I’ve had a week of resting from a back injury. I won’t tell you how I injured it because frankly, it’s embarrassing. But as a result, I’ve been lying in bed at my parents’ place, being spoiled silly. So really, not the worst. Mum’s been making all her greatest hits, including her spaghetti and meatballs — something I’ve been dreaming about for months.
Every few hours, she brings me a heat pack for my back. The kind you heat in the microwave. This one’s a bit hippy-dippy — covered in bandhani fabric and filled with rice. When it’s heated, it smells toasty, malty, and delicious. Not necessarily what you expect from a heat pack, but certainly a plus.
I’ve been worrying about what to write — between the back pain and the bedrest, any time not spent doomscrolling has gone into admiring the ceiling and listening to the rain outside. I’ve had a lot of time to think about life, and the thing I keep coming back to is how much I hate small plates at restaurants.
All the creativity and attention seems to go into the small plate format these days, and for me, it just never hits the spot. I like greedy portions of food. And if it’s true that we eat with our eyes first, well… there’s not much to eat, is there? A few months ago, five of us were sharing small plates at a restaurant, and one of the dishes was one quail egg. That’s possibly enough food for half an eye.
My crusade against small plates keeps getting derailed by the smell of cooking wafting in from the pantry, where mum is often at the stove. Lately, I’ve noticed she always starts by frying the garlic first. Not the onion. When asked, she said she’s started lightly crushing garlic pods — skin on — and frying those first. Because the skin stays on and the garlic is still mostly whole, it doesn’t burn as quickly as chopped or smashed garlic. She tells me that it’s her Mangalore family’s preferred way of cooking. You can take your time letting it slowly sizzle and it starts to smell divine. You know you’re about to eat something good. Onion can’t even.
I’ve been feeling better the last couple of days, and thought it might be nice to shoot a Malabar Tea Room recipe with mum while I’m here. Nectarines are in season, and she used a few to make little frangipane and nectarine tarts. I know, the irony of little tarts when I just spent the above paragraph attacking small plates is not lost on me. But mum, unlike me, is obsessed with small desserts and has the opposite urge — to make everything individual portioned. However, I’m assuming most people don’t have single-serving tart tins lying around, so I’m adapting the recipe for a 9-inch tart pan. This tart would also be delicious with the small, candy-sweet Ladakhi apricots that are presently in the fruit shops. We tried to style the tart to look like the one below — but sadly, it’s nowhere close.
what we was hoping it would look like…
Still, what she lacks in looks, well… she lacks. But she’s got other things going for her: almonds and nectarines are headily delicious together. It makes sense — they belong to the same family, Rosaceae. You may not have realised this until you’ve eaten your way through the floral, fleshy nectarine fruit, and gotten to the kernel, at which point you’d think: “Wait. Are you an almond?”
Same goes for apricots and peaches. You know what else belongs to this family? Roses, as the family name suggests. Which makes me think — a splash of rosewater would’ve brought out their floral-ness and helped both the nectarines and the almonds be more intensely themselves. And if you’re lucky, that’s what family offers.
PS: It’s thrilling that something as soft, homey and non-threatening as a peach carries this secret weapon — a compound in it’s kernel called amygdalin that gets converted to cyanide when eaten. It’s toxic only in large quantities for adults, but to be avoided in the case of babies and children. When the detective in a cosy murder sniffs at a dead person and confidently declares it be cyanide poisoning, it’s because they smell almonds!
Recipe: Nectarine & Frangipane Tart
Ingredients
Tart crust
50 g unsalted butter, kept out of the fridge for 5 minutes
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 1/4 cup flour
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Frangine
100 g unsalted butter, room temperature
100 g icing sugar
100 g almond flour
1/4 tsp almond essence
2 eggs
2 nectarines, sliced into 1/2-inch wedges
1 tbsp sugar for sprinkling
2 tbsp melted butter
Method
To make the tart dough
Cut the butter into a few big chunks. With a stand mixer or hand beater, cream the butter and sugar till soft and the butter lightens in colour.
Add the egg and mix again.
Add in the flour and mix until just combined. Be careful not to overmix.
Cover in clingfing and rest the dough in the fridge for an hour.
To make the frangipane
Lightly beat the butter, stir in the almond flour and sugar, without beating too much.
Gradually add the eggs.
Finally add the almond essence and mix.
Leave to rest in the fridge for 2 hours.
To assemble
Roll out the dough between 2 pieces of parchment with a little bit of flour if needed until it is even and about 3 mm thick, or slightly larger than your tart pan.
Carefully transfer your rolled out dough onto a rolling pin, and transfer onto your pan. and smoothen it out, and remove excess dough from the tops of the pan.
Using a fork, prick the base a few times lightly. This will let the bottom of the pastry crisp up better.
Cover with foil, spread out beans/rice on the foil.
Bake at 200 for 15 minutes, remove from the over, remove the foil and the beans/rice and let it cool.
Fill the tart 3/4 of the way with the frangipane.
Arrange sliced nectarines on top in concentric circles.
Brush with the melted butte and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake again at 200 for 20-25 minutes until it is slightly brown on top.
Let cool and enjoy.