A few weekends ago I made a nice little dinner for my twin sister, her boyfriend and my mum: penne with sausage and jerusalem artichoke, followed by strawberry tart. It was really quite nice!!
We bought the sausages from the Westmere butcher, such a good butcher, they were pork and apple and they were gorgeous. There were sqaushed kalamata olives and some wilted spinach in there too. And a nice squeeze of lemon, a nice scrunch of sea salt, a nice flurry of parmesan cheese.
I made the tart from scratch too - my own pastry and my own vanilla bean pastry cream. The tart was wonderful but I forgot to put some whipped cream into the pastry cream before pouring into the tart shell - therefore when I cut the tart the custard leaked everywhere all over the plate, which made me quite grumpy and made it quite a messy dessert to eat. I got over it eventually though. Look at this tart.
Oh, I didn't make the gelatine stuff that goes over it and makes it look all shiny and pretty, and that probably would have made it hold together better too. I recently did a 6 hour patisserie course at the Main Course cooking school in Freemans Bay and had a BLAST. It was so much fun. It was mostly me and women in their 50s, who were very lovely. We made profiteroles, and tarte citron, and little fruit flans, and quiche lorraine for lunch. I loved it! Until I got home and dropped all of my mini fruit tarts in the driveway.... Merde.
I love strawberry tart! And rasberry tart. And apple tart, and pear and almond. We lived in France when I was eleven for three years, and during the summer we stayed in the countryside, and I swear every day, my sister and I would bike to the boulangerie and buy either a strawberry tart or a rasberry tart, and eat it, for breakfast, every day. Every single day.
Anyway, it really was one of those 'life is wonderful' sundays. Summer is on its way and I am so happy!
