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16 January 2006: Lemon curd and mascarpone tartlets 
Last week I was trying to finish up all of the last remaining Christmas leftovers. The goose carcass and the apple sauce and root veggies and so on were all long gone, but I still had a couple of jars of lemon curd I'd made just before Christmas, and a tub of mascarpone left over from the tiramisu I'd made for new years eve, amongst other things. On Christmas eve I'd made fruit mince pies, using my mother's brilliant recipe. The fruit mince is delicious (I'll post the recipe in the next couple of days) but the pastry is really the best bit. I am hopeless at pastry normally; I have toasty little hands and destroy shortcrust as soon as I touch it. This pastry, in contrast, can stand up to a bit of handling, and produces fine, crisp, delicate tart shells. I got about two dozen tarts from each batch of this recipe, although I am sure my mother used to get more - her tart shells are always as thin as air. Anyway, the memory of those mince tarts inspired me to try combining the leftover cheese and curd in tartlets. And man, these tarts are great. It's a brilliant flavour combination, the rich, solid creaminess of the mascarpone cut with the tart but sweet lemon curd. I will definitely be making these again. My mother's recipe for the pastry is written in imperial measures, and so calls for four ounces of each of the main ingredients - hence four fours pastry. Four fours pastry
Filling
Grease well with butter a tray of round-bottomed tart moulds (or you could use a muffin tray). Preheat the oven to 180 C. Sift together the flours and the sugar, then rub in the butter with your fingers. Add tiny trickles of milk to mix, until it just comes together. Knead very lightly. The pastry can be used straight away. Roll out the pastry as thinly as possible. You'll need to sprinkle extra flour over the pastry after the first few passes of the rolling pin, to make sure it doesn't stick and break as you continue to roll. Cut out circles of pastry with a cookie cutter, and use them to line the moulds. Add a few pastry weights on top of each tart. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until the tart shells are lightly golden. Remove from the oven, and then pry out the pastry weights as quickly as you can without burning your fingers too badly. If you leave them in there for too long the pastry may harden around them and you won't be able to get them out. Keep making tart shells until you've used up all the pastry. Once the tart shells have cooled, they can be filled straight away, or stored in an airtight container until they're needed. To fill the tarts, press a teaspoon of mascarpone into the bottom of each tart, and smooth the top. Swirl a dessert spoon of lemon curd on top of this, making sure it doesn't overflow over the edge of the shell. These tarts are best eaten within a few hours of making (the bottoms of the tart shells will get soggy if left to sit too long.) Makes about two dozen tarts. Comments (5) | Permalink |
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