I’m continuing my trawl through the reserve collection.This claims to be a “vegetarian” cookbook, although a few of the recipes include fish or shellfish. It is definitely not the 70s/early 80s style of vegetarian cooking with lots of wholewheat stodge and mushy lentils. Like Nadine Abensur’s, Annie Bell’s dishes are creative and elegant, letting the flavours of fresh vegetables shine. This book is clearly geared towards entertaining, as it’s organised as a series of seasonal menus, most involving five or six dishes.

Not that this is a criticism. Her philosophy of vegetarian cooking is that rather than having a “main” ingredient (a chunk of protein) and some side dishes, a meal can be composed of a harmonious selection of smaller dishes. It’s a philosophy I like, even though it’s more work, so is likely to happen only on special occasions.

I haven’t cooked any complete menu from this book, but I have bookmarked a number of recipes. Actually, in true neglected cookbook style I hadn’t cooked anything at all from it till today, when I decided to try the cardamom rice with prunes.

Rice pudding and stewed prunes … hmm, sounds like British canteen fare. Happily, it is not. I’ve always liked rice pudding, although I do normally prefer to eat it hot, with jam or maple syrup. The cardamom makes this version decidedly un-English. The prunes are not an unappetising brown mush, but whole pruneaux d’Agen simmered in an Armagnac-laced syrup with cinnamon and vanilla. If I’d done the whole menu, I would also have served spaghetti marrow and vermicelli with watercress cream, cannelloni omelettes filled with spinach and gruyère, with a tomato sauce aux fines herbes, and a green salad with avocado and toasted walnuts. You can tell she used to run a restaurant.

Anyway, here’s my version of the rice. It turned out a bit runny, and over-sweet to my taste, so I’ve adjusted the quantities slightly to reflect this. It was very nice cold, with the prunes making an attractive colour contrast. And of course it can all be prepared hours in advance — fortunately, since the rest of the menu seems to involve an awful lot of last-minute frying, pasta cooking, and salad dressing. The recipe seems long, but really it’s very simple and not time-consuming. I’ll definitely keep this book because even if the complete menus are too much work there are a lot of small, stylish dishes. It’s out of print — so if you want to give it a try you can buy it for a penny on Amazon!

Serves six.

140 g risotto rice, or round-grain rice
450 ml milk
30 g butter
50 g sugar
10 cardamom pods

Custard
3 egg yolks
50 g sugar
250 ml milk
100 ml double cream

Prunes
85 g sugar
85 ml Armagnac, brandy, or Calvados, plus about 3 tablespoons
1 vanilla pod, split
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
300 g Agen prunes (they’re supposed to be pitted, but I couldn’t be bothered)

Preheat the oven to 200C. Bring a pan of water to the boil, add the rice, boil for 5 minutes, then drain in a sieve. In a fireproof casserole (I used one of my Spanish terracotta dishes), bring the milk, butter and sugar to the boil, then add the cardamom pods and the rice and give it a good stir. When it comes up to a boil again, cover with a circle of greaseproof paper and either a lid or silver foil. Put in the oven and immediately turn down to 130C. Cook for 40-45 minutes, until all the milk is absorbed and the rice is completely cooked. Remove the cardamom pods and set the rice aside to cool.

While the rice is cooking, make the custard. Beat together the egg yolks and sugar till pale yellow. Bring the milk to the boil, beat it into the eggs, and then put over a low heat and stir constantly till it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon — don’t let it boil. Pour into a jug and leave to cool.

Once both custard and rice are lukewarm, stir the custard into the rice along with about 100 ml of cream. Cut down on the cream if there seems to be too much liquid, bearing in mind that it will thicken a little while cooling. It should be the consistency of, well, creamy rice pudding. Chill for several hours.

To make the prunes, heat the sugar, 85 ml of Armagnac, the vanilla, cinnamon, and bay leaf with 350 ml of water until the sugar is dissolved, then simmer for 10 minutes. Add the prunes and simmer gently, covered, for 30 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the prunes to a bowl and add a generous glug of Armagnac or Calvados. If the syrup remaining in the pan seems very liquid, boil it for a few minutes to reduce it and then pour it over the prunes. Leave to cool.

