skill in transforming simple, fresh ingredients into something much more special, I'm particularly interested in his recipes for vegetables I normally don't love, like broccoli or beans. I like the reputation his recipes have for working well and faithfully recreating what he sells in his London shops.

The Essentials of Italian Cooking

Marcella Harzan's name comes up quickly in conversations about Italian cooking. Her 1990 title The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is due to be reissued next summer by Boxtree and I hope to pick it up then, if I haven't found a second hand copy of the original edition already. Fans tell me that the recipes are accurate, straightforward and authentic.

Cured: Slow Techniques for Flavouring Meat, Fish and Vegetables

It's one of those things I'm always meaning to try – curing my own meat and fish. (Not so fussed about the vegetables). Apparently, Cured: Slow Techniques for Flavouring Meat, Fish and Vegetables by Lindy Wildsmith is just the ticket, with informative text and helpful illustrations.

The Oxford Companion to Food

Every now and then I'll ask some obscure food question on twitter and wait for the replies to roll in. It's better than Google, as the twitter fooderati are a superb filter, resulting in the most useful or entertaining answers – usually a mix of both. A friend who often replies most helpfully has revealed her secret weapon as Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by Tom Jaine and published by OUP Oxford. This impressive encyclopaedia contains over 2,650 alphabetical entries on foods, cooking terms, culinary tools, countries and traditions plus biographies of chefs and cookbook authors. It's not a cookery book, but still, I covet it.

I'd also quite like New Larousse Gastronomique and Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking but perhaps three such tomes might be overkill.

Forgotten Skills of Cooking

Speaking of tomes, Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking, published last year by Kyle Cathie, has over 700 recipes! Owner of Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork, Allen is one of Ireland's best known chefs and TV food presenters. Her daughter-in-law Rachel Allen seems better known here, but Darina shares decades of skills and experience in this book. I love the idea of relearning forgotten cookery skills, from making one's own butter and yoghurt (my sister and I used to fight over the thick top layer of my mum's home-made yoghurt) to smoking fish and curing bacon.

Macaron

My go to expert for macaron advice is the talented Edd Kimber (more on him on the blog soon) but until he writes his own gorgeous book, I've been lusting after a copy of Pierre Hermé's Macaron. This French language book was published by Agnès Viénot in 2008 – an English translation is apparently on the cards. (Both the macaron books I already own are in French too, so I guess I can dust off my language skills once again for Mr Hermé.

Mma Ramotswe's Cookbook

I am a fan of Alexander McCall Smith's series on The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I've been to Botswana twice (on safari) and been warmly welcomed, though never encountered anyone quite like Mma Ramotswe. I love Stuart Brown's idea to create Mma Ramotswe's Cookbook, based on this larger-than-life fictional force of nature. The recipes are apparently pretty good and interspersed with quotes from the book, suitable illustrations and sumptuous photographs of the food.

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Micah's Chocolate Meringue Pie

Since it was published in 2002, Unwrapped: Green & Black's Chocolate Recipes has sold more than half a million copies. Its recipes for chocolate coffee and walnut cake, chocolate truffles, chocolate pecan pie, chocolate salted caramel tart, white chocolate cardamom mousse, chocolate flapjacks, chocolate ginger cake, chocolate brownies (is the word "chocolate becoming redundant yet?) have proved enduringly popular.

Much excitement has therefore greeted the sequel, Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection, edited by Micah Carr-Hill, Green & Black's Head of Taste, especially since there is now a much-expanded range of Green and Black's chocolate to use.

Micah has asked for chocolate lovers to contribute their favourite recipes and has collated the best put forward by chefs, celebrities, food writers, bloggers, chocolatiers, bakers and cake-makers and competition winners. Just reading the list of contributors in the acknowledgement section at the beginning of the book made me lick my lips in anticipation!

The book covers a lot of ground, from cupcakes to cookies to cheesecakes to tarts to soufflés to pies to puddings to ice-creams to truffles… I had wondered whether the book could possibly offer as tempting a selection as the first book without covering the same ground again or providing more obscure recipes, but I shouldn't have worried. It's an excellent collection of recipes in its own right and definitely a worth successor to Unwrapped.

A few months ago, I was kindly invited to the book launch event at Great Queen Street, where we were treated to delicious savoury titbits from the restaurant's menu and lots of sweet treats made to recipes in the book. Even before being given my own copy of the book to take home, I had already picked out the first recipe I wanted to try - Chocolate Meringue Pie.

