We are back in the UK briefly for a funeral. Nick’s mum’s funeral. Two funerals in one year is more than enough. It should have been three but we were unable to make it to his aunt’s funeral, his mother’s oldest sister who also died earlier this year.
We came back the long way via Portsmouth to avoid Calais in case there were more shenanigans and the port and tunnel were closed again. Normally it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t make it back home but there was no way we wanted to risk being stuck in transit for such an important event.
The funeral itself is tomorrow and it will be sad but also a relief. It was her time, she was ninety one and life was no longer that much fun for her. We’ll all be glad when its over.
Anyway, on arriving back after a journey that took nearly sixteen hours, I opened the fridge to find a dish of gooseberries in there. Put there by my dad, who is eighty seven next, picked from his lady friend’s garden.
Life, eh? The gooseberries cheered me up no end, we love them in this house.
Then this morning I spotted a recipe for this tart on the lovely blog Tin and Thyme. The recipe uses half ordinary flour and half spelt flour. I felt fairly sure we had some spelt flour somewhere so went a-rummaging and sure enough there it was, at the back of the cupboard.
Nick pulled a face when I mentioned the spelt flour. Spelt is thought to be healthy and he doesn’t really do healthy. Not in baking anyway. Not since his mum and dad turned vegetarian and she took to making wholemeal pastry. It was not the best pastry, bless her.
I had just the right quantity of gooseberries for the tart and it was delicious. Nick and my dad declared it so and I agreed. I have seen recipes for this kind of tart many times – the folded over pastry rough and rustic kind – but never made one before. It was a revelation and I will make it over and over again, with other fruits. A great success.
Thanks to Choclette for the recipe. You can see the original here. My only adaptation was that I used slightly less butter in the pastry (125g) and milk instead of yoghurt to combine it – because that’s what I had available.
The tart looks delicious. Yes three in one year is enough but things happen in 3's it seems. Hope fully that is the end of it all. Safe trip home Diane x
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of rustic tarts too, but don't make tarts of any kind as often as I should.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great way to make a tart. Haven't found any gooseberries for sale around here, and don't know anyone who grows them. Left our gooseberry bush back in our French garden!
ReplyDeletethis is just so beautiful..., so rustic but so summery. We got back from Spain on Friday after two weeks and ALL my gooseberries had been stolen by birds!
ReplyDeleteDom, that's a real tragedy.
DeleteIt happened to me one year with my redcurrants - in the space of a one week holiday they all ripened and the birds got the lot. I was distraught! The next year we threw a curtain of pea netting over them and pegged it down firmly. That worked and kept the little blighters off them. It could work for your gooseberries next year.
So glad you made it, it was a revelation for me too and many more fruit galettes will be gracing our table from now on in. So glad Nick was persuaded with the spelt flour and that your dad enjoyed it too. Hope things go as well as they can do today.
ReplyDeleteEeee lass! Thar'll be 'ome whens thar reads this....
ReplyDeletethat be Delia Smith's Summer Collection [1993]....
it is her "A (not so) very easy One Crust Pie!!"
It is a gooseberry season regular in this house...
served with REAL English Custard...
wonderful...
and the cold leftovers the next day...
served with 'clotted' cream from La Borde!!
Tim, I now realise that's where I saw the recipe before! The recipe on the following page is a favourite of the house (both houses!).
DeleteThe spelt makes the pastry slightly more bready I think.
I really love gooseberries and I'm very grateful to live near a PYO farm with plenty of them. This does look lovely and that's exactly what I'd expect from a Choclette recipe. So sorry to hear about the sad reason for your return visit.
ReplyDeleteI love gooseberries too. Your tart looks delicious. I like the look of the folded pastry. My Grandfather used to have huge yellow gooseberry bushes which were quite sweet, and he used to have us kids go out and pick them but he made us whistle so he knew that we weren't eating them!
ReplyDelete