Don't Sweat the Aubergine

yolks, and seasoning. Add a little salt, if you don’t find the cheese salty enough.
    Whisk the egg whites until they form peaks ( see here ). Fold them into the thick béchamel; or fold the béchamel into the eggs, if the bowl is easier to work with than the pan in which you made the sauce. You lift and turn, until the egg and sauce are blended.
    Spread the sauce into the pastry case. It does not appear to be a particularly generous filling; but it will expand. Sprinkle the Parmesan on top.
    You can bake this at a higher temperature than you would a tart with a custard filling. Try gas mark 5/190°C, until the soufflé has lifted and is brown on top.
ALSACE ONION TART
    A pastry case with a flour-based filling. The Alsatians like food that fills them up. The recipe is from
Alsace: The Complete Guide
by Vivienne Menkes-Ivry.
    Lard, or butter and oil
    3 medium onions, sliced
    57g butter
    57g plain flour
    280ml milk
    2 egg yolks
    Salt, pepper, nutmeg
    In a heavy saucepan, melt enough lard, or butter and oil, to fry the onions. (This may be 2 or 3 tbsp – enough to ensure that bits of onion do not catch on the pan and burn.) Add the onions, and a little salt; cover the pan, and cook on a very low heat. When, after about 20 minutes, the onions have wilted and are swimming in water, uncover the pan to allow the liquid to evaporate. Cook until you have a golden, sweet mass. (Menus sometimes, a little pretentiously, call this an onion confit.)
    To repeat the béchamel recipe: melt the 57g butter in a small saucepan. Add the flour, and cook for a minute, until you have a sandy (but not dark) roux. Still on the heat, add the milk in stages, stirring to incorporate each pouring before you add the next. You will have a double-thick sauce, of the sort you would use in the soufflé or cheese tart above. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Allow the sauce to cool before stirring in the egg yolks (you don’t want them to scramble).
    Stir the onions into the sauce, then pour the mixture into the pastry case. Bake in the centre of a gas mark 3/160°C oven for about 25 minutes, until the filling is set and golden.
    This tart often includes bacon, which I would treat in the same way as the bacon in the quiche Lorraine, ( see here ). I must admit that I have never tried the method recommended in the book: pouring boiling water over the bacon strips or lardons, draining them, and then adding them to the filling.



 
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R ICE
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    OF THE MANY aspects of cuisine that can make us feel inadequate, surely the most humiliating is an inability to prepare a palatable dish of a simple, staple foodstuff. Yet who hasn’t produced soggy, clumpy, gluey rice? I have, and still do. There is one, simple rule, which – like the one about keeping your eye on the ball when playing tennis – is easier to break than you might expect
. Don’t overcook it.
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HOW TO COOK LONG-GRAIN RICE
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    Method 1: bring a large pan of water to the boil. Add salt to taste, if you like. 1 Throw in your rice (about 75g is a decent portion for one). Bring back the water to a simmer. Start tasting the rice at about 8 minutes. It will probably be ready in 10. 2 Drain it when it is tender but before it goes soft.
    Method 2: put the rice into a measuring jug, to gauge its volume. Pour it into a pan – one in which it forms a shallow bed. 3 Cover it with twice its volume of cold water, 4 salted to taste. Bring the pan to the boil, and check the time. Simmer gently, until the water is nearly level with the surface of the rice – ‘sink holes’, like the bubbles you get when a thick stew is simmering, will appear among the grains. Cover the pan, put a heat disperser between it and the ring, and turn the heat to its lowest setting. Turn off the heat 10 minutes after the water started to boil. Let the rice stand in the covered pan for a further 5 minutes.
    Method 3: put the rice into a measuring jug, to gauge its volume. Pour it into a pan, as above, but now cover it in cold water and leave it to soak for 30 minutes or longer. 5 Drain. Tip the rice back into the pan, and cover it with one and a half times its volume of cold water, salted to taste. 6 Bring the pan to the boil, cover it, put a heat disperser between it and the ring, and turn the heat to its lowest setting. Turn off the heat 10 minutes after the water started to boil. Let the rice stand in the covered pan for a further 5 minutes.
A SIMPLE RICE LUNCH OR SUPPER
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    Fry leftover bits