Rhubarb and custard tarts

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I love custard of any description. Whether it be Bird’s or Ambrosia’s Devon kind or fresh stuff poured over a crumble or a quivering baked version, I love custard. Sadly it has never reciprocated that love and everytime I’ve tried to make it, there have been problems. It’s split, ended up scrambled, been full of lumps and the packet version has resembled concrete. I’ve always thought if I wrote a book about my cooking exploits, it would be called ‘Custard is my Nemesis.’

Few things go better with custard than rhubarb so when I finally got my paws on some proper Yorkshire forced rhubarb for the first time this season (even though Mister North has been cooking up a storm with it for a while now this winter.) I decided that come hell or high water, this weekend would be the time that I tamed custard, even if it meant the kind of mayhem in the kitchen that accompanied the cartoon duo of the same name.

I’ve been eyeing Dan Lepard’s Bay Custard Tarts forever, even having cut the recipe out of the Guardian and kept it when it first appeared several years ago and thanks to the clear and foolproof instructions in Short and Sweet, I knew this was the place to start with custard, but decided to put a seasonal twist on it by layering the baked custard with a topping of tangy rhubarb curd, partly because it would no doubt be delicious, but because it might hide a custard malfunction…

I made the tart cases from scratch using Dan’s sweet shortcrust recipe and tips on pastry handling. The first time I made pastry it was exceptionally good and I wondered why people worry about it, but every subsequent time has been a mess of varying levels. I decided to try and teach myself better pastry skills while I was mastering custard, but you could just use shop bought if that’s easier. But do follow Dan’s tip to only blind bake the cases for 15 minutes and undercook them slightly to allow the custard to ‘stick’

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raw pork heart

I heart pork!

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It may have come to your attention that Valentine’s Day is upon us again. My reaction to the sea of helium balloons, fluffy teddy bears, reduced priced fizz, enormous boxes of chocolates and red roses in the shops is to say ‘stuff it’…

Not just because I’m a grumpy 30-something woman who happens to be single, but because I found some suckling pig hearts from wild boar at the farmers’ market last week and felt my customary urge to make and use stuffing coming on again, especially since it would be somewhat apt this week.

The cold weather at the moment makes it the perfect opportunity to make long slow cooked meals rich with flavour and red wine and served with roasted seasonal veg and after a trip to The Fruit Garden in Herne Hill where I came across some excellent beetroot and the new-to-me salsify, I had the makings of an excellent meal for one.

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Sticky, spicy ribs for a brilliant Bánh mì sandwich

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Banh mi ribs 13

There’s been a bag of Porcus pork ribs in my freezer for the last couple of months, hiding under a furze of frost, waiting for the right recipe. Last weekend they received their calling when, leafing through the ‘Ginger Pig Meat Book‘ which I got for Christmas, out leapt an intriguingly simple recipe for spare ribs. Sounded perfect for bits of a ginger pig.

Over the years I’ve had a few goes at making slow-cooked, succulent sticky ribs – the last time was in the autumn, when I cooked them under foil at gas mark 1 overnight, before uncovering and getting a quick blast under the grill. They were good, but not gooey and crisp like proper BBQ ribs should be. Not enough time marinading beforehand, letting the flavours permeate every sinew of the meat. Miss South and I went to Bodeans in Clapham a couple of years ago, and enjoyed massive mounds of BBQ meat, and I’ve had good ribs in the States, but was never able to replicate that kind of taste at home. Until now.

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Home cured uncooked bacon

Makin’ Bacon

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I’m not actually a big fan of bacon. Yes, it was the one thing that caused me to fall off the wagon when I was a vegetarian, but that was more to do with the fact of it being 10pm on a cold April day in Ireland up a mountain and the choice of either eating the proffered bacon butty or going to bed hungry and chilled to the bone. I don’t actually remember the first time I ate bacon after stopped being veggie and I only buy it about twice a year.

A recent care package from the north stuffed with Porcus bacon and Bury black pud reminded me that it’s not bacon I don’t like, it’s cheap or mass produced bacon that doesn’t float my boat. So since I can’t get Mister North to pop to the post office every week with some rashers from the Porcus girls, I decided that I would try making my own bacon to see if I could tempt myself.

A quick Google search established that I wasn’t setting myself an impossible task. Basically I needed a hunk of pork belly, a surprisingly small amount of salt, saltpetre and some time. It sounded fairly simple and I was quite excited to get cracking. I went to Walters in Herne Hill and got him to cut me 1.8 kilos of pork belly into two pieces (including the bones) and skipped home to get curing.

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Northern Stars Supper Club

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Northern Stars supper flyer rev2 v5

This week marks North/South Food‘s second birthday, and after two years of cooking, experimenting, exploring and learning we’ve got possibly the best present we could envisage. I’ve briefly mentioned it before, but I’m hugely excited to properly announce our collaboration with the popular JoinUs4Supper evening at North Star Deli in Manchester on February 23rd.

This evening grew out of a food blogger, a food producer and a chef all being thrown together by the opportunity of a TV quiz – united by a zeal for good food  – and the three of us sharing so much passion for quality local produce that we wanted to share it with a wider audience. We started to talk about what we’d do if we could cook together, and before we knew it those wonderful folk at North Star invited us to guest at their supper club.

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So we’ve put our heads together and pulled out all the stops to design a wonderful winter meal, proudly featuring some of the best Lancashire and Yorkshire produce and dishes. We’ll be revealing the full menu details next week, but in the meantime I can reveal that SJ from Porcus will be providing the centrepiece to the main dish of the night… stunning free-range Tamworth pork, happily raised on the moors above Todmorden. A vegetarian option will be provided, using products from the Pextenement Cheese Company. If you’ve followed or read us over the last few years you may’ve spotted certain recurring North/South favourites: this is your chance to try some of them with us.

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