CHOCOLATE & AMARULA MOUSSE TART

If you are on a diet, don't read this. You'll burst into tears. If not, enjoy!

Ingredients

Tart base

100g PnP cream crackers

100g salted butter, melted

Tart filling

90g dark chocolate

60ml castor sugar

2 eggs, separated

80ml Amarula liqueur

180ml milk

Caramelised pears

1 pear, sliced

60ml castor sugar

Extra

Icing sugar for dusting

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Using a food processor (or manual labour), crunch the cream crackers to a fine crumble. 

Mix with the melted butter. 

Spray a fluted tart tin (preferably one with a removable base) with Spray & Cook or smear with butter. 

Layer the bottom and sides of the tin with the crumble and flatten the crumble on the bottom and onto the sides of the tin. 

Blind bake for 10 minutes and let it cool down.

 Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Add the castor sugar and stir until melted. 

Mix in the egg yolks and remove from heat.

In a different pot heat up the milk until it starts to form bubbles, add the Amarula and remove from the heat.

Incorporate a small amount of the milk mixture into the chocolate mix and stir. 

Slowly add the rest of the milk while whisking the chocolate mixture.

Whisk the egg whites until it starts to form peaks and gently fold it into the chocolate custard.

Spoon the mixture into the cookie base and put it in the fridge for 4 hours (or preferably overnight) to allow it to set.

Add the pear slices and sugar to a hot pan and caramelise over medium heat. 

Lay them out on baking paper.

Once the tart has set, dust it with icing sugar and decorate with the pear slices.

£10 A WEEK FOOD SHOP

I'm not one for cat emails, meat-free Mondays, mental detox or sympathy evoking humanitarian stories. Ashamedly, the economist in me overrules all of that.

Today I'm making an exception.

I love this story for 3 reasons:

1) It's about food

2) She never blamed anyone for her circumstances or adopted the 

"I am a victim and now the world owes me something" attitude

3) It has a good ending (I'm getting soft, I know)

It's a good read. 

Click on the link below.

10-pound-food-shop-blog

PICK A FINGER

To be honest I don’t like sardines or cabbage or beans or brown rice…I do like feta though. 

So this week’s Freshly Blogged ingredients was really a challenge for me – to cook something 

that I’d be happy to eat with ingredients I really don’t like. 

This was more determination than inspiration. But I think I succeeded…

I polished the plate after taking the photo.

If you agree, please vote for my recipe here!

Ingredients

Rice cake

¾ cup PnP Brown Rice

1l hot water

2 sachets Ina Paarman concentrated vegetable stock

1 cup chopped cabbage

½ cup chopped green beans

1 disk PnP Plain Feta Cheese, roughly crumbled

2/3 cup grated Emmentaler cheese

Sardine Pâté

1 sardine (from a can of Lucky Star Pilchards in tomato sauce)

40ml PnP Greek Style yoghurt

½ tbs Ina Paarman Lemon & Rosemary seasoning

Fish Fingers

4 sardines (from a can of Lucky Star Pilchards in tomato sauce)

80ml cake flour

2 tsp Robertson’s Garlic Salt

1 tsp Robertson’s White Pepper

1 disk PnP Plain Feta Cheese

1 medium egg

Garnish

PnP Cayenne pepper

Crumbled PnP Plain Feta Cheese

Instructions

Bring water to the boil, add the stock sachets then add the rice.

Let it simmer for 45 minutes.

In a food processor, blend all the pâté ingredients together until it resembles the smooth texture of a pâté. Scoop into a zip lock bag.

Next add all the fish finger ingredients to the food processor 

(it’s ok if there is still a little bit of leftovers from the pâté in the processor). 

Use the pulse function of the food processor – you don’t want to overdo it, 

you just want to cut up the fish and feta and get the egg to bind it all together.

If the mixture is still quite runny, add some more flour 

(egg & fish sizes differ so your mixture might be wetter / dryer than mine). 

Flatten out the mixture on a cutting board or on baking paper using a spatula.

Heat oil in a non-stick pan (medium to high heat).

Using a large (sharp) knife cut off 10cm x 2cm fingers one at a time. 

It’ll probably stick to the knife, then just allow it slide off the knife into the pan.

Once crispy on the bottom side, carefully turn them over. 

They only need to be turned once.

After the fish fingers are done, add the cabbage to the pan and flash fry for a couple of minutes 

then drain on paper towel.

Once the rice has cooked for 45 minutes, add the beans to the same pot and let it simmer for another 15 minutes.

Drain and return the rice & beans to the pot, also add the cabbage and feta cheese and set aside. 

Mix well and press the mixture into a cookie cutter or other object to form a “cake”.

The rules for this challenge prevented me from using the oven so I used a blowtorch to melt the 

emmentaler cheese over the rice cake but you can just pop it under the grill.

To assemble:

Cut open 1 corner of the zip lock bag and use it as a piping bag to pipe dollops of the pâté onto each fish finger. 

Garnish with crumbled feta.

Sprinkle cayenne pepper over the melted cheese top of the rice cake.

Disclaimer: For this recipe and for the upcoming challenges, I'm using and promoting PnP specific ingredients - it is a PnP competition after all! If, during the competition, I come across a PnP ingredient which I feel is inferior I will suggest an alternative in the recipe. But so far the ingredients have been great so I doubt that will be necessary!