Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Little fuss, but no biggie!


Nigella Lawson has come out with a new book!!! But I don't have it yet. Thank god for the Daily Mail -- will I go to hell for that comment?? -- that did a serialization of some sample recipes from Kitchen. This recipe looked easy enough, as its name would suggest, and I do love me some tarts, meant in the least pervy way.

I made this for Rosh Hashanah Eve's dinner, even though there is nothing traditional about it, apart from the honey graham biscuits in the base.

Trust me to mess up a no-fuss recipe. I totally read the instructions wrong in addition to completely ignoring the size of the tart pan. The funny thing is that I used too much butter for the tart pan I had, but even with not realizing I didn't use all the grahams I should have, the base still couldn't come together completely. I am buying bases from now on because I am just stoopid!!! when it comes to these things, apart from my cheesecakes, inexplicably. But I digress. The lemon curd was homemade, because my Russian supermarket (actually it's huge) has ten varieties of cherry preserves but not one friggin' jar of lemon curd. I also used Nigella's expertise for the curd, from the awesome How to Eat. Last time I made it, I think I stood about an hour, no joke, at the stove, waiting for the curd to thicken. This time, with a nagging husband and crying baby, not sure which is worse, I upped the heat and the curd was done in no time, no curdling to be found! The mixture of cream cheese and lemon curd is HEAVEN, and I will use it in the future to ice cakes.

Since the base was a joke and kept falling apart, I really only got to enjoy the cream and the strawberries. My sister made an off-hand comment about this being Wimbledon. Pah! Strawberries and cream got nothing on this.

So looking forward to getting the book in a fortnight or so, and hopefully the next recipe I won't mess up so spectacularly... or maybe I should!

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