Bacania Veche – a cornucopia of good things

Since 2010 Marius has been selling high quality foods and baking home made cakes and savouries making this the first real “foodie mecca” in Bucharest. In particular the range of top quality Romanian artisanal products is second to none.

Now it also has a regular supply of organic veggie suppliers too – some of whom you can order in advance from. The quality of these is excellent and I savour how they really do taste like the veggies you knew from childhood.

49, Barbu Vacarescu

All details and on line shop: https://bacaniaveche.ro/

Apricot, White Chocolate & Lemon Curd Tart aka “the Brian Tart”

The idea here is to create a kind of lemon curd filling that sets on cooking, encasing the apricots and melted white chocolate. The lemon juice and zest help keep things from veering off in an overly saccharine direction.

For a 23cm tart tin with a removable base:

Ingredients

Filling

250g fresh, or 225g dried apricots, chopped roughly

225g best white chocolate. Please do not use inferior quality chocolate – the tart chemistry simply won’t work. Roughly chopped. I have often used the white Toblerone bar

4 eggs

110g sugar

110g melted butter

Juice and zest of 2 lemons

Pastry

350g plain flour

225g butter 82%

110g sugar.

How To

To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the caster sugar. If you have a food procesor or mixer then either blend or use a K beater – I have used both methods and the hand method. By hand is a bit more “stony” (as pictured) , with a mixer will give you a fine sandy, crumbly affair
press the mixture into the tin by hand, line with crunched up baking paper and either ceramic baking beans or salt or rice ie “baking blind” bake in an oven preheated to 180°C until solid – approx 12 minutes.
Remove the baking beans (or salt/rice) and for a perfect baked blind case paint the base with an egg yolk and re-bake a further 2-3 minutes

3. Place the chopped apricots and chocolate into the tart case.

4. Mix together the eggs, sugar, melted butter, lemon juice and zest. Pour into the tart case. Cook at 160C for 25 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.

Improvs and Ideas

There is talk of a peach version…. I think it would work well. Me…I am mulling over a version where the apricots are first macerated in amaretto

There is a prune and dark chocolate version and I do recall a party buffet once where I made both.

As a tip….. there is a risk the curd filling splits in the cooking or doesn’t set – I often stir it with a fork during cooking but it is a bit of a faff. Cooking the filling first as if it was a lemon curd, until creamy consistency, pouring over the filling should work and I may try next time I make.

Speedy Sun Dried Tomato & Walnut Pesto

Speedy and super versatile. Always have some in your fridge.

My original version uses preserved lemons but I realise not everybody has those to hand. In this speedier version the zest of a lemon is used. I use this to spread on bruschetta, make instant galettes, coat pasta, make crusts on meat, as a dip, on crostini as canapes, in chunky sandwiches with goats cheese and more.

In summer it is incredible made with home made slow roasted tomatoes and a great thing to do with a tomato glut. In winter or when time is short, a jar of good sun dried tomatoes in oil can be put to no better use I think.

Gadgets & Gizmos

A blender. For this recipe actually a small hand blender is better than your big one that you might use for smoothies and soups as the quantity is smaller.

Ingredients

Here is my basic recipe and the quantities are for guidance only, the key thing here is to make it how you like it:

A jar of sun dried tomatoes oil and all or a jar of home bottled roast tomatoes in which case no need to add any extra tomato puree or water which you may need to add if you are using jarred sun dried tomatoes. The jar I use is approximately 300ml.

200-250g of walnuts. The ones from the market I always prefer but they do contain teeth shattering shards of shell often!

The zest of one lemon. take care to scrub the lemon first unless it is organic and free of nasty waxy stuff.

chilli (I am sensitive so I dont add a huge amount…if you prefer a dip more on the muhamara side of things…spice it up)

If you are using home bottle tomatoes you might want to add a glug more of olive oil

2 to three and possibly four cloves of garlic. I like quite a lot

salt pepper and absolutely do not omit the cinnamon. half to one teaspoon.

As long as there is a little layer of oil over the pesto it will keep very happily in the fridge for 4-6 weeks.

You Are What You Eat

Tomatoes are a treasure of riches when it comes to their antioxidant benefits. In terms of conventional antioxidants, tomatoes provide an excellent amount of vitamin C and beta-carotene; a very good amount of the mineral manganese; and a good amount of vitamin E. But it is their “lycopene” (a carotenoid that is a powerful anti oxidant) that makes them a real superstar. Interestingly to absorb this lycopene you need to eat them with some oil – so the pesto is the perfect way! Read this HMS study about their benefits.

How To

Blitz it up in a food blender. I like to keep mine with a bit of texture – think of the difference between crunchy and smooth peanut butter.

Thats it.