tomato tarte tartin
This Tomato Tarte Tatin, a recipe from one of my favourite sources, David Herbert, was published in The Australian Weekend Magazine, March 21-22, 2021. His food is hearty and fresh and this delicious tarte is no exception. We loved it hot and we loved it cold! Very easy and uses ingredients you probably have in the pantry or fridge. Perfect for Easter lunches during Lent.
spiced apple cake
Don’t be tricked by the Emma Bridgewater plate. I adore her china and have a lot of it. I like to use it when I can, so Spiced Apple Cake on a Bubble and Squeak plate. This recipe from Luca Ciano was also in The Australian Weekend Magazine. It was a very good cake and could be served as a pudding with cream or icecream, too.
fudge
Made trays of super easy fudge to give as Easter gifts. This is such a simple recipe. All you need is 90% cocoa chocolate, butter, condensed milk and dried cranberries. The basic recipe is (here), I added the dried cranberries instead of the walnuts in the recipe. Love the texture and the flavour, but nuts are a more traditional addition.
Covered a little cardboard tray I’d kept with some French text, lined it with gold paper and then baking paper and finally cellophane, a ribbon and a gift tag (here) Well received!
and finally, an easter cake
I like an Easter cake for when visitors come or we are just sitting and talking as Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Monday are holidays in Australia. The cake started as a plain cake but I added cinnamon and powdered cloves to the batter. The Spiced Apple Cake I made earlier in the week had both spices in it and we really enjoyed the flavour. Then I added apples. This time the apples were peeled, de-cored and cut into smaller pieces before being stirred into the mixture. I’m still trying to use up an over supply of apples!
Adore this lovely little furry rabbit, so cut a piece a baking paper the size of his base so he could sit cleanly on the icing, then surrounded him in speckled eggs.
french film festival
The French Film Festival, run by Alliance Française, is in full swing in Perth.
The Rose Maker is a film about Eve, a second generation rose grower on the verge of bankruptcy. Her assistant signs up to take on three workers from a rehabilitation scheme. They have no horticultural experience and Eve begins training them in the finer skills of growing roses.
She capitalises on their not so squeaky clean backgrounds to steal a rare rose to breed a new, award winning rose. It saves her business and provides futures for the three workers. Beautiful roses, well acted and a happy ending!
Eve’s typically French country house, the multiple character outbuildings and the paddocks and greenhouses of roses made me want to move to the country post haste. Add a few dogs, chickens and horses and it would be perfect. And a water view. And a miniature donkey.
As we were leaving the cinema we were given these camembert treats. I haven’t found them for sale anywhere locally.
reading
Jenny Rose Innes published Australian Designers At Home in 2019. It is an intriguing insight into the lives and homes and gardens of well known Australian Interior Designers. Then she published this book, British Designers At Home. As usual, in a house overflowing with thousands of books, I borrowed it from the library.
These generally are not minimalist houses. Their owners all seem to be collectors of beautiful things. I think the climate encourages cocooning and nestling, surrounding yourself with beautifully and sentimentally significant things as more time is spent indoors. The country has a tradition of producing fabulous fabrics and china and centuries of manufacturing household artifacts to retain and enjoy.
It always intrigues me to see how other people live. Their choices and arrangements are interesting and say so much about the owners. These designers are all well known and influential and they share their design tips and beliefs. These are all beautiful houses and gardens and the stories of the designers are fascinating. Another gorgeous book.
Following a recommendation on another blog I also read The Mission House, by Carys Davies. Set in a hill town in Southern India, this is the story of Hilary Byrd, who has been forced to leave his job as a librarian in a small English town due to increasingly erratic behaviour. A voracious reader, he is tempted by many destinations but ends up in India.
He meets a Padre on a train and is offered the use of the Mission House. He settles into exploring the town. He has a regular rickshaw driver and the friendship of the Padre and his adopted daughter. He feels calmer, but the conflicts of faith and non believer arise, concerns the adopted daughter is being offered as a wife and then finding to his consternation she isn’t and the conflicts of the Imperialistic past and the Nationalist future are all present.
The ending puzzled me for a long time. I went back and re-read the preceding chapters, I read reviews and I think I now understand what happened. It feels like the last chapter was dashed off in a hurry with an ending the author had implied previously but never really elaborated. I was relieved when other reviewers felt this was a weak point, a confusion.
This is an engaging and well written book until the last chapter. I found the contrasts between old and new very interesting. An easy read from an award winning author.
Yesterday was April Fools Day. I hope you had some fun!