Serve the rice either warm or chilled in small, pretty bowls with 3-4 prunes on top and a little of the syrup poured over. Any left-over prunes can be served with crèmes au muscat.

1. The simplest: mincemeat palmiers

Buy a block of ready-made puff pastry and roll it out thinly into an oblong. Spread thinly all over with mincemeat, then starting from a short side, roll up the pastry like a Swiss roll. Cut into slices about 2 cm thick, and lay them on a non-stick baking tray (or a tray lined with silicone/baking parchment). Put in the fridge for half an hour or so.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Put the tray in and cook for about 10 minutes, till the pastry is golden. Remove and cool to lukewarm before sprinkling with icing sugar and serving. This is a great and easy alternative to conventional mince pies.

2. Classic and luxurious: almond paste mince pies

I used this recipe; I don’t know why it’s called “almond paste” because there are no almonds in it, only almond essence. I was very pleased with these; the pastry was crisp and golden, and the “almond” paste makes for a lighter topping than pastry. Delicious. I didn’t have a piping bag so I just rolled the paste into small balls, flattened them and placed them on top of the mincemeat. So they looked a lot less elegant, but still tasted good. If, or rather when, I make these again, I’ll substitute ground almonds for some of the flour in the paste though!

3. Comfort food: Eliza Acton’s mincemeat pudding

I loved this; it was my favourite of the three, although it’s a pudding rather than a teatime treat. I’d happily eat it instead of Christmas pudding. It’s basically bread and butter pudding with mincemeat in it. I found the recipe in Elizabeth David’s Christmas; the original is from Eliza Acton‘s Modern Cookery, and is labelled “Author’s Receipt”.

Eliza Acton’s mincemeat pudding
About 4-5 slices of brioche, milk loaf or, at a pinch, white bread
mincemeat
3 eggs
300 ml milk
150 ml single cream
60 g sugar
salt

Spread the slices of brioche thinly with mincemeat. Layer them in a deep, round baking dish (I used a souffle dish about 15 cm in diameter).

Whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Pour carefully over the brioche and leave to stand for an hour. Then preheat the oven to 150C and bake for 45 minutes, until it is just set. Serve at once (although I will happily eat the leftovers cold).

I never cease to be inspired by apricots, one of my favourite fruits for cooking with. This tart has many of the same ingredients as apricot frangipane tart, but with quite different results — and it’s much quicker to make. It’s based on the very English Bakewell tart, but the usual raspberry or strawberry jam is replaced with an apricot compote flavoured with vanilla and rosemary. I venture to suggest that the result is better than the original; apricot and almond are a classic pairing, and the sharp, intense flavour of the apricot layer contrasts well with the light, spongy topping. You can serve this lukewarm as a pudding, with a dollop of crème fraîche, a pool of custard, or simply some pouring cream. Or when cold, serve as a cake with tea.

The recipe makes much more compote than you need, but this is no hardship; store it in the fridge and serve folded through Greek yoghurt, with ice cream and crisp almond biscuits, as a layer in an apricot trifle, or as a cheesecake topping.

Apricot compote:
1 kg ripe apricots
1 vanilla pod
2 sprigs rosemary
1 tbsp olive oil
30 g butter
150 g sugar
1 small glass muscat or other sweet wine

I recommend tying the rosemary up in muslin if you don’t want to spend ages picking spiky leaves out of the finished compote with tweezers. No need to ask how I know this.

Wash the apricots, halve them, and remove the stones. Put the oil and butter in a heavy saute pan. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways, and scrape the seeds into the pan with the tip of a knife. Heat the oil and butter, then cook the apricots over a high heat for a couple of minutes, turning them to start the juices running. Add the vanilla pod, rosemary, muscat, and sugar. Continue to cook on a low heat, stirring occasionally to stop them sticking. The apricots will cook to a mush, and the juice should reduce and thicken; this will take about 20 minutes. Taste to see if you like the result; if you have a sweeter tooth than I do, you might want to add more sugar.

Remove the vanilla and rosemary and leave to cool.

