One Fat Man

5th Feb: Minne di vergine o cassatelle di S. Agatha

St Agatha (d. 251 AD) is one of the virgin martyrs mentioned in the Canon of the Mass. Her breasts were cut off during her martyrdom. In Sicily -- from whence St Agatha hails -- they make this pert little pastry on her feast day. You join the dots.

 

The recipe below is brought to you care of Googletranslate, a lot of editing, and some educated guesswork. I'm not sure I executed it perfectly, esp. as I used muffin tins, which aren't quite the right shape or cup size. I made some by hand which I cooked on a baking tray, they looked better, and are the ones pictured.

 

The finished pastry is basically a cassate, but without any marzipan, although some receipts that I found for these did use marzipan (unnecessary, I think). They're rather like a cross between a cheesecake and a bakewell tart, and the result is not unpleasant.

 

Ingredients

280 grams of sugar 

550 grams of 00 flour 

150 grams of lard/butter

1 large egg 

400g ricotta 

50g candied diced peel

50g chocolate drops 

grated lemon rind 

For the icing: 

250 grams of powdered sugar 

1 tablespoon lemon juice 

1 egg white 

Glace cherries

 Method

Sift the flour into a bowl and mix with 150 grams of sugar. Add the lard (if you prefer you can use butter) and rub it in. Begin to knead into pastry with your hands. Then add the egg and lemon zest. Continue to knead until you have a smooth pastry dough. If it is a little dry add a splash of milk. Form into a big ball, wrap in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for about 45 minutes.

Prepare the filling by whisking the ricotta with 130 grams of sugar, continue to work the ricotta until it becomes smooth and you can no longer see the grains. Add the candied fruit and dark chocolate to taste. Put filling in the fridge and let it rest.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll it out thin, then cut disks of the right size to line the moulds (already brushed with lard/butter and sprinkled with flour). Fill the cavity with ricotta cream previously obtained. Place a smaller disk of dough over the top and make sure that the contents does not spill. Be careful not to overfill as the cheese will expand during cooking.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170 degrees C for about 35 minutes. After cooking allow to cool on a rack.

Prepare the glaze by heating a tablespoon of water and the lemon juice. Sift in the icing sugar and stir it in. Allow to cool, add the egg white and mix with electric beaters until very foamy. Spread the icing over the pastries, making sure to cover them thoroughly. Garnish each pastry with a glace cherry.

Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - Fish Pie, Lentil Soup, and Dill and Cheddar Scones

 

Yesterday was Maundy Thursday. I had a lovely day, which began with Tenebrae. Fr Bede and I then collected flowers for the altar of repose – daffodils. This was a surprisingly beautiful experience, because St Louis has been covered with a foot of snow. It had all melted and the daffodils were flat against the ground. There was something deeply evocative of the themes of Holy Week in these bright flowers flattened against the ground, being raised up to the Altar of Repose. All desperately corny really, but it gave me pause for thought whilst we were picking the flowers.

On Spy Wednesday Fr Bede and I had set up the Altar of Repose. This was a wonderful moment for me. In a way it reminded me of my childhood, in my old parish church. My mother and I would usually spend the morning of Maundy Thursday helping to prepare the church for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. I would be sorting things out in the servers’ sacristy, polishing the thurible, faffing with candles. My mother would be helping the sacristan with linens (which my mother washed and ironed for many years). I particularly remember the hanging of the curtain to go behind the Altar of Repose, and Olga (a lady of parish) coming in with hyacinths from her garden to go on it. The smell of the hyacinths mingled with incense is the scent of the Mount of Olives for me.

So helping Fr Bede to hang the curtain behind the altar of repose and to clear the tables from the hall was a trip down memory lane that I greatly valued. Fr Bede’s parish is wonderful. It is a thriving community with many young families, and great devotion. In fact I've never encountered a parish with this youthful demographic before. In some ways it reminds me very much of the parish of my youth, even though Fr Bede’s parish offers Traditional Latin Mass and sacraments and mine did not. I think part of this is the mingling of the ‘make-shift’ and the ‘sincere’. My old parish church was a sort of hall, with a sanctuary that could be screened off at one end. It had to be a multi-purpose space in order to finance itself. But the sanctuary was very sensibly ordered, and it was a deeply prayerful space, with the tabernacle at the centre. Sadly the church was closed down, and has since been bulldozed to make way for houses. There are some pictures of it here on a very interesting website that looks at derelict buildings. Fr Bede’s parish has a similarly humble setting, but it is very prayerful, and sincere. Like my old church, it just works.

