I have a lovely book, part history and part cookbook, called Tea Fit for a Queen. I love the Queen, so this was a wonderful and very appropriate birthday present from a lovely friend one year.
There are lots of lovely things to make, but I wanted to make something savoury because I don’t do a lot of savoury baking on this blog.
In the ‘A Feast Fit for a King’ chapter, the book talks about sitting down to afternoon tea in the Georgian era, with diners set to ‘expect an elaborate affair.’ I assume this means a lot of courses?!
So in this chapter the savoury recipes are smaller portions which I presume is to leave room for more cake later on. One recipe that appealed to me were these salmon and dill tartlets. I love smoked salmon but haven’t really used dill before.
The recipe uses pre-made pastry, but I thought I might as well do it properly. So I used this recipe from BBC Good Food and regretted it a short time later because I really am not very good at pastry. Which is why I wanted to make these – practice makes perfect!
They were actually really easy to make and I think they look lovely. I think on some of the tartlets I struggled a bit with the pastry, and so I think perhaps a couple could have been cooked for a little bit longer. I won’t lie, there was a fair bit of ‘patching up’ going on which resulted in some of the pastry bases being thicker in certain places than others…
But they tasted beautiful! They are PACKED with smoked salmon and for once the quantities worked really well – the filling mixture did fill all 6 cases!
Things I’ve learned from this experience:
1. Dill smells amazing and I may start bathing in it
2. I am still not very good at making pastry
I think I might have to practice these a few more times before I serve them to the Queen, but as a first attempt I don’t think they were bad. I certainly enjoyed the one two I tried!
I wonder; when the Queen has afternoon tea, what she has in her sandwiches?
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I can attest that they were lovely. The filling was not as light as a quiche would be. The salmon and dill were nicely balanced. The pastry was fine. (I think the Queen has cucumber in her sandwiches).
i am sure one would enjoy these with the cucumber sandwiches ; – )