This was my first year running readers’ recipe swap, and each week has seen me fall for a different ingredient or novel dish to the point where “my new favourite thing” is a phrase I’ve uttered more times than I’ll admit to. But there have been some constants, like Bobby Ananta, Anna Thomson, Fadime Tiskaya and Rachel Kelly, each of whom have made it into print more than 20 times.
Most remarkable of all, however, was ColonialCravings, who was responsible for no fewer than eight recipes of the week, with three people doing the testing (Eve O’Sullivan, Rosie Reynolds and me). That, all of Cook concurs, is awesome work!
Cori Pim-Keirle (in a nice instance of parental prescience, it’s short for Coriander) grew up in a tiny place not far from Saltash in Cornwall, and she’s been cooking since she was little. “My mother is a really good cook,” she says. “She made a lot of pies, savoury and sweet, and I can remember sitting in the kitchen hoping for offcuts – she made amazing pastry. She made sure my brother and I knew how to cook for ourselves by the time we left home.”
Colonial Cravings is the moniker and the name of the blog Cori came up with when she moved to Baltimore with her husband and decided to document her culinary adventures in the US. Travelling is a constant inspiration: “I have a lot of cookbooks, but I never, ever follow a recipe. I make things up as I go along. I get ideas wherever I eat: I’m always analysing the ingredients on my plate, then going home to try to use the same flavours.”
Flavours and all-American recipes came back with her when they recently returned to the West Country: an industrial amount of Old Bay seasoning, proper biscuits, and Georgia cobbler. “I associate food with memories, so when we’re feeling a bit down and missing our lives there, we’ll make biscuits. We were there for three and a half years, and I find myself doing here the reverse of what I was doing there, when I was missing home and only wanted to make British things.”
Her signature dish combines baking with alcohol: two strengths I’d noticed in her weekly submissions. “More than a drink, alcohol is such a good ingredient for flavour,” she says. “Here the bourbon makes the pastry beautifully crisp and flaky. Baking is definitely my love. It’s the alchemy of it.”
Making this tart for the photo shoot this week was a thrill – I’ve never managed a tart this lush.
Bourbon and apricot tart
Serves 12
For the pastry
200g plain flour
20g cornflour
50g icing sugar
100g cold butter
1 egg, separated
25ml bourbon
For the filling
80g butter
100g sugar
80g ground almonds
50g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
2 eggs
½ tsp almond extract
25ml bourbon
6-8 apricots, halved and pitted (canned will do, but dry them on kitchen paper)
Flaked almonds to decorate
1 First make the pastry. Sift together the flour, cornflour and icing sugar, then rub in the butter – or use a food processor. Lightly beat the egg yolk (keep the white for later) with the bourbon, then add to the other ingredients and bring together to form a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2 Roll out the dough into a large disc, about 2-3mm thick. I like to do this between sheets of greaseproof paper so I don’t incorporate any extra flour, which can result in tough, chewy pastry. Grease a loose-bottomed tart tin and line it with the dough. Trim away any excess and keep this for decoration. Cover the pastry and rest it in the fridge for 20 minutes.
3 Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Cover the rested pastry with greaseproof paper and pile on baking beans or anything heavy and ovenproof. Bake the tart crust blind for 20 minutes, then for a further 10 minutes uncovered, until golden and crisp.
Set aside. If it looks as if the edges are getting a bit too brown just cover them with some baking parchment. Reduce the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.
4 Now make the filling. Beat together the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy. Mix in the ground almonds, flour and baking powder. Whisk together the eggs, almond extract and the bourbon and add this to the mix, so everything is well combined.
5 Pour the filling into the pastry case and smooth the top. Arrange the apricot halves on top, cut-side up, pressing them into the filling. Scatter a few flaked almonds over and add any pastry decoration you want. Brush with the egg white left over from making the pastry for a glazed finish. Bake for 35 minutes. Enjoy hot or cold with cream.
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