A Monthly Publication

By Michael Prince of Chives

I’m waiting for my good lady to finish work and it’s very late. ‘What a good time to write the newsletter article’ I thought. There’s one problem though.... I’m having ‘writer’s block’. I don’t have a clue what to write about. That’s when I heard the music playing over the stereo system; I quite like it. It’s by Don Mclean apparently.  It reminds me of my love affair with music. We go back quite a long way. I love music; I’ve always got some music playing, whether it is at home or walking to work and most definitely whilst cooking. I find that music and cooking go hand in hand together. I have almost 200 cds with music from as far back as the 1960’s all the way up to present day.

This brings me to my teenage years living in Torquay when I used to play in a band.  We were a 5 piece band called Bruised which consisted of me on the keyboard and acoustic guitar, Daniel Clark on the lead guitar, Dave Clark on the bass, Darren Webster on the drums, and Paul Lynch was our singer. There were two members/ friends that came into the band and left again, both drummers coincidently.  I had some great nights in the band. We started off doing covers of R.E.M, Radiohead, Deep Blue something, Lenny Kravitz, and Queen just to name but a few, but then we started writing our own songs, we even recorded a CD with 8 songs on it. Sadly my copy has broken but there are a couple of cd’s out there somewhere. We never hit the same heights as the Beatles or Queen, but I’m sure giving a couple more years we would have been playing on Top of the Pops or Kerrang. Band practice ended with a few drinks at the pub we rehearsed in and a game of football (about 1 in the morning) at the coach station. Happy days.

Sadly I left for Norfolk leaving the band short, and after a couple of gigs the guitarist and bass guitarist moved to London and the singer up North, leaving only a drummer to keep the dream alive. Sadly though there are few people who’d go to a gig with just a drummer, so now Bruised is just a distant memory. Maybe a reunion could be on the cards one day.

I keep in touch with the drummer on a regular basis as he now lives in Cambridge. Every time I go and see him, I make a lemon tart, which he loves. So this recipe is a dedication to him and the band.

The ultimate lemon tart

Shop bought pastry

A tub of crème fraiche

5 lemons

5 eggs

150g caster sugar

Roll out the pastry and bake it blind at 180c in till cooked. Juice the lemons. In a pan, warm through the crème fraiche with the lemon juice and sugar. Whilst this is warming, whisk the eggs together. Once the mix has just come to a slow boil, take it off the heat and add it to the egg mixture and mix together. Pour it into the cooked pastry dish and cook at 170c for 15 to 20 minutes. It is cooked when the mixture still has a slight wobble in the middle. Remember that it will continue cooking when you take it out the oven so if the mixture is completely firm when you take it out of the oven, that will cook some more whilst it is cooling and therefore be over cooked.

As an afterthought, I never ever buy shop bought pastry, but it does taste acceptable and for quickness is a handy item to buy.

So, to Bruised, for some of the best music ever written.

Happy cooking!