So I invited the usual suspects around one night for grilled cheese sandwiches and French horror movies, and somehow this happened.
But there was also this.
I can’t imagine watching scary movies without Jissie or Dion. It started last year when we dragged ourselves out to St Kilda to see Quarantine. Then a group gathered at mine to watch The Descent, definitely one of my favourite movies, and Suspiria. So when I got a mysterious hair up my ass about having an evening full of fancy grilled cheese sandwiches, the horror struck me as a natural compliment. There’ve been a spate of great-looking French horror films lately, so I decided to download legally obtain the well-reviewed slasher Inside and the almost indescribable Martyrs.
Inside was spare, moody, unrelenting and, ultimately, just a little camp, with Betty Blue’s Beatrice Dalle as a scissor-wielding, child-hungry killer and Allison Paradis as her very pregnant victim. The whole thing was a straight-up exercise in the monstrous feminine, full of blood, wombs, vicious mothers, and even a pair of scissors through someone’s scrotum. It was great, and well worth the praise.
Martyrs, on the other hand… oh my. I don’t want to say too much, as it really is a film best watched when you don’t know much about it, but oh my. Rich from FourFour describes it as super-horror, and indeed it is. It’s the kind of harrowing, brutal film that makes you tense every muscle in your body and leaves you aching for hours afterwards. It’s a difficult film to watch, and indeed we fast forwarded through one excruciatingly long scene, but overall it really was worth it. It stayed with me for days, in the best possible way.
But you don’t come here to read about my increasingly juvenile taste in films, you come here for the food, and there was such food to be had that night. The focus of the evening was, obviously, grilled cheese, and we made it through cheddar on rye with white truffle oil and gruyere on sourdough with caramelized onion. I had planned camembert and apple, but we got sidetracked by wine, good conversation and scary-ass movies. I also made a caponata based roughly on this recipe from Serious Eats as a way to cut through all the richness, and it was perfect, beautifully warm and fragrant and sweet and acid. I also decided to make a tart for dessert using several recipes from David Lebovitz, including his rather remarkable tart shell. Basically, you make a kind of choux pastry, press it into your tin, bake and then it’s done. No food processor, no chilling, no resting, and, best of all, no rolling. The only caveat is it cracks rather easily, especially if your butter-crazed cat knocks the hot shell off the counter as soon as it comes out of the oven.
The benefit of this ruined shell, though, was that I made it twice in one day, refining my technique a little. The biggest problem was making sure the dough was evenly distributed in the tart tin. Also, I found the shell puffed up quite a bit when baked on its lonesome, so I blind baked the second shell. While the second shell did shrink a little, it didn’t crack at all. I am the pastry queen.
EDITED TO ADD: Jissie and Jon recently uploaded the animation (!!) they made for Spooky Fancy Grilled Cheese Night to Vimeo. That’s right, they made a freaking animation. My friends are the best. Enjoy.
Rhubarb and lemon tart
A pastiche of David Lebovitz recipes. Serves six. For the shell
- 90g butter, cut into pieces.
- 1 tbsp flavourless vegetable oil. I used canola.
- 3 tbsp canola
- Fat pinch salt
- 150g, or 1 rounded cup, flour
For the lemon part
- 1/2 cup lemon juice, or the juice of 3-4 lemons. I used two large lemons and got between 1/4 and 1/3 cup juice. The lemon curd was a little on the mild side as a result, but I think it worked well with the astringency of the rhubarb.
- Grated zest of one lemon
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 85g butter, cut into pieces
- 2 large eggs
- 2 large egg yolks
For the rhubarb part
- A bunch of rhubarb, washed and cut into 2cm pieces
- 2-3 tablespoons sugar
- Splash good vanilla essence
First, put the cat outside. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Put butter, water, oil, salt and sugar in a heat-proof bowl. I used a Pyrex bowl, as I developed strong feelings about Pyrex mixing bowls when I did home ec in high school. This, combined with an antipathy towards the thin plastic mixing bowls of my childhood, have left me with a mighty collection of Pyrex. Anyway. Put the bowl in the oven for around 15 minutes, until butter is bubbling and starts to brown around the edges. Gingerly remove hot bowl from the oven and quickly dump in the flour. Working quickly, combine the butter and flour with a heat-proof spatula until it forms a bowl.
Tip into a 23cm tart tin and allow to cool for a minute. Pat it into the tin using the heel of your palm. I find it helps to pat the dough into a roughly round in the middle of the pan, then push it out to the edges from the centre. This made for a more evenly distributed tart shell second time around. I also used a fork to press the sides tightly into the tin. Prick the dough all over with the tines of a fork. The first time around I followed David’s instructions and baked it as-is. Second time around I blind baked for the first 15 minutes, then removed foil and weights and gave it around 5 minutes to brown up.
To blind bake, quickly spray the shiny side of a piece of foil with cooking oil. Press into the tart tin, fitting the foil in quite tightly, then tip in ceramic pie weights, dry beans, rice, something like that. Bake for 10-15 minutes, then remove the foil and weights and bake for 5 minutes more until a pale sort of gold.
When the tart has had its time, carefully, carefully place it on a wire rack. This is prime cracking time, so you want to be careful. Allow the shell to cool completely before filling.
To make the lemon curd, combine the butter, sugar, and lemon zest and juice. Oh, you’ll probably want to pre-heat the oven to around 180 degrees C at this point, too. Heat gently until melted and combined. Whisk together the eggs and egg yolks in a small bowl. When the butter is melted, whisk a small amount of it into the beaten eggs to warm them, then scrape the warmed eggs into the butter mixture and cook over a low heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. Pour it directly into the tart shell through a strainer and smooth out.
Put the curd-filled tart in the oven to set up for a few minutes, and busy yourself with the rhubarb. Put the rhubarb pieces, vanilla, a spoon or two of water and an appropriate amount of sugar in a saucepan. Heat over high until the rhubarb starts to soften and release liquid, then reduce the heat to medium. Bring to a sternish simmer and cook until rhubarb is mostly broken down and jammy, with a few more solid pieces here and there. Remove the tart from the oven and smooth the rhubarb mixture over the top. Chill for 3-4 hours before serving.
