Portuguese custard tarts.

Bit out of the ordinary from our usual discussions, but I am going to post this here as its a recipe I did this afternoon, its piss easy, and the results are excellent. In truth, its a Jamie Oliver recipe, but that's no bad thing, as Jamie cooks some good stuff.

To make about 6 tarts you will need:

1 pack of ready made puff pastry, in sheets
Some ground cinnamon
Some plain flour
125g of creme fraiche
1 egg
1 orange
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (NOT essence!)
golden caster sugar

Method:

Preheat an oven to 200c

1. Flour a clean surface and spread out a sheet of the puff pastry. Cut it in half. Sprinkle a few good pinches of cinnamon on the pastry and rub it in. Flip the sheet over and repeat

2. Roll the sheet length ways to make a sausage, and cut the sausage into 6 pieces, each of which stands a couple of inches high.

3. Get a muffin tin and squash your pastry bits in, using your fingers to work the pastry up the sides of the muffin tin so that you have created a pastry cup.

4. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

5. While that's baking, zest one orange. Keep the orange to one side and retain the zest. Take a bowl and combine the orange zest, creme fraiche, the egg, the vanilla extract, and one large tablespoon of caster sugar. Beat them all together to form an egg custard.

6. When the tart cases have cooked, use a spoon to knock the pastry back down and create more space for filling, and then fill each case with the custard. Put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

7. Once cooked, remove from the oven and leave to cool.

8. Whilst cooling, put a pan on a high heat and add the juice of the orange you zested before

9. Add four tablespoons of the caster sugar and allow to turn to a thick caramel, but don't burn it.

10. When it becomes a caramel, spoon it over the cooling tarts to form a caramel glaze. Let the caramel run down the sides (just makes sure you have something to catch it on so it doesn't burn your kitchen surfaces!)

11. Leave to cool so the caramel goes hard, then eat!

Trust me, they are excellent.

I'm sure if I was a custard tart fan I would appreciate this...

Jamie Oliver has some really good recipes. Last week I made Jamie Oliver-style macaroni cheese, with parmesan, taleggio, mascarpone & mozzerella in a sauce made of butter.

The thing that struck me about it though, on nuking the remaining bit for breakfast the day, the amount of fat & grease in it is unbelievable. I thought he was meant to be promoting healthy eating? There is nothing healthy about this! Not that I have any complaints though, it was lush.