The idea behind this tart came about many years ago one night while travelling in India. I was staying in a village in the Himalayas in a room I rented under a local family’s house. This was quite a common thing for tourists to do. Whenever we would feel unable to face another meal at the only place in town that served food at night — the food always being dahl, rice and subji (subji being vegetable, and the one item that varied) — we would organise a feast in one of the tourist’s rooms.
On this particular night some friends had invited me to dinner at their room in the next village about 20 minutes up a steep rocky track. A trip well worth making as these two girls, one Italian and one Dutch, were great cooks. As the sun set I made the climb in near-freezing conditions, only to find them not at home. Sam, who happened to live in an adjoining room, heard me knocking. I told her of my dinner invitation, and we could smell food cooking, so we let ourselves in to find an eggplant dish slowly simmering and some rice already cooked waiting in a pot. After about half an hour we decided we should eat, and eat we did — it was delicious!
We were, however, still hungry, so we searched the kitchen benches and found a mango, a few eggs, some butter and sugar. Sam decided that I should make dessert with these ingredients, which set me thinking about the flavours of masala chai, the spiced sweet milky tea that is drunk in all the tea houses over India. I wanted to make custard flavoured with these spices to accompany the mango. Due to lack of ingredients this didn’t happen, but I did slice off the mango cheeks and sauté them in butter and sugar — a very tasty winter dessert to warm one through.
Quite a few hours later, as I was walking out the door to head home, our dinner hosts arrived. I thanked them for a great meal as I waved farewell and stumbled on down the mountain. As I wandered home in the now freezing conditions, two things were going through my head: the first being that I must remember to make the chai-spiced custard one day; and the other that I must see this Sam girl again.
Time passed by — a number of years, actually. I had been travelling around Asia and was now living in Taiwan when I got a message from Sam to say she was coming to Taiwan. Two things went through my mind again: the chai-flavoured custard, and of course seeing Sam again.
Three years later, Sam and I are living together in Australia and I’m planning her birthday party, so I decide on an Indian banquet — and to finish, the chai-spiced custard, which by now had morphed into a chai-spiced brûlée. The brûlée was a hit; even the non-dessert eaters loved it. It became a trademark dessert at our dinner parties, and once the bakery opened I wanted to use the flavours somehow.
Over the first few months the ginger brûlée tart slowly developed. It was also a hit; the only problem now was how to produce enough of them. So here is the recipe and method we developed at the bakery to suit a small tart.
