The Food I Eat

I’ve got a thing about eating off big plates. Weird. My plates are so hopelessly big they don’t fit in the dishwasher or the cupboard.

I came up with a cunning plan though, and bought an enormous plate rack off ebay, which would have all been very well if I’d been competent enough to attach it to a wall. Instead, it’s been gathering dust behind a door for months.

Lastnight, I finally pulled out the damsel in distress card though and propositioned a friend who is renowned for his enormous tool belt. I offered to cook him supper if he put up my plate rack (embarrassingly reminiscent of a Design and Technology report I got when I was 13 years old: “Rachel has gender issues. She has spent the entire term trying to persuade me to make her box for her if she sweeps the floor in return.”)

In celebration of the plate rack finally being mounted on the wall, I thought I’d cook something a bit special, and seeing as there were 8 lemons for £1 on Bethnal Green Road, I plumped for my favourite lemon tart recipe…

Ingredients

(For the pastry)
350g plain flour
175 g unsalted butter (cubed)
100g icing sugar
3 egg yolks

(For the filling)
8 eggs
230g caster sugar
Zest of 8 lemons
360 ml lemon juice
260 ml double cream

Start off with the pastry. It’s a bit of a fiddly pastry to make, but it’s definitely worth it – the filling of the tart’s so sharp and lemony, it’s worth having something extra short and sweet to hold it all together and balance the flavours.

Mix together the flour and butter, then sift in the icing sugar and add the 3 egg yolks. It looks all dusty at this point, like it’ll never stick together, but don’t be disheartened.

Get your hands involved, and (unlike most other pastry) use the heat of your hands and keep squeezing it together until it comes together in a lovely, golden ball. Wrap it in cling film, and pop it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Once the pastry has come out of the fridge, roll it out, put it in a greased flan dish and blind bake at 180°c for 20 minutes. The pastry is quite short, so don’t be disheartened if you can’t line the flan dish all in one go – if it’s misbehaving, then roll out the pastry in four quarters and jigsaw them together in the dish.

For the filling, mix together the sugar and eggs first. (This was my mistake – I wasn’t thinking, and started by mixing together the lemon and sugar first, so the eggs didn’t properly meld in, earning the tart the name: Leggy Tart – a lemon, eggy tart.)

Once you’ve gently beaten the sugar and eggs, then add the lemon juice, zest and cream, then pour it into the pastry case and bake at 140°c for 35 minutes.

Serve with a dusting of icing sugar, a drizzle of cream if you like things sweet, or a drizzle of fruit compote if you prefer your puddings fruity and tart!