Sugar and spice? Nice
Condiments: Mix it to celebrate seasons
THIS IS A LOVE story between sugar and spice. Spice is often the party girl, the loud, bold, exuberant element in the mix. Yet there is also another art, more subtle yet equally seductive. Married with sugar, spice can provide a delicate fragrance, hard to put your finger on but one that gives backbone to a dish and deepens its allure.
Eleanor Ford is a food writer and a cook who uses food as a means to explore culture and understand the world. Her book, A Whisper of Cardamom, offers a whole world of inviting new flavours.
STONE FRUIT GALETTE with MARZIPAN & LONG PEPPER
A rustic tart with buttery-crisp pastry and just-sweet-enough fruit, well suited to harvest feasting. I love the creativity this freeform way of baking allows you, and I find myself switching things up and trying different flavour combinations every time I make it. Here is a failproof template to riff on.
I have chosen my favourite fruits, plums and cherries, but you can use any combination of peaches, nectarines, plums, blackberries, blueberries, cherries or apricots. Just make up to around 450g in weight. Then choose a citrus zest and spices. Here I have gone for long pepper, a granite-grey catkin grown in India and Indonesia, which has the hot bite of black pepper but with more of a violet-scented pungency.
Ingredients
For the pastry
120g unsalted butter, frozen
180g plain flour, plus more for dusting 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
2 tsp granulated sugar
100ml (scant 1/ cup) iced water
For the filling
300g plums, stoned and sliced
150g cherries, stoned
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
2 Tbsp cornflour
Finely grated zest of a lemon
2 long peppers, ground
100g marzipan
1 egg white
Method
Freeze the butter in advance, wrapped in foil. The aim is to keep everything cold for light, flaky pastry.
Combine the flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Coarsely grate in the frozen butter, holding it in the foil as you grate.
Stir in with a table knife as you go to coat the wisps of butter in flour. Stir in two-thirds of the iced water, adding more only as needed to form a shaggy (not sticky) dough. Use your hands to lightly bring it together and wrap in cling film. Chill in the fridge for half an hour (or up to 3 days).
When you are ready to cook the galette, heat the oven to 200C/180C fan.
Tumble the fruit with 2 tablespoons of the sugar, the cornflour, lemon zest and spice.
Lightly dust a baking sheet with flour and roll out the pastry on it to a circle about 5mm thick. Roll out the marzipan to a very thin circle, smaller than the pastry, and lay it on top. Pile on the fruit, leaving a 7cm border. Fold the edges up and over the fruit, pleating and pinching as needed to keep it in place.
Beat the egg white until pale and very foamy. Brush the foam onto the pastry and sprinkle it with the remaining tablespoon of sugar.
Bake for 35 minutes. The pastry should be crisp and golden and the fruit juicy and bubbling. I think it is best warm, about an hour out of the oven.
Spice switch
Keep it hot with a good pinch of black pepper, Aleppo pepper or chilli flakes. Or take it more floral with lavender blossoms, cracked coriander seeds, ground cardamom or toasted and ground fennel seeds. — Serves 6