Free Don't Sweat the Aubergine by Nicholas Clee Page B

loose-bottomed tin will enable you to transfer the cooked tart to a plate. Grease it with a little olive or vegetable oil – the solids in butter can cause sticking. Spread the pastry by hand over the bottom and sides of the tin; or grate it into the tin, and smooth it out.
    Prick the pastry with a fork, lay foil or greaseproof paper on top, and weigh down this covering – with baking beans, or with uncooked rice, or, as I do, with another tin of the same size. Cook the pastry ‘blind’ (without a filling) in a gas mark 6/200°C oven for 15 minutes; remove the weight and the foil or paper, and continue to cook until the pastry loses all tackiness. Now it is ready for your filling. 5
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • Cold ingredients . The trick in pastry-making is to minimize the creation of gluten – the rubbery, tough protein that forms when molecules in starch granules bond, with the help of water. ‘Shortening’ – a fat such as butter or lard – coats the grains of flour, repels water, and inhibits these chains of molecules from forming. A low temperature also inhibits gluten formation. The recipe includes no salt, you’ll notice: salt ‘greatly strengthens the gluten network’, Harold McGee warns.
    2 • Machine or hand? I use the machine, because I tend to botch the hand-rubbing. But it has drawbacks. The vigorous beating can cause the water in the butter to hydrate the starch, creating gluten, as can the heating effect of the rapidly whirring blade. I try to minimize these results by using the motor in short bursts. Lard, if you’d like to use it, has a lower water content.
    3 • Adding the water gradually, and gently. This is a delicate stage of the process: you’re introducing an ingredient that will cause gluten to form if handled insensitively. Do not pour water through the spout of the processor while it’s whirring. As the ball coheres, it will be kneaded by the blade. Kneading is fine for bread, but not for pastry.
    4 • Resting . Even with your delicate handling, the dough has developed some lengthier protein molecules. During the next 30 minutes or so, they will relax.
    5 • Blind baking . Margaret Costa’s
Four Seasons Cookery Book
is a wonderful work, but offers bad advice in suggesting you pour your tart filling into a case of raw dough. You end up with a soggy crust. When baking blind, you prick the pastry and weigh it down because it can buckle as the water in it steams.
Fillings
QUICHE LORRAINE
    200g streaky bacon, cut into strips, or 200g lardons
    A little vegetable oil
    1 whole egg, 3 yolks
    200ml milk
    200ml double cream
    Put a baking sheet on to the middle shelf of a gas mark 3/160°C oven.
    Over a medium heat, fry the bacon in the oil until the fat runs.
    Beat the eggs (you could use one of the surplus egg whites to brush on the surface of the pastry 5 minutes before the end of cooking, to glaze it). Then beat them with the milk and cream. Tip in the bacon, which you have removed from its frying pan with a slotted spoon; pour the mixture into a pastry-lined tart tin.
    Put the tin on to the baking sheet (which helps to convey the heat), and bake for 30 to 45 minutes, until the custard is set.
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VARIATIONS
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    There are any number. The first is that you could use cream only, instead of cream and milk; or 200ml double cream and 200ml crème fraîche. I find a cream-only tart a bit rich, but perhaps that is because I like greedily to eat half of one of these tarts (which might be enough for four), with just a green salad as accompaniment.
    An authentic quiche Lorraine, Elizabeth David tells us, does not contain cheese . But I cannot resist adding Gruyère, or Cheddar, or Parmesan, or some other melting cheese – about 60g.
    Vegetables: cooked onions, mushrooms, spinach, leeks and asparagus are the obvious ones. You need to cook the first four so that they do not leak water into the custard (see Vegetables, here ). Sweat the onions and leeks gently, perhaps in a covered pan, until