GROUND RICE TART:

I grew up with this tart/pie -- it was one of my mother's favourites -- and over the (many) intervening years had thought about making it myself. But even after I got my sister to go through my mother's old handwritten recipe book and e-mail me the recipe a couple of years ago, it wasn't until today, when I was standing in the store looking at the display of Bob's Red Mill products and saw the packets of rice flour, that I actually did so. I'd changed computers and operating systems and e-mail programs and all that crap in the last 2 years, so rather than hunt for my mum's recipe, at first I looked for one on line. And found this:

Ground Rice Tart
Weight of 1 egg in butter, sugar and rice flour. Beat butter and sugar to cream, add beaten egg and rice flour. Line tart plate with short pastry, put a very little raspberry jam in the bottom and then pour in the mixture. Bake in a moderate oven.

Short and sweet, and it sounded right, so I set out to make it, but as I started to prepare the filling something about it didn't seem to match what my mother used to do (I remembered something about almonds), so in the end I tracked down my mum's version, and switched recipes halfway through:

Ground Rice Tart (Joyce Connell's version)
pastry: 4oz flour, pinch salt, half oz. caster sugar, 2 oz marg, 4 tsps cold water
filling: 2 tbs raspberry jam, 2 eggs, 4 oz ground almonds, 2 oz marg, 2 oz ground rice, 4oz caster sugar, quarter teaspoon almond essence

Line [9-inch pie] dish with pastry. cover bottom with jam. place remaining ingredients in bowl and combine until well mixed. spread over the jam. bake at 325 degrees on middle shelf for 1 hour 10 mins. serves 6-8.

So that's what I made, and it worked out well. It certainly had the taste of the tart I remember. It was a darker and slightly more solid filling than I recall, though, perhaps because I used almond meal rather than finely ground almonds (and I'm pretty sure I left out the "2 oz marg"). It was halfway towards what I seem to remember is called a Bakewell tart. Next time, I think I'll try using fewer almonds, and in the form of the almond flour that Bob's Red Mill makes, to try and get that lighter texture.

When my mother made it, it would occasionally be not completely set in the middle -- what we called "weaky" in our Northern dialect -- and we liked it that way so much we begged her to make it that way every time . . .