Pastry: make some plain shortcrust with 120 g of flour and 60 g of butter, and use it to line a 20-cm tart tin.

Topping
50 g butter at room temperature
50 g sugar
1 egg
25 g flour
50 g ground almonds
1/2 tsp baking powder
about 1 tbsp milk
almond or vanilla essence
flaked almonds (optional)

Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and light. Beat the egg with the almond or vanilla essence, then beat into the butter mixture a little at a time. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (except for the flaked almonds) and add to the egg mixture in two batches, beating thoroughly to incorporate. If the mixture seems stiff, add a little milk.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Spread the pastry in the tin generously with the cooled compote. Then carefully drop dollops of the topping on top, using a wet knife to spread it to cover the entire surface. It will look meagre, but it puffs up as it cooks. If there’s any pastry left over, you can cut out leaves or other shapes to decorate the top. Or sprinkle with a few flaked almonds.

Bake the tart for about 30 minutes, until the top is brown and springy. Leave to cool to lukewarm before serving.

It was Eliza who inspired me to try the vintage feast idea in the first place, so I don’t know why I’ve waited so long. The official “challenge” is over, but I like these old cookbooks so much that I have decided to continue an occasional series.

The book I have is an old Penguin, The Best of Eliza Acton, published in 1968, edited by Elizabeth Ray and with a foreword by … who else? Elizabeth David. You can’t read much Elizabeth David without discovering that she and Eliza are kindred spirits. Jane Grigson drew on Acton heavily for her English Food, and both she and David clearly thought more highly of Eliza than of the better-known Mrs Beeton.

Modern Cookery for Private Families was published in 1845, when Eliza was 46, and stayed in print for over 50 years. This 350-page paperback holds only a fraction of the hundreds of brief, precise recipes the original book must have contained. Her crisp prose, sharp asides, and succinct instructions that assume the reader is already a competent cook cannot fail to recall Elizabeth David, so it’s hardly surprising the latter admired her so much : “Over and over again,” she writes, “I have marvelled at the illuminating and decisive qualities of Miss Acton’s recipes.” Discussing the fact that Acton was eclipsed by later inferior writers, David suggests that it was because she was “a child of the eighteenth century …. living in the manner and writing of a style of English domestic life already doomed.” And she concludes, “Temporary eclipse has often been the fate of great innovators. In a way it is posterity’s compliment to genius.” And similarly, when the Jamies and Nigellas of this world have been and gone, Elizabeth David will still be with us.

So after all that, what about the food? I was spoilt for choice here. All sorts of things tempted me: fried potato ribbons, which sound very much like rather fantastical potato crisps, cut in long spirals; jumbles; cheesecake with no cheese in it; the famous cabinet pudding. In the end I went for a very simple menu.

To start: carrot soup. Eliza has two basic recipes for this, but follows them with a recipe for a variation: “Buchanan carrot soup (Excellent)”. With that recommendation, how could I not try it? It was delicious, deep orange with a zing from the curry powder, making it much more successful than Ruth Lowinsky’s bland 20th-century version. My only criticism was that I don’t particularly like the texture of cooked rice in my soup; when I reheated the leftovers for lunch, I liquidised it. Next up: Chicken Burdwan, which with a few adjustments could well become a regular standby for using up leftover roast chicken, and is an “Indian” dish that would certainly appeal to French people. It’s a feast of 18th-century flavours.

For dessert, I found the potato pudding irresistible. Years ago we were served a dessert of tiny dishes of impossibly smooth potato puree flavoured with vanilla at my then-favourite restaurant, Les Feuillants in Céret (sadly now gone). It was fantastic, and potatoes are my favourite vegetable, so I was certainly prepared to try another potato dessert. Of course it was nothing like that creamy dish at les Feuillants, but it did seem strangely familiar. After a couple of spoonfuls I realised it was very like the bottom part of a Queen of Puddings. So next time I want to make Q of P and don’t have any stale bread, I might use potatoes instead.

All of these were dishes I’d happily make again, so this is the best vintage feast so far. My adapted recipes for all three follow.

