We use honey in a myriad of ways – in our baths, on our skin, in our tea, on our toast, to sooth, to sweeten, to heal. We even pen homilies about it. ‘Honey catches the bees’ is an excellent retort to a sharp comment. However, I prefer to eat it.
Last week a friend gave me a jar of honey from the hives in her garden along with the last of her lemons. It was very timely, as the Gang was getting together for dinner, and I now happily had real home grown produce to steer my choice for a dessert, my allocated contribution to the evening.
Honey and lemon is a fabulous combination for all sorts of occasions: in bed with a cold, with a dash of brandy if you’re sufficiently miserable; as a syrup drizzled over all sorts of sweet treats; with garlic to add flavour and a lovely crusty finish to barbecued meat; mixed with soy sauce and brushed over fish for chargrilling or in this case combined with almonds and cream to make a tart inspired by the flavours of Greece … and my friend’s Australian garden.
Rosie
CANDIED LEMON, BURNT HONEY AND WALNUT TART
Serves 10-12
Walnut Pastry
125 gm white rice flour
60 gm corn flour
60 gm ground walnuts
85 gm caster sugar
1 Pinch of salt
65 gm unsalted butter, cold, cubed
1 whole egg, beaten
Place dry ingredients into a food processor and process to combine. Add cold butter and process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add beaten egg to mix and process just until the pastry comes together. If too dry, add a little water a teaspoon at a time.
Place pastry onto plastic wrap, pat into a disk about 1cm thick, wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 160°C.
Remove pastry from fridge and knead briefly. Press pastry to a thickness of 3mm into a 38cm x 3.5cm fluted tart tin with a removable base. Return to the fridge until firm then blind bake. (See below for blind baking instructions.)
Filling
140 gm honey
9 egg yolks
130 gm unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
200 gm ground almonds
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
120 ml lemon juice
200 ml thick (double) cream
250 gm candied lemons, drained (see below)
Garnish
1 tablespoon pure icing sugar
1 good pinch ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon slivered pistachios
Whipped cream to serve
Increase oven temperature to 180°C.
Place honey in a medium sized saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 3 or 4 minutes or just until the honey begins to darken in colour. Allow to cool down, but not harden, before going on to the next step.
Beat egg yolks and burnt honey until thick, light and voluminous. Add the butter a few cubes at a time, mixing well after each addition and ensuring all the butter is well incorporated. Add the ground almonds, cinnamon and lemon juice. Gently fold in the cream. Spoon the cool candied lemons onto the base of the cooked tart case then gently pour over the filling.
Bake for 30 minutes. The centre should still be a little wobbly. It will firm up as it cools. When cool, remove from tin and transfer to a serving plate.
Mix the icing sugar and cinnamon together. Serve the room temperature tart dusted with the icing sugar mix and scattered with pistachio slivers accompanied by whipped cream.
Candied Lemons
3 lemons
500 gm caster sugar
500 ml water
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
1 sprig lemon verbena
Cut lemons in half lengthways and slice thinly, removing the seeds. Place the slices in a bowl, cover with boiling water and stand for 1 hour. Drain, rinse and repeat. After the second hour drain and rinse again.
Bring the sugar, water and vanilla bean slowly to the boil. Add the lemon slices and lemon verbena, reduce the heat the simmer gently for about 2 hours until the syrup has reduced and taken on a golden tinge. Take off the heat, and remove the vanilla bean and lemon verbena. Store lemon slices in the syrup. When ready to use strain off and reserve the syrup. Keep for use in other recipes, as a glaze etc.
To Blind Bake
Preheat oven to 160°C
Line your pastry-lined tin with foil, gently pressing well into the corners. Fill with baking weights, (raw rice, dried beans or purchased pastry weights all work equally well) pushing them up the sides of the shell. Place in your preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and carefully remove the foil and baking weights. Return the tart shell to the oven for a further 5 minutes. If you find any tiny cracks in your cooked shell, brush with beaten egg and return to the oven for 5 minutes.