The church I now go to when I’m at home in Guildford just isn’t a prayerful space for me. I find there to be no sense of silence, or of the sacred. Architecturally it is a meeting space, not a place of sacrifice. I find it very difficult to pray there, and find that the design of the space can often exacerbate the tendency for the modern liturgy to become incorrectly focused upon ‘communal meal’ and ‘community event’. I don’t want sound mean, because I know that many people like this building, and have meaningful experiences within it. I am also acutely aware that it’s the only option many people have as a place in which to attend Mass (and indeed it’s my only option when I’m at home). But I simply don’t think it functions well as a Catholic liturgical space.

But I digress. Yesterday was a day of preparation, in which I took great comfort. And the sense of preparation was experienced in many aspects of the day. Between Holy Mass and some time at the Altar of Repose I helped Br Dunstan make fish pie. This is the same fish pie that appeared on this blog last Good Friday ... the Jennifer Paterson Two Fat Ladies recipe. But I thought some photographs of it in progress this year would not go amiss. We will eat it this evening after the Good Friday liturgy.

[Lots of mashed potato]

['Prawns for treats' as Jennifer said - I realise this looks fairly uninspiring, but we haven't baked the pie yet so I can't show you it finished]

Br Dunstan also made a delicious lentil soup for lunch today.

Indeed, I thought it was slightly too delicious for Good Friday - but perhaps that's a worrying Puritan streak coming out in me that I should stamp on ASAP. He some dill and cheddar scones from the Barefoot Contessa to go with it. Now they really were DELICIOUS and I urge you to make them. The recipe for the scones can be found here.

Mince Pies for not-the-Annunciation: 25th March

Easter is coming. Now, I tend to focus on Christmas quite a bit at Easter. I remember once having a conversation with an Anglcian friend of mine about the Incarnation. We were talking about whether humanity could have been saved by the Incarnation alone – that is, is the Incarnation by itself enough to restore humanity? In the Christ child is human flesh perfected already, are we saved? Of course, we both knew that the answer is both yes and no… In the Christ child is our redemption, and the potentiality of it, but it is only in the cross that Christ draws all things to himself, and achieves our redemption.  But thinking of the Incarnation at Easter and of the Cross at Christmas is a nice exercise. The Incarnation is pointless without the Cross, the Cross impossible without the Incarnation.

This Easter these thoughts have been more pronounced than usual. This is partly because Monday would have been the feast of the Annunciation (because it’s Holy Week the Annunciation is transferred to 8^th April… but it’s difficult not to think of it). Indeed, as we make our last steps towarsd Easter it is wonderful to remember the first steps of the Incarnate Logos towards the Cross too, we can remember that in the Virgin’s womb was the potential for our salvation.

It’s also been feeling Christmassy. Certainly the Almighty has decided to make us think of Christmas:

So now seems as good a time as any to finally give you some pictures of me making Mince Pies this Christmas with my dear MaMa. In the pictures you’ll note the following:

A splendid Christmas apron – given to me by the wonderful Mrs Joan Casey of St Louis, MO.

 

My mother.

 

We used my granny’s recipe for rose crust pastry. It can't be beaten, and here it is:

The pastry is very short, so be sure to chill it, and avoid overworking it (or use marg instead of butter - but it'll taste awful). Full details of mince pie making can be found here.

And whilst you think of the symbolism of the mince pie next Christmas, the pastry manger, the holes on top for the wise men, keep in mind that those piercings might just as well – if it doesn’t seem too crass a connection – remind us of Zechariah’s prophecy; ‘the shall look upon Him whom they have pierced’ (Zech 12.10 - quoted in Jn 19.37) for in the joy of Christmas we must also detect the desolation of the Cross.

Dutch St. Nicholas Cake - for St. Nick, 6th December

Today is the feast of St Nicholas, from whom we ultimately get Santa Claus. Beloved across Europe it consistently surprises me that jolly old St Nick was actually Turkish.