As well as being one of the recipes Micah wrote himself (which I wanted as it would be sorta, kinda, vaguely like having him cook for me – I cooked for him recently, after all!), it's also heavy on the eggs, and would allow us to use some of our goodie bag of Clarence Court eggs, received after a wonderful egg evening at Hix Soho. I've bought these eggs before, from Waitrose and they really are fabulous; the yolks in particular have a very good flavour (and colour). And if you think eggs are just eggs, I'd urge you to do a side-by-side comparison of Clarence Court against your supermarket's regular free-range eggs and any others you usually buy. You will notice the difference in taste!

Note: Micah advises that you need electric beaters or an electric mixer for this recipe as the meringue is a hot meringue, for which the egg whites are heated by the sugar whilst they are being mixed. He also suggests investing in a blow torch for browning the meringue, though we managed without.

Micah's Chocolate Meringue Pie

Ingredients
Pastry
140 grams plain flour
30 grams icing sugar
75 grams chilled, unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 large free-range egg yolk
Custard
4 large free-range egg yolks
45 grams caster sugar
20 grams plain flour
350 ml full-fat milk
70 grams dark (70% cocoa solids) chocolate, chopped finely
Meringue
300 grams caster sugar
5 large free-range egg white

Note: This recipe is for a single large tart made in a 24 cm tart tin, to feed 6-8. As you can see, we made smaller individual tarts instead.

Method

• To make the pastry, sift the flour and icing sugar together before rubbing in the butter to achieve a breadcrumb texture. Add the egg yolk and mix until the ingredients come together, adding a tiny splash of cold water, if needed. We did both steps in our food processor, as we usually do for pastry.
• Shape into a ball, flatten slightly, wrap in cling film and chill for at least an hour.
• Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C.

• Micah suggests grating the pastry into the tart tin and pressing it evenly into the base and edges. We stuck to the traditional rolling it out technique. Once the tart tins were lined, we cut some of the excess away but left the pastry flopping over/ above the edge a little to allow for any shrinkage.
• Prick the base and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

• Bake the tart shell for 10-15 minutes and cool on a wire rack.

my new Kitchen Aid mixer - Intergalactic Unicorn

• Meanwhile, make the custard by whisking together the egg yolks and sugar, sifting in the flour and whisking it in. Heat the milk to boiling point then pour it onto the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return the mixture to the saucepan and bring to the boil over a low heat, still whisking. When it comes to the boil, continue to whisk constantly for another 5 minutes, still over a low heat. It will be thick and smooth.
• Remove from the heat and add the chocolate, whisking until fully melted and incorporated. Pour into a bowl, cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming and leave to cool.

• To make the meringue, reduce the oven temperature to 200 degrees C. Pour the sugar onto a baking tray and place in the oven for 7 minutes. Meanwhile beat the egg whites until stiff. Remove the sugar from the oven and quickly decant into a heatproof jug. We found this much harder than it sounds. Set the mixer onto a low setting and slowly pour the hot sugar onto the egg whites, taking a couple of minutes to do so.

• To assemble, pour the chocolate custard into the cooled pastry case and spread to form an even layer. We had made four pastry cases but had enough custard to fill three to a decent level. Pour or spoon the meringue over the custard. You can smooth it with a knife but we and Micah both prefer the natural mounds and peaks.
• As we had a lot of meringue left, we filled our leftover fourth pastry case wholly with meringue! If you make individual tarts like we did, you may want to adjust the ratios of custard to meringue. If you stick with Micah's one large tart, they'll presumably be just fine.

• Micah advises using a blow torch to brown the surface of the meringues but we found a short stint under a very hot grill worked very well.

The pastry was light and sweet and simple and Pete had rolled it super, super thin, which was fantastic.

The chocolate custard was a little too liquid though it tasted great. I'm not sure if this is how it is meant to be though, as the photograph in the book shows the finished pie – no chocolate custard in sight! Perhaps we didn't leave it to cook long enough after bringing it to the boil, as we didn't time the five minutes and it seemed to thicken pretty fast and you can see it looks like a pretty thick custard in the photos above.

The meringue was sweet and light.

I'd really like to use both the pastry and the chocolate custard in other recipes.

