Cooking and Tips

225g/8oz plain flour

150g/5oz butter, diced

1/2 teaspoon salt

 (for savoury pastry)

or 25g/1oz caster sugar (for sweet pastry)

1-2 egg yolks

Sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the salt or caster sugar, then mix to a dough with the egg yokes and a little cold water if necessary.  Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest in the fridge for 20-30 minutes. Roll out on a lightly floured work surface and use to line a deep 28cm/11 inch loose-bottomed flan tin.

To bake blind, cover the pastry with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans (either ceramic ones or any raw dried beans, which you can reuse for baking blind).  Remove the beans and greaseproof paper and return the pastry case to the oven for 5-10 minutes, until very lightly coloured.

And for the filling:

5 free range eggs

1 cup of Greek yogurt or creme fraiche

2 tablespoons of chopped gherkins

3 small peppered mackerel fillets

Flake the fish from the skin and break up in a bowl.  In another bowl beat together 3 whole eggs and two egg yolks then add the yogurt and mix well, add the mackerel and the gherkins to the egg mix and put the mixture into the pastry shell.  

Yes, well I had some salad leaves but when I went to look, there were no tomatoes or cucumber to make a salad, so I had to improvise.

 half a bag of salad leaves

1 carrot

1 ripe pear (peeled)

1 small apple (unpeeled)

A handful of pecan nuts