weekend experimenting

Being a big fan of Keiko’s beautiful blog Nordljus, I got intrigued about all those delectable-looking Hidemi Sugino cakes and tartlets that keep on popping up on her blog. Keiko links these entries to the Japanese Amazon store and Sugino’s cookbook Le Gôut Authentique Retrouvé. Encouraged by the French title, and since amazon.co.jp is, well, in Japanese, and my Japanese doesn’t stretch much further than some touristy phrases, I enlisted the help of my Japanese friend M in Fukuoka and asked her to check for me whether this book was written in French. If so, Mr Sugino and I were in business. No such luck though, the book was written in Japanese only. However, M informed me that he did have a second cookbook, called The Dessert Book, written in Japanese and English. Not only that, she also very kindly sent me a copy of this book. Thank you M-tyan, arigatoo gozaimashita! The recipes in this book are fairly simple, basic and easy to make, but elegant. The one that immediately caught my eye was a tiny tartlet with a rhubarb and mascarpone filling, topped with cherry tomatoes, basil and balsamic caramel, and served with a celery sorbet. And so, last weekend – jetlag forgotten, three weeks of laundry and ironing all done and itching to start baking again – I knew this was just the thing I wanted to try.

cocoa pastry cases? Nope, just burnt pastry cases...

I had some cinnamon sweet pastry dough in the freezer (leftovers from a Claudia Fleming recipe), a bunch of dainty baking moulds I bought in Paris last July and hadn’t used before, I had finally figured out how to get pastry dough thinly rolled out without it sticking to the work surface (roll it out between two sheets of baking paper), and so I set about fumbling around making the pastry cases. It took me a long time to roll the dough, drape it in the moulds and trim the excess, but I had fun with it. I wonder though how these things are done in professional pastrychef land – if you have to make, say, 800 rather than eight. After the rolling, draping and trimming I bunged the whole lot in the oven and there it all went horribly wrong. I followed the baking instructions to a T but of course the oven decided to not cooperate and my dainty rectangular pastry cases came out rather dark brown and smelling quite burnt. For a minute, I toyed with the idea of pretending that it was cocoa pastry, but there’s not much use making a tartlet that looks nice but is inedible. Luckily the somewhat larger, less dainty moulds I had put in a different place in the oven came out fine. A bit darker than I would have liked, but still very much on the right side of burnt and inedible.

The baking bit over and done with, I proceeded to the tomato and caramel bit. I had never made caramel before but I remember some stories about boiling hot things exploding on stoves, so I thought I’d better be careful with this. Sugino’s recipe said to melt butter (I used salted rather than the unsalted specified, which gave it a slight edge) in a pan, cover it with a layer of sugar, cover the sugar with a layer of honey and then, when the whole lot starts caramelising, add balsamic vinegar and sauté cherry tomatoes in this mix. It all looked rather strange, but worked perfectly. The balsamic vinegar added a nice twang to the caramel, as did the juice from the tomatoes, which also prevented the caramel from setting to a rock hard substance.

Moving on to the filling bit, I realised I had completely forgotten about the rhubarb, so I had to make do with just the mascarpone, which I mixed with sugar and shredded basil. The celery sorbet I had decided to skip altogether. You see, I was pretty sure S wouldn’t be jumping up and down with enthusiasm for this dessert, as he’s more of a vanilla and chocolate kinda guy. To his credit though, he does taste everything I make. And when he says ‘mmmmmm, yeeeees, it’s… ok’ when trying some weird concoction like, I don’t know, a dessert with tomatoes, basil and balsamic caramel, that means I’m on to a winner.

The finished tartlets were just a tad too sweet to my liking – that rhubarb I forgot would have been perfect to cut through all the sweetness of the mascarpone, caramel and tomatoes. And of course, the celery sorbet would have provided the finishing touch. Next time I’ll make sure to put celery and rhubarb on my shopping list. And not trust my oven…