He was born in Myra in what is now modern day Turkey. He was a bishop, and a worker of many miracles. He was also know for his stealthy giving of gifts... or more accurately, alms.

Nicholas was buried at Myra, and there has been a church there since the 6th century, which I had the pleasure to visit some years ago. It is very impressive despite the fact that it needs restoration work. Sadly I don't think the relics of St N are in Myra , I have a vague recollection of reading that they were ... wait for it... nicked!

Nevertheless, Myra remains a site of great devotion (and tourism). We have a rather jolly gourd from Myra painted to look like a Christmassy St Nick. We also have a Christmas Kilim rug with him on it which I imagine some enterprising teenaged carpet shop owner fleeced my father for.


I remember reading in the official Myra bumpf about St Nicholas dropping purses of money secretively into the house of three daughters whose father had died - thus giving them dowries and enabling them to marry. N's quiet giving wonderfully embodies our Lord's instructions about almsgiving in Matthew 6... although somehow we do all know about it, so it can't have been THAT secret.

It is from these early traditions that come the tradition of St Nicholas filling the shoes of children with sweets on his feast, and of Santa filling our stockings at Christmas.

The shoe-filling brigade are mostly European, and so today's recipe comes from Holland. It came as a surprise (a surprise gift if you will) as my mother made it and surprised me with some photographs of it. She got the recipe from a lady in our home parish. She's had the recipe for some time, but hadn't made it because it turned out to be rather difficult to get ground cardamon here. Luckily my father was able to charm one of his lorry drivers into bringing some over. Always good to have a spice mule.

So here, thanks to parents, parish and lorry driver is a cake for St Nicholas:

Spices:

2 1/2 tspns ground cinnamon

1/2 tspn cloves

Good pinch nutmeg

Good pinch ground anniseed

Pinch of pepper

Pinch of ground cardamon

 

Pastry:

6 oz soft light brown sugar

6 oz butter

1 egg yolk

10 oz SR Flour

The spices - above

10 oz ready-made marzipan

 

Preheat the oven to 170C. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the egg yolk, and sift in the spices and flour. Form together into a stiff dough. Cut the pastry in half and roll two thickish squares, to fit a 7 or 8 inch cake tin. Grease the tin, and line it with greaseproof paper. Put the first half in the tin, and then roll the marzipan into a square to fit on top, add it on top of the first layer of pastry, and then put the second layer on top of it. Press it down a little. Brush with egg white or milk, and decorate with almonds if desired. Bake for 45 minutes. It will sink a bit when it comes out of the oven. Apparently this is normal.

A Feast of Friendship – Torta della Nonna for Nanny, and St Aelred of Riveaulx

Among the many blessings for which I am thankful, the highest on the list is my friends. For the past few months it has been wonderful that one of my of my furthest-flung friends has been in the UK. This friend is Fr Aelred Niespolo. Fr Aelred lives in California and very rarely gets to visit. I had seen Aelred a few times in Chelmsford – where he has been staying with the Praemonstratensians. However, last week he made it to London to look after the nuns at Tyburn for a week. This provided the perfect opportunity for a dinner party in his honour.

Aelred was a student at St Benet’s Hall with me, indeed we matriculated together, and one of our great shared loves is food. He also – and I cannot remember the origins of this – is affectionately known to most of us as Nanny. Aelred is of Italian origin, although he is a born and bred New Yorker. I cannot eat spaghetti alla vongole without thinking of Aelred. The same is true of mozzarella in carozza.

With all the above in mind I decided on an Italian feast for Nanny. I took advice from my Italian menu consultant William.

We began with a simple bowl of trofie with fresh pesto. My friend Benj came round the night before to help as sous-chef, he did much of the pesto-making. It’s important to dress informally for pesto-making, as we see here:

Now the trofie itself is relatively easy – just salt the water well and don’t overcook it. Then serve with the pesto, the ingredients for which are basil, good olive oil, hard cheese (I like to use grana padano and parmesan as the GP is nice and creamy), garlic, pine nuts. Make it to your own taste. (NB in liguria they like to serve trofie with some added potatoes and green beans as well as pesto – but this is only for the very hungry).