Buchanan carrot soup
600 g carrots
30 g butter
1 litre chicken or beef stock
1 heaped tsp curry powder (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
60 g cooked rice

Scrape the carrots and cut into thick slices. Melt the butter in a large pan and add the carrots; then cover and cook really slowly for an hour, shaking the pan from time to time. The carrots should not brown or stick. In true 19th-century fashion I did this on top of the woodburner.

Add the stock and simmer for another half hour. Liquidise till smooth. Then add the curry powder and cooked rice, and simmer for another 10 minutes. Liquidise again if, like me, you don’t like the texture of the rice. Taste, adjust seasoning, and serve.

Chicken Burdwan
Lefotver roast chicken (I used about half a small chicken)
1 small onion or a large shallot, finely chopped
25 g butter
1 tsp flour
pinch cayenne (I used pimentón picante as that’s what I have these days)
1 tbsp anchovy essence, or a couple of tinned anchovies, very finely chopped
1 wineglass of Madeira (I used some sweet Pedro Ximenez sherry, another magic Spanish ingredient)
1 tsp chilli sherry (Eliza says a tablespoon, but my Scotch Bonnet chilli sherry is so strong I didn’t dare)
black pepper
Juice of 1 lime or 1/2 lemon (optional)

Cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces, removing skin. Melt the butter and gently soften the onion or shallot. Then add the flour and stir for a minute to blend before adding the anchovies and a wineglass of water. Bring to the boil, stirring, then simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in the Madeira/PX and chilli sherry, then add the chicken and heat gently just long enough to warm it through. Taste it and add black pepper and/or lemon juice to taste. Serve with rice pilaff and chutney.

Potato pudding

This is served hot with whatever jam or preserve you have; I used some home-made apricot jam. Eliza says you can serve it on its own cold as a cake, but I’m not sure I’d like that; it’s a bit stodgy and would be rather dull without the jam, which complements it really well.

500 g floury potatoes
75 g butter
120 g sugar
5 small eggs
pinch salt
grated zest of 1 lemon
good-quality not-too-sweet jam, e.g. redcurrant, apricot, greengage

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Boil the potatoes till soft and drain them very well. They need to be mashed very thoroughly but lightly while hot; I put them through the potato ricer, which is perfect for this. Beat in all the other ingredients except the jam. Pour into a well-buttered soufflé dish or cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, till the cake is set in the centre. Turn out of the tin or dish, cut into wedges, and serve with the jam. Or use it as the basis of a Queen of Puddings (in which case you’d use only the yolks of the eggs, saving the whites for the meringue, and reduce the other quantities by about half).

More googling, and I hit upon Vegan Yum-Yum’s version. Aha, no eggs! I tried it and was really pleased with the result (and so were the choir members who got to taste it).

It was a bit soggy, and I messed up the frosting by cooking it too long, but candying the clementines gave it a really marmaladey flavour which I liked a lot. You can serve it for tea or as a dessert — skip the frosting and add a dollop of Greek yoghurt or crème fraîche. I’ve made it twice since then; it freezes well too. You do have to plan in advance to cook the clementines, but they’ll keep in the fridge for up to a week, or you can freeze them. Use the remaining syrup to make champagne cocktails (or just top up with sparkling water).

Here’s my metric version. When blitzing the clementines, try to drain them well so that you don’t include too much syrup, otherwise the cake will be even soggier. We don’t have bundt pans here, so I just made it in a loaf tin.

Candied clementines
12-15 clementines, well washed
900 g Sugar
700 ml water

Note: despite the name these aren’t candied in the sense of being sticky and chewy; they’re really just poached.

Pierce the clementines 8-10 times with a toothpick. Put them in a large pan with the sugar and water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1-2 hours — don’t let them boil. Leave to cool in the syrup. Store in the fridge when cold.

Clementine cake
About 300 ml pureed candied clementines (about 6-8 clementines)
110 ml vegetable oil
220 ml low-fat milk (non-dairy if you are vegan of course; I’m sure almond milk would be good)
55 g sugar
220 g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease a loaf tin and line with baking parchment. Use a food processor to blitz the well-drained clementines; don’t make a complete puree, there should be detectable bits of peel. Measure the quantity you need after blitzing. Whisk the oil, milk, and sugar into the puree. Combine the remaining dry ingredients and then fold them into the clementine mixture.

