In Season: classic lemon tart

Now this recipe involves some serious cooking and you will need a blow torch but it’s worth the effort.

It’s always on the menu at our restaurant, we’ve been doing it for 20 years so I would definitely recommend that people give it a try. You don’t even have to make the pastry, you can just buy that in the shops.

It is a serious Michelin star dessert so it is a challenge.

I’d love to see how you get on so why not tweet me photos of your finished tarts?

Classically Glazed Individual Lemon Tart, Black Grape Juice

Serves 4

Ingredients

Pastry:

250g flour

50g butter

50g icing sugar

1 egg

1 tablespoon water

Lemon Curd:

750ml cream

4 lemons

100g sugar

4 eggs

Raspberry Puree:

2x 250g punnets of raspberries

100ml stock syrup

Grape Juice:

200g red seedless grapes

100ml stock syrup

To garnish and serve:

Yoghurt

Icing sugar

Hot frothy milk

Grated nutmeg

Method

To make pastry:

1 Put flour, butter and icing sugar in bowl and rub together to become breadcrumbs

2 Add the egg and water and mix through until it comes together

3 Roll into ball, rest for 30mins

4 Once rested divide into quarters and line four 10cm tart cases

5 Bake blind at 180˚c until cooked, set aside

To make lemon curd:

1 Juice and zest lemons and put into pan with sugar

2 Put cream in another pan, then put both pans on heat.

3 Crack eggs into bowl

4 Once lemon mixture and cream are hot, pass through a conical sieve over eggs

5 Whisk well and pour mixture back into the cream pan

6 Place back on heat, whisk until eggs are cooked, the mixture will become thick. Set aside and cool 

To make raspberry puree:

1 Place raspberries and stock syrup in a pan. Cook down for 30mins

2 Blitz, pass, cool then put into bottle

For the grape juice:

1 Blitz stock syrup and grapes, pass then set aside

To serve:

1 Fill tart case with Lemon mixture, level out with spatula

2 Heavily coat tart with icing sugar, caramelise with blowtorch

3 Dot alternate yogurt and raspberry puree around the outside of the plate

4 Finish tart with dusting of icing sugar

5 Serve grape juice on the side, topped with hot frothy milk and nutmeg

Lemons are high in vitamin C but did you know that they are technically a berry?

Here are 10 more fascinating facts that you might not know about lemons.

1 The average lemon contains three tablespoons of juice.

2 During the renaissance, fashionable women used to use lemon juice to redden their lips.

3 Lemons help prevent scurvy, a disease that causes bleeding gums, tooth loss and aching joints. Even now the British Navy are still required to carry enough lemons on board ships to ensure every sailor can have one ounce of lemon juice a day.

4 Lemon was a common first name in America in the early part of the 20th century.

5 According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s heaviest lemon weighed 11 pounds, 9.7 ounces and was harvested on January 8 2003.

6 Sprinkling lemon juice on sliced apples, avocados and bananas will help stop them oxidizing and turning brown.

7 Food historians believe lemons have been cultivated in the Mediterranean from as early as the first century AD.

8 Lemon trees produce fruit all year round.

9 An Arnold Palmer is a drink named after the golfing legend which combines equal parks of lemonade and iced tea. Adding vodka to the mix turns the drink into a ‘Tom Arnold’.

10 Demand for lemons and their scurvy fighting properties peaked during the California Gold Rush in 1849 when miners were willing to pay huge sums for a single fruit. As a result, lemon trees were planted in abundance throughout California.