After the trofie we had Osso Bucco, which is also easy. I was a bit controversial and did a Tuscan inspired one with added tomatoes… When making the Osso Bucco the two most important things are --- cook it flat in the pot and be careful turning (otherwise you might lose the marrow in the middle of the bone)  and buy your veal somewhere good, with good welfare standards. I went to Allens of Mayfair, who source from the only fully welfare inspected source of Dutch Veal.

After the OB came a torta della Nonna, which is the recipe of the day. Torta della Nonna is basically a light pastry cake, filled with Crema Pasticcera (or cream cheese in some recipes). Naturally every Nonna has her own recipe, and everyone’s Nonna’s Nonna is the best. Here is the recipe I used… it’s an amalgam of about seven different ones:

For the pastry:
300g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

110g sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

2 egg yolks

1 egg

110g butter

Make the pastry by combining everything together until a stiff-ish dough forms. Wrap in cling-film and chill for half an hour. Meanwhile make the Crema P. I use an egg-yolk heavy Crema:

1 egg

5 egg yolks

1 pt milk

Vanilla sugar

150 gr sugar

6 tablespoons flour

A little cornflour

To make the CP, whisk the egg yolks and egg together with the sugar until it ribbons, now whisk in the flour and cornflour and a splash of milk. Now heat the rest of the milk until it’s almost boiling, remove from the heat and stir into the egg, sugar and flour mixture – stir constantly.  Return the mixture to the pan, and back to the heat. Put over a gentle flame, whisking unceasingly, until you have a rich and glorious custard. Allow to chill.

Roll out the pastry, and line a well greased tin with enough to come up the sides a bit. Roll out a top. Now pour the CP into the middle, place the pastry lid on, folding over the excess from the bottom. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 180C until nice and golden. Allow to chill. Decorate with a layer of toasted almonds and pine nuts. Dredge with icing sugar. Serve, perhaps with a spiced pear (as I did).

Nanny with his Nonna:

 

Of course the torta did not finish the meal, we also had some lovely Sardinian Pecorino with dates, and some lovely mozzarella with pomegranate (I had wanted burrata, but I couldn’t lay my paws on any). The pomegranates were particularly fine specimens, and naturally made me think of Catherine of Aragon (her heraldic symbol was a pomegranate).

After all this Fernet Branca and coffee were both highly necessary.

It was a wonderful evening, and wonderful to see Nanny, and to come together as friends. It made me feel very lucky indeed, for as St Aelred himself said:

‘Those who have no friends are to be compared to beasts for they have no one with whom to rejoice, no one to whom they can unburden their hearts, or with whom to share their inspirations and illuminations.’

A Michaelmas Feast - 29th September: Pudding

Michaelmas is the day when Michael the Archangel threw Lucifer out of heaven. Tradition has it that Lucifer fell into a blackberry bush and when he did he cursed it (or in some traditions spat on it, or in others – mostly Cornish – urinated on it). It is for this reason that it’s traditional not to eat blackberries after Michaelmas, because they will taste sour. This is, of course, because they haven’t ripened in the sun and the season is over.

So I thought I’d give the blackberries their last hurrah of the year, and adapted a lemon meringue pie to be a blackberry meringue pie. I topped the curd with an Italian meringue as I thought French wouldn’t work nicely... it also meant I didn’t have to worry about getting something else through the oven.

For the Pastry:

8 oz flour

1 oz icing sugar

4 oz chilled unsalted butter in cubes

1 egg yolk

2 tbspn cold water

10 inch tin

Rub the butter into the flour and sugar. Then use the egg yolk – keep the white aside in a clean bowl for the meringue - and water (go easy on the water) to make a smooth pastry dough. Avoid over-working it. Wrap in cling film and chill for half an hour.

Roll out, using icing sugar as you would flour in the context of rolling a savoury pastry. Carefully put it into a greased and lined 10 inch fluted flan tin.

Bake blind (with baking beans and parchment) for ten minutes at 200C. Then remove the beans and bake for another ten. Watch the edges, and watch during this last ten – you don’t want it to burn. Allow it to coll well in the tin before adding the filling. If there are any holes in the bottom rub a little jam over them, it will form a seal and stop the filling from leaking out. 