Pour the mixture into the tin (mine was quite sloppy). Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, using a skewer or toothpick to check it’s cooked. Cool slightly in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack. I prefer it without icing.

I can still remember the first piece of French pâtisserie I ate, aged 18, on a hot summer day in Brittany. We came out of the bakery with our paper-wrapped slices and sat on a wall in the sunshine to eat them: my very first taste of tarte aux pommes. The pastry was flaky and buttery, the creamy layer of crème pâtissière melted into the thinly sliced apples, slightly burnt at the edges and brushed with shiny apricot glaze that stuck to our fingers. It was unlike anything I’d ever tasted, and I knew I wanted to stay in France forever, so I could eat like this every day.

I don’t think I’ve ever found quite that tart in a pâtisserie since; most of them lack the custard layer and just have plain sliced apples, or a layer of tart apple purée. Delicious all the same, but when I encountered Jane Grigson’s apple tarts from Evreux in Good Things in about 1980, I gave a cry of recognition and set about perfecting them. It took a while, but eventually, after several tweaks to the recipe, my own creations were as wonderful as I remembered that first slice being.

And then I stopped making them, turning to slutty Tarte Tatin as my go-to apple tart recipe. Whatever anyone says about the complexity of Tarte Tatin, it is frankly a doddle to make. All you need for complete success is to burn the apples, butter, and sugar, and how difficult is that? The worst of cooks can do it. It’s always baffled me that people try to make it look so complicated.

This tart is a lot more fiddly and time-consuming, but if you didn’t like spending time in the kitchen, you wouldn’t be here, would you? In any case, you can make the pastry and crème pâtissière in advance and put them in the fridge till needed. Blind-bake the pastry and assemble the tart just before the meal, put it in the oven, and serve it either freshly baked, or lukewarm.

I think this looks loveliest if you bake small individual tarts, but you can make a single large one instead, using an 18-20 cm loose-based tin.

Pastry
Either use your own favourite sweet shortcrust, or the recipe below. This will make more than you need for a single 18-cm tart; use the rest for something else, or freeze it.

225 g plain flour
125 g butter
2 tbs icing sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp cold water

Rub the butter into the flour. Stir in the icing sugar, then lightly beat the egg with a little cold water and stir in. Bring the pastry together in a ball, wrap in a plastic bag, and put in the fridge for an hour. Remove about half an hour before you want to use it.

Crème pâtissière
This is an all-purpose recipe that can be used for all sorts of other tarts and desserts too; for example a simple fresh fruit tart. It’s less nerve-racking than making ordinary custard, because the flour means that it won’t curdle even if it boils.

25 g flour
1 egg
2 egg yolks
50 g sugar
vanilla essence
250 ml milk
a knob of butter

Warm the milk in a saucepan until it is just at boiling point. Meanwhile beat together all the other ingredients except the butter. Pour on the hot milk, whisking all the time, then pour into the saucepan and return to a low heat, whisking all the time until the sauce is very thick. It’s perfectly OK for it to boil, but don’t use a high heat or it may stick and burn. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time, until it doesn’t taste floury any more. Pour into a bowl and dot with bits of butter, then place clingfilm over the surface to stop a skin forming. Leave to cool.

Apples
Jane Grigson made hers with Golden Delicious; that was one of the first things I changed. You need firm, tart eating apples; Granny Smith or Cox’s are good. For the glaze, you can use apple or quince jelly if you have any, in which case add a little glug of Calvados. If you use apricot jam, sieve it after heating.

About 5 tart eating apples
3 tbs apple or quince jelly, or apricot jam
1 tbs Calvados (optional)
1 tbs water

Preheat the oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry, line the tin or tins, and blind-bake for 10 minutes. Remove paper and bake for another 5 minutes, until the pastry is very lightly coloured. Meanwhile, peel, quarter, and core the apples, then slice lengthways into thin, even slices. Sprinkle with lemon juice if necessary to stop them browning.

