Nigella Lawson’s Salted Chocolate Tart

For the base I like to use chocolate sandwich biscuits which I break up roughly before dropping them into a food processor. Next I add some good dark chocolate. I give this a blitz until I have beautiful earthy rubble. On top of this I add some soft unsalted butter and smoked sea salt flakes. Though you can of course use regular sea salt flakes. This gets another blitz until the butter is incorporated. I tip this mixture into a loose bottom flan tin then press it down and around the edges with my hands before smoothing it with the back of a spoon. I leave the lime case in the fridge to set overnight so that all I need to do the next day is melt a few luscious ingredients together for the filling. I begin by finely chopping a slab of chocolate. Again it must be good and dark. So I have already laid the foundations for my salty chocolate tart, in other words made the base, and now for the filling. I'm going to start off by using a word that I love which is I'm going to slake some cornflour in milk. This gives a satiny lusciousness to the chocolate filling. All right that's done. Feeling very efficient in a warm kind of a way. And now I need some cream, a lake of cream. I've used very good dark chocolate so I need a bit of sugar and then the cozy sweetness of vanilla. You can use extract but I love this goo. So that's the light side. Now come with me if you will to the dark side and I mean dark. Some instant espresso. I use this a lot with chocolate because it provides a really deep dark hinterland. In life I have no truck with bitterness. In the kitchen I'm drawn to it. So I want some cocoa and although sieving is my least favorite job in the kitchen I am prepared to do this now because it's worth it. I promised a salted chocolate tart but I'm going one better, smoked salt. I am a person of passions and I love this stuff. It brings a slight note of the bonfire. Now the chocolate goes into the pan here and then finally an ooze of extra virgin olive oil. It would be more usual to use butter here but the thing is to me butter just merges in with the cream. It doesn't add anything and this brings a sort of slightly grassy peppery savoriness as well as gleam. And on we go. At this stage I just want the chocolate to start melting. Then I can add my slaked cornflour. Right so the chocolate's melted now. In this goes. The cornflour helps this mixture to thicken and without eggs which makes life very simple. I mean you saw how easy the tart base was to make. This is even easier. I mean it's embarrassingly easy. Now it's quite easy to tell when it's ready. I mean you can see how thick it is but this is a scientific method. Lift up the spoon, draw your finger across the back and you can see it's not trickling. That line is staying there. That means turn off the heat and pour into a jug to cool. Now it's got to be cool enough so that it doesn't melt the biscuit base but I still want it to have a bit of flow to it so when I pour it into the base it will just ripple in. To prevent it's getting a skin I'm going to scrunch up some dampened parchment to have about my person as one does. Let's put it on the top. My mother taught me this. So once this is cooled down a bit I can build on my foundations and that's perfect. Get it to wave its way into the tin. Just a little shimmy to make it flat and even and now it needs to go in the fridge to set for later. A deep deep joy awaits. Betty I've made your favourite. Oh my god. That looks beautiful. There we go. That looks so good. That's so delicious.