For the Blackberry Filling:

1lb blackberries

juice 1 lemon

4 oz sugar

A little water

 

Cook the above in a saucepan over a low-ish heat. When they come to a bubble let them continue to do so for just under ten minutes. Then blend the mixture and pass through a seive to get rid of pips. You can get up to this point well in advance and have it in the freezer.

Taste and add a little more sugar if necessary. Remember that the Italian meringue is very sweet so the filling should be quite sharp.

Heat the blackberry liquid (it should be around 600 ml in total), add water if necessary.

Mix 4 tbspns of cornflour with a little water, add to the heating liquid and whisk until it starts to thicken. Then remove from the heat and whisk in 3 egg yolks – again saving the whites for the meringue. [When you are separating the eggs have a working bowl and a storage bowl, only transfer the white to the ‘storage’ bowl when it’s successfully separated. That way if a yolk breaks on your fourth egg it doesn’t ruin the whole lot].

Heat the mixture through gently, whisking the whole time. It will form a thick custard. Pour this into the pastry shell and leave the whole thing to cool well. When almost cool place in the fridge and leave to chill.

For the Meringue:

For this I decided on an Italian meringue. This mergingue is cooked by whisking a very hot sugar syrup into the egg whites. The syrup cooks the meringue. Then you can pipe it.

6oz sugar

¼ cup water

4 egg whites

A little cream of tartar – quarter of a teaspoon, it helps the meringue to stay stable.

You want to do the meringue as late as possible, as it will start to break down as time goes on. You certainly can’t do it the day before. I did mine just before the guests arrived, about two and a half hours before we ate it.

Put the egg whites into the extremely clean bowl of the electric mixer. You don’t want anything to go near the egg whites, particularly not any fat. Add the cream of tartar. Use the mixer to whisk to soft peaks. Whilst this is happening heat the sugar and the water in a saucepan. Use a jam thermometer to measure the temperature. Do NOT stir (crystals will form) but you can shake the pan.

When the sugar reaches 110C remove from the heat and start the mixer again on a medium speed, drizzle the sugar into the egg whites very slowly – in the way you’d drizzle oil into yolks for mayonnaise. When all the sugar is in turn the speed right up and whisk until stiff peaks/until the meringue has cooled. This takes several minutes.

You should now have a fondanty sort of meringue. Put it into a piping bag and pipe attractively over the pie base. When it is all on then use a cook’s blow torch to brown the top, for chewy crunch and prettiness.

 

 

 

 

 

Cretan Boureki for Andrew of Crete: 4th July

The fourth of July is not the only the day when Her Majesty considers whether or not to revoke the independence of the United States of America. Oh no, it is also the feast of St Andrew of Crete. To be completely honest with you I didn’t know who St Andrew of Crete was until the 4^th July this year, when I suddenly considered the need to do a blog post before going on holiday.  I was going to embrace my heritage and blog about St Elizabeth of Portugal, but as my holiday took me to Crete it seemed natural, indeed essential, that I should do a Cretan dish for Andrew of Crete.

Andrew lived in the 650s/700s, was a bishop, and had an alright ecclesiastical career. A few councils here, a few discourses and sermons there. His principal contribution, however, was as a hymn-writer and – apparently – he introduced the ‘canon’ as a form of orthodox hymn. Anyway, he eventually ended up as Bishop of Crete, the lucky sod.

Sadly, whilst I enjoyed the cooking and the eating on the fourth, it took me rather longer – indeed almost a month – to write about it!

 

Ingredients:

Three big fat courgettes

Four large potatoes

A nice big onion

Thyme

Dill

Spearmint – I use Greek dried spearmint that I bring back with me every year. Don’t use normal dried mint. It’s too strong.

Good olive oil

Five cloves of garlic

Two tubs of quark cheese

A little milk

Young goats cheese – about 8 – 10 oz

Sesame seeds

Lemon juice

A brief excursus on the cheese: it’s usual in Crete to use a goat’s cheese called Mzithra. It’s basically a simple village cheese, like a ricotta. But it’s very creamy, and yet has that nice sourness that cheese from goat/sheep can often have. It’s the perfect cheese for this dish, and there really isn’t anything like it. I’ve found that mixing quark and a little lemon juice with a nice young goat’s cheese – the bright white one that supermarkets sell in logs – seems to do the trick. It’s not quite right, but then if it were there would be no reason to go to Crete.

