So the first book gets pulled off the shelf and pressed into action - The Jimmy Young Cook Book from 1968. This was one that I rescued from my mum's pile of charity shop books. It's a collection of recipes sent into Jimmy Young's BBC Radio show - for those younger readers, Jimmy Young was one of the country's best known disc jockeys, hosting a show on Radio 2 until as recently as 2002.The book is really an artifact of its time containing lots of boiled (red) meat recipes, lots of mince and (in a book with 142 recipes) only four chicken recipes. There were a lot that sounded particularly unnappealing - Thursday mince, for example, contains unspecified minced meat, oxtail soup, 2 large onions and grated cheese. Ick.
One recipe jumped right out at me - John Peel Tart. How could I, as a late-'80s/early-90s indie kid, resist a recipe with that name? I also wanted to challenge myself as it was a pastry dish, and as I've mentioned before I've got a love-hate relationship with pastry. I decided to cheat, though, and bought frozen pastry which just needed to be defrosted and rolled out - success! It was brilliantly easy to make, especially once I'd purloined an enamel plate from my mum (I only have 10" tart tins). The resultant tart was delicious, tasting similar to a mince pie - we had two refusals from the kids but Simon and I had ours warm with ice cream.
JOHN PEEL TART8oz short-crust pastry
4oz golden syrup
1oz butter
6oz currants
1dspn lemon juice
1oz chopped peel
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1oz ground almonds
METHOD: Melt the golden syrup and the butter, together with the currants, lemon juice, chopped peel, mixed spice and ground almonds. Mix all together over the heat, then take off heat and leave to cool. Line a greased 7-in fireproof plate with half the rolled out pastry. Fill with the fruit mixture. Cover with the remaining pastry, sealing the edges well and bake for around 40 minutes in a fairly hot oven, until golden brown. Serve hot or cold.
