Peach Tart

Peach Tart
Originally uploaded by Hells Bells.

After the Delia Cooking day I thought I would attempt the Peach Tart for Steve’s birthday. I gathered all the ingredients including organic Peaches from Borough Market and a FIVE pound vanilla pod from Selfridges food hall. I’ve since seen vanilla pods for much less but of course couldn’t find one at our local Morrison’s (they didn’t even stretch to vanilla essence).

I think after the Chef demo’d six dishes in the space of two hours I was under the illusion that it wouldn't take very long to make. But with so many components – pastry, peaches cooked separately, filling and fruit glaze I ended up in a bit of a tizz with pastry needing to be frozen and rested and blind baked. Talk about high maintenance. (Unfortunately Morrison’s didn’t stock frozen short crust pasty either – bugger).

Anyway so by the time I came to the cream filling there was equipment, dishes and packets strewn across the kitchen. I was closely following the instructions – In a pan mix sugar milk and the (extortionately expensive) vanilla and boil it, then blend egg yolks with something else in a separate bowl – ok no problem. But…still following instructions…I then poured the milk into the egg mixture….and watched with horror as the eggs began to take on a very strange texture. I managed to scramble them. Total panic – I couldn’t start again as I didn’t have any more vanilla. Time and patience were also almost all out. So I pulled out the stab-mixer and blended the hell out of it while yelling at Steve that I was having a major disaster. He yelled back “didn’t Alex say something about that – to pour it in slowly to stop it going funny?!”. Oh. Yes. He did. Whey the hell didn't he put it in the instructions though?!!

So although the end result looked divine(if I do say so myself) – the slightly rubbery, lumpy texture let it down a bit(Steve and Naomi both made very polite yum noises - thank you).But I’m not going to let this experience put me off – I’m going to try again this weekend with the very last peaches of the season.