Increase heat to 200C. Spread an even layer of cold crème pâtissière in the pastry case. Then arrange the apple slices in concentric circles like the petals of a flower, starting from the outside and overlapping the edge of the pastry slightly. Make a rose shape in the middle. Heat the jam or jelly in a small pan with a little water until it is runny, then use a brush or spoon to spread it carefully over the apples. Put the tart in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, glazing it with any remaining jelly about halfway through. The apples should be starting to burn at the edges. Remove from the oven and serve proudly. Do not bother with cream – it doesn’t need it!

Plums can be a bit bland and mushy, but this recipe really gives them some zing. Use smallish red plums. I used these to make little plum tarts: blind bake some tartlet cases of pâte sablée until crisp and golden, then tuck two or three roasted plums into each, drizzle over a very little syrup, and top with a blob of crème fraîche flavoured with finely chopped crystallised ginger and a little black pepper. You can cook the pastry in advance, but don’t assemble the tarts till the last minute.

The plums are fine on their own too, with cream, ice cream, or Greek yoghurt, and keep well in the fridge for up to a week. Or you can freeze them.

100 ml water
100 ml balsamic vinegar
6 tablespoons demerara or golden caster sugar
10 black peppercorns
1 vanilla bean, split
500-600 g small whole plums
a few sprigs of rosemary

To serve:
crème fraîche
crystallised ginger
black pepper

Preheat oven to 200°C. Whisk together the water, vinegar, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the peppercorns to dissolve the sugar. Split the vanilla pod and scrap the seeds into the mixture, then throw the bean in too. Put the plums into a gratin dish into which they will fit snugly in (more or less) a single layer. Pour over the liquid, then sprinkle over the rest of the sugar. Tuck in a couple of sprigs of rosemary.

Bake for 20-30 minutes; the skins will start to split, but the plums shouldn’t disintegrate. Use a slotted spoon to remove the plums carefully to a serving dish. Pour the liquid into a non-reactive pan, discarding the rosemary sprigs and vanilla pod. Boil vigorously to reduce to a syrupy consistency (you probably need to reduce it by about half). Taste it; if it seems too vinegary, add some more sugar. Pour over the plums and garnish with fresh rosemary sprigs. Serve hot, warm, or cold.

Update: we finished off the last of these from the freezer 6 months later. The flavour improved with keeping, the vanilla really coming through. Gorgeous with a big dollop of crème fraîche!

This is that old French favourite, yoghurt cake. Good for cooking with children or Americans because no scales are required — you just use the yoghurt pot to measure your ingredients. Of course yoghurt pots may vary slightly in size, but then so do eggs, and anyway it’s all about ratios. For this cake it’s not critical. I found the mixture a bit sloppy, so I added a couple of extra tablespoons of flour. You might need to cook it for more or less time too, depending on how wet your mixture is.

You can bake the apricots into it — or if, as I did, you happen to have a whole trayful of baked apricots in the fridge, add them before pouring the honey over. Or use any other fruit you fancy. Cherry compote for example.

50 g roughly chopped nuts (pistachios, hazelnuts, almonds, pine nuts …)
1 pot plain yoghurt
2 pots caster sugar
2 pots plain flour
1 pot ground almonds
3 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 pot melted butter
5 apricots
4 tbs runny honey

Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter an 18-cm round cake tin (I used a springform). Put the yoghurt in the mixing bowl, then rinse and dry the pot and use it to measure the remaining ingredients. Add the sugar and eggs to the yoghurt and whisk thoroughly till slightly frothy. Then whisk in the flour, almonds, and baking powder, followed by the melted butter. If baking the apricots, halve and stone them and arrange them in the bottom of the tin with the chopped nuts before pouring the mixture over. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is springy and a skewer poked into the cake comes out clean.

If you baked it with the apricots on the bottom, let it cool for a few minutes, then turn out onto a plate apricot-side up and pour the honey over while it is still warm. Otherwise you can arrange your baked apricots and chopped nuts on top and again drizzle with honey while warm. Allow to cool completely and serve in thin slices — with cream if you are feeling naughty.

