New and Exciting

Sea-buckthorn juice, from Aragatsotni in Armenia. Tastes like a briny apricot.

Goats cheese and tomato tart

I'll try most anything from scratch in the kitchen. I've made my own cheese (a necessary by-product of Mrs. Inspector's overenthusiastic milkman standing order – why she thought the 2 of us would require seven pints of full fat milk a week, I'll never know), I've made Scotch eggs (huge, irregularly shaped things they were, like a prize bullock's knackers), I've even made chocolate flavoured marshmallows, albeit the thinnest, least pillowy marshmallows ever to see the light of day - they could have passed for after dinner mints, served along with the Nescafé Alta Rica the rector's wife only gets out for special occasions.

I draw the line at puff pastry, though. In order to get satisfactory puff, one folds the pastry in three, 4 to 6 times (or turns, in cheffy parlance), taking care not to allow the interstitial layer of butter to become too soft by refrigerating the dough after every turn, thus keeping the pastry foliated. The butter keeps the layers separate, and the folding action traps in air, which expands in baking and further helps to keep the layers separate. This takes an age and is fiddly, to boot. Hervé This has a good recipe for puff pastry, should you want to make the effort.

Goats Cheese and Tomato Tart

This is a good dish for a party, where it can be served warm or at room temperature, in slices of varying sizes.

Pre-heat the oven to 190°C. Roll open a packet of puff pastry onto a large, non-stick baking tray. With a sharp knife, score a line all the way round the pastry rectangle, about 1cm in, taking care not to cut all the way through to the baking sheet. This gives a nice edge to the finished tart.

Crush 2 cloves of garlic in a pinch of salt. Now add around 150g soft goat's cheese (I used a rinded French cheese similar in texture to brie, although a chevre-style log would work admirably too), 2 heaped tablespoons of crème fraiche, one finely chopped spring onion and 1 tsp of chopped fresh thyme. Mix until well combined and gloopy.

Spread this mixture evenly and thinly onto the pastry base, taking care to go work all the way up to the scored line.

Now take some good quality, ripe tomatoes, and slice them as thinly as you can with a sharp knife. Lay the slices on the tart, taking care to cover the whole surface and overlapping like roof tiles. Drizzle on a good glug of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Lay some thyme sprigs on for decoration. Cook until the pastry is nicely browned and the tomatoes are roasted, around 40 – 45 minutes.

Allow to cool slightly before cutting and serving. We had this with a glass of Dúzsi Tamás' wonderfully fruity Kékfrankos rosé. I must start drinking things with less special characters. It took me an age to type that.