Artichoke, Onion and Thyme Tart

I have been having a bad few days. It all started last week when I downloaded an album onto i-tunes and it did not recognise it so I started to manually input the album title and artist when i-tunes match went berserk and before I could say "Mine's a pint!" it had amalgamated over 3000 songs into one album. This had happened to me before but not to this magnitude and after several days trying to undo the damage manually I could take no more and deleted the library and am now currently downloading my music library again one album at a time. 

The second disaster occurred when I was in the middle of an enormous pile of ironing and the iron just stopped working and no amount of coaxing, fuse changing or cursing would make it start again.

The final straw came when I tried to heat up my lunch and my Siemens Combination Steam Oven just refused to turn on. It is fair to say that the air around the Richards' household is blue at the moment.

This was not perhaps a good time to try a new recipe but as the ingredients had been purchased, there was nothing else that could be done except get on with it. Todays recipe is an Artichoke, Onion and Thyme Tart from Daniel Galmiche's French Brasserie Cookbook. It is only within the last few years that I have felt comfortable making pastry and I like to try a tart now and again as it makes me feel like a 'grown up' chef and this one seemed a little bit unusual.

I started with the pastry recipe on Page 23 and it turned out a little bit wet, but not to be deterred I carried on regardless and put it in the fridge to cool as I sautéed the onions. I am very wary of trying to deal with fresh artichokes and tend to use preserved artichokes in olive oil, or even antipasti, instead. I do recommend, however, that you buy the most expensive ones you can afford or else you can find that you are spitting out tough indigestible leaves which makes you a little less than elegant at the dinner table.

The recipe calls for blind baking and I was a concerned when I removed the baking beans (actually I didn't have any and used dried black eye beans that I had in the cupboard instead) and found that the pastry was a little damp underneath and there was a hole in the bottom - but refusing to be downhearted, I just scraped the dough off the greaseproof paper and filled the hole.

The finished product was good, perhaps a little bit bland but the pastry was very flaky and light and the artichokes delicious. It would make a nice lunch in the summer to share with friends over a bottle or two of wine. In fact I am thinking of my friends now and am determined to make it when they next visit. Let's hope the Cumbrian weather allows a bit of sunshine next month.

A second vegetarian meal for Mike and he seems to be unconcerned by the prospect. "I take it you'll be wanted some meat tomorrow night then?" I asked "Not necessarily." He replied as he wandered off into the living room leaving me somewhat shocked and a little bit smug. Another success in spite of the omens to the contrary.