Jansson's Temptation (or The Scandi Fainted with Delight)

I wanted to try this out for ages but it wasn't until very recently that I found a shop selling the requisite Swedish anchovies, which are actually sprats pickled in a quite sweet brine. Swedish ansjovis (sprats) are, I think, reasonably good on the marine conservation stakes, being mature fish when they are caught.

They are also pretty healthy, containing lots of omega oils. If you frame it with the high levels of vitamin A in the cream, plus vitamin C and B6 in the potato, this isn't a totally unhealthy dinner... but saying that, it's carb heavy and contains double cream so it's probably not an everyday dinner! This would go really well with a lovely side of steamed spinach or broccoli.

So first up, dice two onions and saute them in a little oil and a little butter. While that's cooking, thinly slice several potatoes - it's important that they are really thin or they won't cook through.

Open up the tin of ansjovis and cut each one in half, then butter an oven proof dish and preheat the oven to 180°C. Take the frying pan off the heat and divide out half of the onions, you'll use half now and half in the creamy sauce later on.

Put a layer of potatoes on the bottom of the dish, sprinkle with onion and then lay peices of fish over the top. The, another layer of potatoes, more onion, more fish and so on until all the fish, potatoes and half of the onions are used up.

Put the frying pan back on the heat with the second half of the onions still in there, add half a pot of crème fraîche and half a pot of double cream, stir until melted together and season well with sea salt and freshly ground white pepper. Pour over the top of the potato-onion-fish layers.

Then the crispy topping - I use crackers, as in cheese and biscuits! Left over crackers, water biscuits and so on are perfect all crumbled up and sprinkled over the top. Dot with lots of butter and then bung in the oven for 40-50 minutes. Poke it with a fork to see if the potatoes are done.

* I bought my ansjovis when I went to the Scandinavian Kitchen shop one Saturday. The base inspiration for the recipe above came from Scandalicious by Signe Johansen

Father's Day Lemon Tart with Raspberry Cream

Lemon tart is one of my Dad's favourite puddings. I made one recently as part of the Terre a Terre experiment but it was a bit of a chore, so I chose to try a different base recipe to see whether the results could be as good using a simpler method.

I based this tart on a recipe in "The Masterchef Cookbook" by David Henry, p373. As usual, I played about with the recipe to suit myself, plus I served it with raspberry cream (instead of his cucumber sorbet) because I saw James Martin make some on Saturday Kitchen this week and thought it would go well - it did.

The results were fabulous, the pastry was a bit like a shortbread biscuit and the tart, lemony filling was gorgeous. The raspberry cream was perfect with it.

So, method. First the pastry: 85g of butter, 50g of icing sugar, 2 egg yolks and 175g plain flour. Rub the butter into the icing sugar, add the yolks and mix in, then the flour. Wrap with clingfilm and pop into the fridge for half an hour or until you're ready for it.

I made the filling while the pastry was chilling. Warm up 75g of caster sugar with the juice of 2-3 lemons (depending on how lemony and tart you want it), until the sugar has dissolved. 

Slowly add 100ml of double cream, whisking constantly, then 3 beaten eggs - keep whisking! You're waiting for it to thicken, it took a while but when it worked it was obvious, so keep cooking on a low heat and whisking away until it's quite thick, but still pourable. 

It was fine left to go cold until I was ready to make the tart itself; I suspect that the pastry and filling could be made quite happily the day before.

Don't bother rolling out the pastry, just slice it thinly and press the slices together with your fingers in a greased baking tray or dish. It might not be perfectly flat throughout the tart but it's much much easier to do and cooks just fine. I used one of those tins with a removeable bottom.

Prick it all over with a fork and pop in the oven for 15 minutes at 200 degrees. Turn the oven down to 140 degrees, fill the pastry shell with the lemon mixture and bake for a further 25 minutes. Leave to cool and then refrigerate for an hour or even overnight.