Jane Webster

I had the great pleasure last Monday of hosting a dinner with a talk by Jane Webster.  Jane is a Melbourne mother of four children who along with her husband has bought a magnificent chateau in Normandy, totally renovated it and is now offering accommodation, cooking classes and food and wine tours. It was inspiring to hear her amazing tale of moving the family to France, which they did for two years, and now they spend six months here and six months at Chateau Bosgouet.

Which sounds magical, especially when you see the Chateau:

I might add that the exceptionally talented Jane cooks for all her guests on top of managing this very large house and her family, which I think is amazing.  She very generously gave me a copy of her most recent book...

I love that they are 'living the dream'....it is all possible, although it takes bravery, fortitude and determination and I'm not sure I would be game.  Read more about Jane here and plan a trip to France.  I can guarantee you will be beautifully looked after.  Thank you to my friend Jo for organising Jane's visit.  And thank you to Tim who gallantly stepped in to the role of butler and kept our wine glasses topped up throughout the night.

I decided I wanted to cook something French for Jane and our 14 guests, using some produce from my vegetable garden.  I eventually decided on a Tomato Tarte Tatin with a rocket, pear and roasted hazelnut salad.  Simple fare, but perfect for a late summer supper or lunch.

The beauty of this is that you can make it ahead of time.  The only thing is that the pastry will not be crispy if you do it ahead.  This doesn't really matter as the juices from the tomatoes soak into the pastry which gives it great flavour.  I did put them (I made two) into the Aga to slightly warm them before serving.  

TOMATO TARTE TATIN

The measurements for this are fairly loose as it depends entirely on the size of your pan.  Mine served 8.  You need a frying pan that can go in the oven, or I suppose you could do it in a shallow cake tin.  I also added a layer of gently softened onions and a layer of grilled zucchini because I wanted a thicker tarte and the tomatoes shrink down to nothing.

Make a batch of sour cream pastry, wrap it in baking paper and put it in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 200c.

Cut up a couple of brown onions and fry them gently in a knob of butter and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.  Stir occasionally until they are very soft.  Set aside.

In the same pan fry slices of zucchini until slightly browned.  Set aside.

Add a little more olive oil,  and add enough cherry tomatoes to cover the bottom of the pan you intend to use for the tarte.  Shake the pan gently to roll them around and partly cook them.  You don't want them to lose their shape.

Put a round of baking paper on the bottom of your tarte pan.  Tip in the tomatoes and make sure they fit snugly in one layer.  Season with salt and pepper.  Spread over the onions and zucchini in layers.

Roll out the pastry and drape over the top, cutting a couple of holes in the top for the steam to escape.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Allow to cool for about 20 minutes before inverting onto a plate.  Tear up some basil leaves and scatter over the top.

February

The weather these days never ceases to confuse me.  Last Thursday we were minding our own business, having dinner actually, when totally out of the blue a massive hailstorm descended.....

It hosed with rain and we had 32 mm in about 20 minutes.  One kilometre up the road there was not a drop.  When I went outside on dusk about an hour later to lock up the chooks it was as if nothing had happened.   Not a puddle remained.  This is how you do it:  you run out of rainwater so you get a man to bring a huge tanker of water to fill up your rainwater tank.  You pay him to do this.  Then it is guaranteed to rain within the next week.

It's been very hot since then.  There have been spontaneous lightning strike fires erupting in the Grampians:

Photo:  The Hamilton Spectator

30 degree plus temperatures are typical for February.  It is tinder dry.  It is always the time of year that I retire indoors to make tomato sauce and relish to last us for the coming year.

The beans are coming thick and fast now, and I made this bean and roasted hazelnut salad:

I flashed the beans in the hot oven of the Aga to roast them as an experiment, but the colour wasn't great, so it would probably be better to just blanch them (the flavour was good though).  I also roasted the hazelnuts then wrapped them in a tea towel and rubbed the skins off.  For the dressing I mixed about 3 tblsp olive oil with 1 tblsp vinocotto, added salt and pepper and a dash of lemon juice.  Dress the warm beans in a bowl with the dressing, then arrange on a plate, crumble over some goat's cheese or feta and top with the hazelnuts.  Drizzle over a bit more dressing to finish.

Getting a roasting

Here is a better photo of my lovely new speckled hens.  Luckily for them they won't be getting a roasting, but practically everything else in my kitchen is.  Lots of things that you traditionally would do on the stove top can be roasted in the oven, which adds such a lovely dimension to food.  Last week it was pears and quinces.  This week it is  tomato sauce.

There a masses of cherry tomatoes that are just starting to ripen.  I bring them in when they have just started to go orange and put them on the kitchen windowsill to ripen fully.

I found this recipe in Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion  and it is quite honestly the best tomato sauce recipe (that is pasta sauce as opposed to ketchup sauce) that I have ever tried.  You can use it for pasta, pizzas, on meatballs, in casseroles, pretty much anywhere that you might be tempted to tip in something from a jar.  When I last made it I froze it in varying sized plastic zip-lock bags.

OVEN BAKED TOMATO SAUCE (this is double the recipe from the book, but if you're going to the trouble, you might as well have lots)

1 kg tomatoes 

2 carrots, chopped

2 onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

20 basil leaves, torn

s & p

Preheat oven to 150c.

Mix all ingredients in a big roasting pan.  Cover with foil and and bake for about 2 hours, or longer if you want it more reduced.

Put the sauce through the medium disc of a food mill (mouli).  This gets the seeds and skin out, so pureeing the mix won't do the job.

Season with s & p.  It will keep in the fridge for a week, or in the freezer for a month or so (I have left it in there for longer with no ill effects). 

More roasting experiments to follow.  I need to practise, as apparently 80% of cooking on the AGA is done in the oven.

Autumnal activity

There has been a flurry of activity in the Lambchops kitchen of late.  The start of autumn brings so much fresh produce from the garden I feel duty bound to deal with it all.

Because my tomatoes look like this:

I bought a box of these:

and we picked a hat full of these:

And a neighbour gave me a bag of these:

 I just cannot let beautiful, fresh, organic  (can't vouch for the box of tomatoes though) produce pass me by and I loathe waste, (believe me, our chooks practically starve), so I got cracking.  I will let you know how I got on with everything, but I'll start with the tomatoes.

I always make enough tomato sauce to last a year.  The bought stuff is revolting and surely a last resort, although my philistine children prefer it.  It is the perfect accompaniment to chops and sausages an cold roast lamb.  I usually triple this recipe.

TOMATO SAUCE

3 kgs tomatoes

500g brown onions

30g garlic

1 tblsp cloves

1 tblsp ground ginger

1/4 cup of salt (start with a little less and add more if you need it)

1 tblsp black peppercorns

1 cinnamon stick

1 cup white vinegar

3 cups sugar

Cut tomatoes, onions and garlic into chunks.

Place all ingredients except vinegar and sugar into a large saucepan and boil slowly for two hours.

Put all the mix through the medium disc of a food mill or mouli (you really need one of these to get the right texture), or enlist the help of a child roaming the kitchen in search of food...

Return the mix to the cleaned out saucepan , add the vinegar and sugar and boil until it reaches sauce consistency, stirring from time to time so it doesn't stick to the bottom.  This will take about 30 minutes.

Put into hot sterilised bottles (old gin and whisky bottles are good) and allow to cool before you put the lids on.