Method: Slice the courgettes thinly, lengthways, and salt in a bowl. Leave for a while for osmosis to do its thing.

Meanwhile peel and slice the potatoes and onion. Drain off the liquid from the courgettes and put them, the onion, and the potatoes in a bowl and coat with about 3/4s of the cheese mixture. Add the herbs and garlic, in good measures, but being sparing with the spearmint (about two teaspoons). Roughly layer in a big rectangular cooking dish, sprinkling on a bit of olive oil now and then. Create a final layer on the top of potatoes only. Top with the last part of the cheese mix, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake slowly in a moderate oven for about two hours. If it starts to dry out then add a little water.

Serve with a nice juicy tomato.

I will update with a brief, off-topic, diary of much of what I ate on holiday at some point soon.  But here is a proper Cretan Boureki, that I ate in my favourite mountain-top Taverna:

[Even] more oil than mine!

 

Religieuse for Corpus Christi

My grandmother had a habit of buying cream cakes on major feasts. This was something I greatly enjoyed as a child, and it was always good to have a feast day properly marked. It was even more special when the feast days fell on their traditional days... usually Thursdays. However, just like the Ascension, the feast of Corpus Christi is one the English Bishops (in their wisdom) have decided to transfer to the following Sunday. They do this in their grand tradition of dumbing down our religious heritage, and they do it for no apparent reason. In general I find it upsetting, but with Corpus Christi I don't mind so much because at some points in its history (and in some places throughout its history) it has been celebrated on the first Sunday of July, or the first Sunday after Trinity Sunday. Also, I was having a lunch party, so a Corpus Christi feast seemed sensible.

Corpus Christi is a fairly modern feast, founded in the 1200s, partly at the behest of Juliana of Liege.  Juliana was a Praemonstratensian canoness and mystic, who had a eucharistic vision off and on for about 20 years. Eventually this got back to bishop and Pope and became instrumental in the feast being created by Urban IV.

Because of the Praemonstratensian flavour to the feast I wanted to make some fat little religieuse pastries - that wonderful choux pastry confection that resembles a monk or nun - and decorate them with white chocolate so that they looked like Praemonstratensians. I was thwarted in this because I accidentally didn't buy enough white chocolate. So I got religieuse pastries - but they look a bit more Benedictine than anything. 

Here's how I did it:

1. I got up rather too early and rather hungover and set about making the choux buns. I was on a tight wicket, but thought it'd be ok.

2. I followed Delia's profiteroles recipe, only I made some big buns (bodies) and some little buns (heads), rather than all little buns. I baked the big ones first, and then the small, for the same amount of time each.

3. I made creme patissiere (in this case I'm happy to use the French, as this is very much a French pastry) according to my tried and tested method.

4. I left the buns cooling on a rack and went to church. The necessity of doing two separate bakes made me 10 minutes late for mass... but as I tend to find the Novus Ordo 'liturgy of the word' needlessly lengthy this didn't bother me desparately much, and I was there in time for the Epistle. 

5. I sat in church praying that I'd get everything done in time and that my hangover would go away soon.

6. I ran home and melted some white chocolate, with some plain chocolate, and some cream... together with a bit of butter and icing sugar.

7. I piped my buns full of creme patissiere using a special icing/cream piping syringe that I have lying about the place.

8. I ate a few spoonfuls of creme patissiere.

9. I put the chocolate sauce over the heads and bodies and put them in the fridge to chill.

10. I ate a spare head.

11. When they were a little chilled and the chocolate set (only about 15 minutes) I piped cream on top of the bodies and stuck the heads on.

12. My hangover miraculously lifted.

13. I returned them to the fridge, pushed lunch back by half an hour, and frantically got on with the rest of the menu.

14. Served them with fresh English strawberries, perfectly in season.

Here is what they look like inside:

Here are two of them daintily perched on the piano as it started to get dark and I started to get hungry again:

For those interested, the full seasonal Corpus Christi menu was:

English asparagus with butter, black pepper and quail's eggs

Roast pork with puy lentils, braised cabbage and celery, and roasted Jersey Royals

Religieuse with English strawberries

Variously champagne, prosecco, red wine, white wine and Fernet Branca.

