Ingredients

Source

Good Food Magazine, October 2005

Directions

This is a recipe from Stephanie Alexander’s Cooking &Travelling in south-west France. Typically with Stephanie, one of the best cooks writing in the language, the recipes are not the normal ones you would find in a book about the area. Stephanie seems to me to continue the line of illustrious female cookery writers – others being Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David and Julia Child – whose enthusiasm is made so much more important by solid scholarship. This recipe typifies the rugged, but sophisticated nature of the cooking of south-west France.

1 Remove the butter from the fridge 30 mins before making the pastry. Sift the flour and a pinch of salt onto a work surface. Cut the butter into smallish pieces, add to the flour and lightly rub together to partly combine. Make a well in the centre, add 2-3 tbsp cold water and, using a pastry scraper, work the paste to a rough heap of buttery lumps of dough. Then work together as briefly as possible into a smooth dough, roll out on a lightly floured surface and use to line a loose-bottomed flan tin that is 2.5 cm deeper 24 cm across the base. Prick the base here one there with a fork and chill for 20 mins.

2 Heat oven to 200 °C/fan 180 °C/gas 6. Line the pastry case with a sheet of crumpled greaseproof paper and a thin layer of baking beans, and bake for 20 mins. Remove the paper and beans, then return to the oven for 10 mins. Remove pastry case then, lower the oven temperature to 190 °C/ fan 170 °C/gas 5.

3 Put the butter, honey, cream and rum together in a saucepan and warm gently over a low he but don’t let it get hot. Mix the walnuts and sugar together in a bowl. Lightly whisk the egg yolks, then whisk them into the honey mixture. Then stir into the walnuts and sugar. Pour the mixture into the pastry case and bake for 40-50 mins until the tart is well caramelised. Leave to cool, then cut into thin wedges and serve with some crème fraîche.

:MODERATELY EASY
:PREP 30 mins
:COOK 1 hr 10-20 mins

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