Manchester Tart

Hi there PF@H’ers. I hope you are all well. Apologies for the gaps between posts right now, by new life in Madrid is hectic, hectic, hectic. It had been so long since I studied for my first degree, I think I had forgotten just how school can overtake your life, leaving little time for quaint little hobbies like cook-through blogging. When I’m not on campus or reading at home for the next day’s lectures, I am out and about networking with my new classmates. They call it networking here. It’s what we used to call “going on the piss” when I was back in London. Anyway, so it was I found myself with an invite to my new buddy Akhmed’s 30^th birthday bash.

Akhmed decided to host a “bring a dish” party at his flat, with each guest bringing a plate of something authentic from their home country. “OK”, thought me. A great chance for me to knock up something from my copy of Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food. I guess I could have chosen any of the 100 or so recipes I still have left to cook, but this one for Manchester Tart just seemed to jump out at me.

Manchester tart is all about school dinners. I can remember it being served up by the dinner ladies at my old junior school – it was always one of my favourite puds. It’s a bit of strange recipe for a cookbook by a Michelin starred chef such as Gordon Ramsay. And I’m not convinced I have ever seen it served in a British pub. Though I suppose there are those niche drinking dens in London that cater for gentlemen with a certain type of school teacher fetish. Perhaps it pops up there?

I awoke from my Saturday afternoon siesta rather later than planned, so I had to put the tart together in an awful rush. That, and getting to grips with my new Panasonic Lumix camera, perhaps explains some of the less than stellar photography (sorry!). Here’s the first snap of the ingredients. You can see eggs, milk, cream, butter,  caster and icing sugars, desiccated coconut, bananas, raspberry jam and vanilla pods.

To start off, I had to tackle my kitchen nemesis. I could almost hear Gordon admonishing me. “Its only f**king pastry you big girl. Get stuck in”. Hmm, easy for him to say. But, perhaps because I was so rushed that I didn’t have time to worry about it, the pastry making actually went pretty well. It was the usual drill. I piled my food processor high with butter and sugar and whizzed to combine. Then an egg and another whizz. And then the flour and a final quick whizz until the dough came together. I gently kneaded the dough for a while and then shaped it into a flat disc, wrapped it in cling film and popped it into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Half an hour was just long enough for me to grab a quick shower and pick up some beer for the party. When I got back from the shops, I took the dough out of the fridge and rolled it out to about the thickness of a pound coin (or I suppose

about two one-euro coins back-to-back is more appropriate). I lined the tart tin and then added baking paper and some dried beans before “blind baking” the tart for 20 minutes.

OK, next job – pastry cream. I added milk, cream and a little sugar into a pan over a low heat. I split open a vanilla pod and added the seeds and the pod into the mixture and slowly brought the whole lot up to a simmer. I loved the smell of fresh vanilla as the creamy milk gently warmed through.

Meanwhile, I beat together egg yolks and sugar until smooth. I then whisked in 40g of cornflour, a bit at a time, keeping the mixture smooth.

Once the creamy milk was at the boil, I took it off the heat and slowly trickled it onto the eggy mix, whisking all the time until I had a nice runny custard.

Next, I used a sieve to strain out the vanilla pod and added the mixture back into the pan and onto the heat.

The heat under the pan must be very gentle – if it gets too hot the mixture will curdle. Not good. I kept stirring and slowly, slowly the pastry cream began to get nice and thick and smooth. It’s thick enough when you can draw a line across the bottom of the pan with a spoon.

By now, the pastry case was out of the oven and cooling. While that happened, I whipped together more cream with some icing sugar. As soon as it began to stiffen, I folded it through the pastry cream and gently combined the two.

Now to assemble the tart. First I spread the base of the pastry case with raspberry jam before layering on slices of banana, which I had previously chopped and tossed in lemon juice.

I then spread over the pastry cream mixture to fill the tart. There was a fair bit left over, but that quickly disappeared into the chef. Yum!!!

For the last job, I quickly toasted some desiccated coconut in a dry pan before mixing in a bowl with caster sugar. Finally, I sprinkled the sweetend coconut over the top of the tart, tucked it under my arm and headed out of the door towards the party. I was late!

So, how did it go down? Well, I wouldn’t say the tart was something I was overly proud of – it was hardly a gourmet recipe. The taste was very much school dinners, and I guess that was ok. The  “bring a dish” party was fab though. There are people from over 90 different countries on my course here in Madrid, so the range of food and drink on show was pretty amazing. And, once the Manchester tart finally got to the table, it certainly didn’t hang around too long. But then maybe that’s students for you…..