CHOCOLATE TART - FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This is the second fortnightly Food for Thought meme the brainchild of the very talented Jain from Once in  Blue Moon and of Food With Style.


 The Road Home
**** and a half

Few things could be worse than losing a spouse to sickness and death, and when it happens and you have loved, it changes your life forever.

"Lev pressed a damp towel to his face and prayed that the heartache would pass, like a brief storm, like a nightmare from which it's possible to wake. But it wouldn't pass and so he stood there weeping....."

"When men cry it's never for nothing..."

It was the premature death of his wife, Mariana, that Lev wept for.

Lured by the opportunities of a capitalist country Lev had travelled to London from Auror, a deprived village in Eastern Europe, in search of a new life for his daughter and his mother back home.

Lev spends a year in London, with memories of Mariana tucked into his heart, sometimes reliving his past at will and at other times helplessly. 

It is a story of Lev, as an immigrant in London, his shift from one ideal to another, the loneliness he encounters, the displacement he feels, the despair of poverty, the friendships, the love affair, his foolishness and finally the discovery that he dared to dream.

This is a story that is profound, enchanting, painful and bittersweet. I loved it.

Because ..............

Tremain writes with such depth and intensity for every character. She makes them breathe and pulsate so I could touch them; each one fascinating and complete. Each precisely and expertly chiselled that it leaves you without a doubt to whom and what they are.


Tremain made me savour the book like a sweet not wanting to go too fast lest I lose its sweetness too soon.


Tremain made me tender and kind towards Lev's despair, his confusion, his rage and even his blunders because he was kind, gallant and genuine.


Tremain made me laugh thorugh Rudi, Lev's wild, impulsive and unpredictable friend.


Tremain made me cry.

It was woeful........It was wild...........It was beautiful.

Ruffled only by.................. 

An ending that was too predictable too soon before the end; it felt like a deja vu. If she had not let on a little too early and had ended the story with an optimistic hope rather than as a gift too neatly wrapped it would have been perfect. This was one of the three little brown spots in the apple. But I'm not going to make mountains out of molehills. I'm not going to nitpick.

It won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

This book proved perfect for Food For Thought because the story centred around Lev starting out as a dishwasher and later as a vegetable cutter at GK Ashe, a classy, high end restaurant, where he observed the chefs as they worked. So I had a vast uppity choice from paragraphs of detailed descriptions through Lev's eyes and mind.

I chose my favourite. A dessert named chocolate tart. 

It was also the dish on which Lev's mother, Ina, made her first comment, after a long and stubborn silence, marking her recognition and approval of Lev's dream.

She said, " I liked the taste of that. It reminded me of sleep."

The recipe...........ceated by Sydney's Aria pastry chef, Andrew Honeyset.......

This is a recipe I had extracted from a beautiful blog I had only recently discovered called Citrus and Candy. I had scrolled down innocently. And quite shockingly I found myself face to face with this gloriously evil tart. We glared at each other. I ~ stunned. It ~ proud. And I realised.......

That I had come. I had seen. And I had been conquered.

ARIA CHOCOLATE TART

The recipe is as exactly as I had found it. I dared not fluster a speck... 

  Chocolate pastry :

320 gm plain flour
60 gm cocoa powder
160 gm sugar
pinch of salt
160 gm cold butter, diced 
2 eggs


Filling :


270 gm good quality chocolate, chopped
60 gm butter, diced
315 ml cream
3 eggs
2 egg yolks


Chocolate glacage :

300 gm dark chocolate, chopped
240 cream
300 ml chocolate sauce (recipe follows)

Chocolate sauce :


60 gm cocoa
200 ml water
120 gm sugar
25 gm butter, diced

Make chocolate pastry :


Place flour, cocoa, sugar,salt and butter in bowl of food processor and process till fine as breadcrumbs. Add eggs and process till it holds together. 


Turn onto a lightly floured boared and gently knead till just smooth.Shape into a disc and cover with plastic wrap. Place in fridge fro 10 mins to rest. 


Roll out pastry according to the tart pan or mould you're using. It's important that you use a tart tin with a removable bottom. You could roll out the pastry between 2 sheets of baking paper. Let the pastry be about 3mm thickness. Line the tart tin. Place in fridge for 15 mins to rest. 


Line pastry with paper and fill with beans or rice and bake 10 mins, take out, remove, beans, and bake again for another 5 - 10 minutes or until firm. Keep aside.


Make filling :


Preheat oven 160 C.

Place butter and chocolate in a bowl. 

Place cream in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour hot cream over th ebutter and chosolate and stir until it all melts and the mixture is smooth. Stir in eggs and stir until even and smooth again.


Pour the mixture into the tar shell up to about 3/4 full leaving enough room for the glacage.


Bake 25 minutes until the centre is just cooked and the top just set. Take tart out and allow to cool to room temperature before topping with the glacage.


Make chocolate sauce for the glacage :


Combine cocoa,water and sugar in a saucepan and stir over heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil, stir in butter till melted. Strain through sieve placed over a bowl and set aside.


Make Chocolate glacage :


Place chocolate in a large bowl. Place cream in saucepan and bring to a boil. Add in chocolate sauce. Stir to mix well and is smooth.


Assemble :


Pour the glacage over the cooled cooked tart up to the rim. Put in refrigerator to set and firm up. 

Serve. UMMMMPPPPHHH.....

It was rich, deep and sonorously soothing  ~ like sleep.