 

 

 

 

Our Lady’s Crown - Marian pudding for May

Fr D.W. Ryan, sometime chaplain of Digby Stuart  Catholic Teacher-training college in Roehampton (the Alma mater of my own dear mater) had a saying, which I vaguely remember from childhood. The saying was basically that when things go wrong it is our lady smiling upon us, giving us something to offer up for the holy souls. It’s a saying that I have always found a bit much. Yesterday it came back to me in a harrowing tale of broken pastry. Allow me to tell you about it.

Sunday morning, May Bank Holiday Weekend 2012: picture the scene! I got up rather early – having been bolstered by by Bloody Besses on Saturday, and having given it large again at a party (at which I was dressed up as white rapper Eminem, but managed to look more like a butch nun). The reason for my early rising was to make a tart for a dinner party in the evening. I’d made the pastry the night before, and needed to roll it and bake it, and make a crema pasticcera before the 11.30am mass.

I have little recollection of the whole morning process, indeed my memory from yesterday begins roughly half-way through the Pater Noster. Nevertheless, when I returned from mass I found two neat tarts, filled with delicious crema pasticcera. One of the tarts was to be ‘Our Lady’s Crown’, a pudding inspired by Our Lady’s royal titles, for the marvellous month of May. The other tart I considered a little over baked, it was an auxiliary flan. It was rejected.

When, at the end of a pleasantly boozy (but not excessive) dinner, I brought out Our Lady’s Crown, resplendent with its jewels of summer fruits and piped cream, it had stuck right royally in the flan dish, and wouldn’t come out. Now, I’d worried about it this, because I would usually make such a thing in a tin, and take the shell out of the tin. But I thought it’d be fine... I was in a rush, so I chanced it. The dish was blessed by Our Lady, she wouldn’t let it go wrong.

Disaster! The whole thing collapsed and it made me rather sad, even though I think it tasted delicious. Here’s how I made it. Whatever you do, use a well-greased tin.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

3oz butter

2 oz sugar

7 oz flour

3 egg yolks

For the crema pasticcera:

4 egg yolks

1 egg

5 tablespoons flour

5 tablespoons sugar

1 pt milk

Vanilla extract

For the top:

A quantity of summer fruits (I used the English strawberries and raspberries, and some blueberries)

Double cream

Some jam, for a glaze

 

Method:

Pastry

I like a traditional sweet pastry, as it has very little shrinkage during cooking. It’s sensible to make the pastry the night before, that way it can chill down and will be easier to work the following morning. Cream the butter and sugar together, then work in the egg yolks. You should have a pleasing yellow paste. Work in the flour and form the pastry into a ball. Then wrap in foil and put in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Roll the pastry out, and place in a WELL GREASED flan dish, or better still a nice tin. Give a decent lip, which you can then either trim down after baking or leave for a rustic look. Bake blind for 15 minutes, and then for another 7 at about 190C. Leave it to cool completely.

Crema Pasticcera

I suppose you could call this crème patissiere, and you’d be right, but I’ve always admired the Italian approach to puddings... which is basically to make a jolly good chilled custard, and to couple it either with pastry or cake and leave it at that. So, in union with this principle, I use the Italian lingo.

I have a couple of tricks for CP. The first is to run a sink or big dish of cold water at the beginning. This means you can cool the bottom of the pan, to stop the CP from curdling. The other is to use a whole egg in addition to egg yolks. This gives a lighter cream.

Begin with two pans. In one place the milk, the sugar, and the vanilla. You want to bring this up to just below the boil.

In the other pan beat together the yolks and the egg with the flour, until they are a smooth paste. When the milk is hot, pour it into a pyrex jug. Pour slowly into the egg and flour mixture, whisking constantly. I do this off the heat. Then put the whole mixture over a low heat. Cook until the mixture thickens, again whisking constantly. You want to do this slowly. Do not overheat. I tend to cook until it bubbles a tiny bit and then plunge the bottom of the pan into cold water and... you've guessed it... whisking constantly. Let the CP cool before putting it into the tart shells. Then chill them.