Pitting cherries must be one of the messiest jobs in the kitchen, but it is oh so worth it. I’m not very conscientious about wearing an apron, but this is one occasion when I swathe myself in my most voluminous apron, cover the table with newspaper, and settle down to a curiously relaxing session of pitting. We’ve eaten a lot of cherries this season – mainly because back in May I was irresistibly tempted by a 2-kg crate of cherries in a Spanish venta for only 5.60 euros. I got home wondering how on earth two of us were going to eat them all before they rotted. My new cookbook, The Real Taste of Spain, provided an answer: cherry compote. A monster, messy pitting session followed, especially as I had no cherry pitter to hand.

This recipe is so simple to do, and words cannot describe how delicious it is. For a week, our breakfast was a spoonful or two of this with dollops of Greek yoghurt, and we mourned when we scraped out the last few drops of syrup from the bowl. From then on we constantly looked out for affordable cherries, and whenever we found some, we bought at least a kilo to make some compote. The last batch is now in the freezer in several plastic boxes so that we can spin out the pleasure over the summer. So my advice is, if you make this, make plenty, it freezes really well. It goes with all sorts of things: with ice cream for an extra-special Cherries Jubilee, with yoghurt or cream, or spooned over an almond cake, for example.

Note: if you double the quantities, don’t double the amount of sugar and water, just leave it the same. The cherries will produce lots of lovely juice anyway.

500-600 g ripe cherries, pitted
100 ml water
150 g sugar
100 ml guignolet or cherry brandy (optional)

Put the cherries in a pan with the sugar and water. If you have some guignolet (a cherry-flavoured aperitif wine) or cherry brandy, you can add some, but it doesn’t really need it. Simmer very gently, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. The cherries should be tender and glossy but still whole, and the juice syrupy. If the juice is still quite liquid when the cherries are done, remove the cherries with a slotted spoon and boil the liquid vigorously for 5 minutes or so, till it is thick and glossy. Then pour over the cherries. Store the compote in the fridge, where it will keep a couple of weeks (probably – it never lasts that long in our house) and serve either chilled or at room temperature.

Pastry
170 g flour
85 g caster sugar
85 g butter, softened
1 tbs milk or water

Filling
2 tbs ground almonds
2 tbs caster sugar
1 tbs flour
350 g bilberries (fresh or frozen)
2 tbs crème fraîche
1 tbs sugar
1 egg
icing sugar

Note: Clotilde recommends just putting the frozen bilberries directly in the tart without defrosting so they don’t lose too much juice. I defrosted mine a bit in a colander over a bowl and then poured the juice that had drained off over the bilberries before putting it in the oven, fearing that it would get really soggy if I cooked them from frozen.

For the dough: in a food processor or by hand, beat the sugar and butter till pale and fluffy. Beat or cut in the flour until you have coarse crumbs (I did it in the food processor up to this point). Scrape out into a bowl and add about a tablespoon of milk. Then use a fork to mix it in, and your hands to pat the dough into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm or put in a plastic bag and let it rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C and grease a shallow 22-cm tart tin, preferably with a loose base. Roll out the dough on a floured surface, as thinly as you can. It’s difficult to roll and might fall apart, but if it does, either roll it out again or just put the pieces in the tin and stick them firmly together with a little water. Bake blind for 15-20 minutes; the dough should be only lightly coloured. Reduce heat to 180C.

While the crust is baking, mix together the almonds, flour and sugar. Spread this mixture evenly over the tart base and then spread a generous layer of bilberries on top. Taste a bilberry, and if it’s really sour sprinkle a little extra sugar on, but don’t overdo it; it needs to be a bit tart. If you are using fresh or still-frozen bilberries, return the tart to the oven at this point and cook for 10 minutes to start the juices running; I decided my (defrosted) frozen bilberries were soft and juicy enough already, so I skipped this step.

Whisk together the egg, cream and sugar and drizzle this mixture over the bilberries. There isn’t much of it; this isn’t supposed to be a custard tart. Return to the oven for 15 minutes or until set. Turn off the oven and leave for another 10 minutes before removing.

Allow to cool and serve at room temperature, sprinkling a little icing sugar over it just before serving. Accept the compliments of your guests.