Can you suggest any ideas?

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Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection is currently available from Amazon for just £9.19 (RRP £16.99).

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Angela Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine

In February 2007 I chanced upon a marvellous cookbook: The Ultimate Recipe Book by Angela Nilsen. It had just been published, so I'm not sure how (or where) I came across it so soon, in the days before my compulsive food blogging.

But I was instantly taken with Nilsen's approach of selecting 50 classic dishes and setting out to define the ultimate recipe for each one. In her quest she used her own considerable skills and knowledge of cooking and also consulted with many expert chefs, food writers and regional specialists to glean as many insider tips and suggestions as possible. Then she tested, tested and tested again, fine-tuning as she went.

The result is this wonderful cookbook, published by BBC Books under the brand of Good Food Magazine (for whom Nilsen worked as Food Editor and then Acting Food Director before creating the Ultimate series of recipes).

In her introduction to quiche Lorraine, Nilsen points out that "what you don't put into a quiche Lorraine is as important as what you do". It's a good reminder that quiches with "salmon, watercress, brie, even broccoli" might be jolly nice but are not Lorraine!

Quiche Lorraine is a simple dish with just a few ingredients. To me, that's where it's beauty lies.

One of Nilsen's advisors for this recipe comments that a great quiche Lorraine should be "like a rich savoury custard with lots of bacon gently set in it. The custard should be creamy, not solid, and the tart slim."

We enjoyed this quiche recipe when we first made it, not long after buying the book but with the huge influx of cookery books I've amassed in the last couple of years, the book had been neglected at the back of the shelf. Recently I yearned for a good home-made quiche and dug the book out again.

Angela Nilsen's Ultimate Quiche Lorraine

Ingredients

Pastry
175 grams plain flour
100 grams cold butter, cut into pieces
1 egg yolk
cold water

Filling
200 grams smoked or unsmoked lardons
50 grams Gruyere
200 ml crème fraîche
200 ml double cream
3 eggs, well beaten
pinch of ground nutmeg

Notes
We used smoked Denhay bacon cut into pieces.
We used a strong, well-aged Gruyere and doubled the amount to 100 grams.
As it was the nearest available pack size, we used 170 ml of double cream.
We added the extra egg white (leftover from the pastry) into the custard filling, which compensated for the reduced cream content.

Method

• Make the pastry by putting flour, butter, egg yolk and 4 teaspoons of cold water into a food processor. Process in pulses until the mix binds.

• Line a 23cm diameter flan dish or tin (we buttered and floured ours). Nilsen suggests a tin that is about 2.5 cm in height.
• On a floured surface roll the pastry out as thinly as you can.
• Ease the pastry into the base of the dish, trimming the edge so it sits slightly above the lip of the dish (to allow for shrinkage). Lightly prick the base with a fork and chill for 10 minutes.

• Preheat the oven to 200 C (180 C fan).
• Line the pastry with foil and weigh down with baking beads (or any other suitable weight – we used a smaller metal pie tin). Bake for 15 minutes.
• Remove the beans and foil and bake for another 4-5 minutes until the pastry is pale golden.

• If you notice any small holes or cracks, patch up with leftover pastry trimmings.
• While the pastry cooks, prepare the filling.
• Dry fry the lardons for a few minutes until they start to colour. Nilsen suggests discarding the cooking fat and draining but we tipped it into the custard mix for added flavour.

• Cut three quarters of the cheese into small dice and finely grate the rest.

• Scatter the cooked lardons and diced cheese over the pastry base.

• Beat together the crème fraîche, double cream and (pre-beaten) eggs. Add nutmeg and seasoning. (You shouldn't need much salt given the bacon and cheese).

• Pour into the pastry base, over the bacon and cheese.

• Scatter the grated cheese on top.

• Bake for about 25 minutes at 190 C (fan 170 C) or until golden and softly set. The centre shouldn't feel too firm.

• Remove from the oven and allow the quiche to settle for a few minutes before serving.

As you can see, our pastry was just a touch soggy in the base, though this didn't detract at all, for me. This may be because we didn't roll the pastry thin enough or because it needed an extra minute or two of blind baking.

This is a really delicious recipe and very straightforward. I definitely recommend that you try it.

Use only the recommended 50 grams of cheese if you want a milder, more custardy flavour.

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