Topping

When the tart(s) are cool, top with fruit, glaze with jam melted with a little water, and decorate with piped whipped cream (double).

And what of the difficult doctrine of Our Lady’s Smile (incidentally if anyone knows about that do tell me – the only thing I can find on the internet relates to St Therese of Lisieux and that’s something rather different)? Well, it occurred to me as I ate a slice of the auxiliary tart this morning, which slid easily out of dish and onto plate… that in truth Our Lady is crowned by the marginalised and forgotten, that Our Lady draws all to her heart and smiles upon us all. So – even whilst it would be crass to draw too many similarities between the forgotten back-up tart and the forgotten and marginalised – there is a beauty in the way things worked out that made me think.

Not only was our lady crowned with the broken and unbeautiful – but nonetheless delicious – but also she was crowned with the marginalised and forgotten.

Perhaps Our Lady was smiling after all.

Regina in caelum assumpta, ora pro nobis!

 

Jennifer's Fish Pie for Good Friday: Courtesy of St Louis Abbey, MO, USA

I am delighted to share a recipe, or more accurately a 'receipt' (using Jennifer's lingo) from the Two Fat Ladies for Good Friday. It is not my recipe at all, it is recipe from the late, great, Jennifer Paterson... the inspiration for this blog.

Not only did I not invent this recipe, I haven't even cooked it this year. It has been cooked by my friends at St Louis Abbey, in Missouri, and they will eat it tomorrow - Good Friday. Of course, a fish pie with as many prawns as this seems a little lavish for Good Friday... but St Louis IS part of the EBC so it's to be expected. Fr Bede has taken some wonderful photographs of the cooking process (so I shall include more photographs than usual to showcase the vast scale of monastic cooking), and you can watch Jennifer make it here.

Br Dunstan gens up on the recipe, whilst Fr Ambrose is already 'offering up' the pains of onion chopping for the holy souls.

Ingredients (for 4 - not a whole monastery):
1 lb Coley fillet
1 lb Smoked haddock fillet
2 lb Fresh spinach
4 oz Butter; plus extra for the top
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
Grated nutmeg
1 lg Spanish onion; thinly sliced
3 tb Flour
1 1/2 pt Milk
1 Bay leaf
4 ts Anchovy essence
1 lg Bunch parsley, chopped
8 oz Fresh peeled cooked prawns

A couple of hardboiled eggs

Three large potatoes

Instructions:

Put the coley and haddock into a large pan and pour boiling water over just to cover. Simmer very gently for 10 minutes. Turn it all out into a clean sink and leave until the fish is cool enough to handle. Then remove skin and any bones. Flake the fish onto a plate and reserve.

Wash the spinach thoroughly and place in a saucepan--do not add any water. Cook gently until it collapses, then raise the heat and cook until done, about 3 minutes. Drain well, pressing the liquid out. Return the spinach to the saucepan with 2 ounces butter and season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Spread the spinach evenly on the bottom of a well-buttered oven dish large enough to take the rest of the ingredients.

Melt the remaining 2 ounces of butter in a saucepan and cook the onion gently until translucent. Add the flour and stir around to make a roux. Have the milk heated to a simmer and add it little by little until you have a smooth bechamel sauce. Pop in the bay leaf and let it simmer for 1/2 hour, stirring occasionally. Whilst this is happening, peel chop and boil the potatoes.

Stir the anchovy essence and parsley into the sauce and season with salt and pepper. Mix in the flaked fish and pour onto the spinach. Chop the eggs and distribute over the fish. Scatter the prawns over the top, mash the potatoes and spread on top, and dot with a little extra butter. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, until heated through and browned

A wonderful dish for Good Friday and I'm very grateful to Fr Bede for the photos. I'm also grateful to him for the final photo he sent, which is of the flowers for the altar of repose at his parish - The Oratory of SS Gregory and Augustine. This photo is what I shall leave you with, as I potter off to bed contemplating our Lord's agony in the garden, as the Blessed Sacrament is reserved for the liturgy of Good Friday tomorrow. I shall, of course, be up early to finish the Hot Cross Buns (the dough is made already).