Studio In House & Apple Flan Ménagère

Stuffed full of tea & cake last Saturday afternoon, minutes later C & I found ourselves munching our way through various unusual varieties of apples.

Studio In House is a (fairly) new concept store on Redchurch street. Every so often, the shop will change its contents, according to the owner's fancy, and will adopt a new guise. For October, it is filled with apples. If you were looking intently at your feet while walking by, you'd stop because of the smell. Stepping inside is as if you're stepping into an orchard: the sweet, fresh, powerful scent surrounds you and fills the space, escaping out the open front door. A longing sigh and exclaimation of, I can't believe I'm in London follows. Shut your eyes and you're transported into a picturesque old-English scene, and you don't want to return to reality.

Paper bags filled with apples line the benches and tables; wicker baskets with nobbled and imperfectly round apples lie on the floor; freshly pressed apple juice stands in a bookshelf in one corner; hydrangeas fill the apple-free spaces. The different varieties of apples available are written on a blackboard at the front of the shop, where pieces to try will be given to you, so you can admire the fresh, powerful taste and crunch. 

A bag of Bramley apples were purchased, and carried preciously all the way home. Most of that way I had my nose in the bag, trying to capture the precious scent.

Not wanting to do to much with the beautiful apples, I made a batch of rich shortcrust pastry, lined a tart tin, blind baked it, and then filled it with finely sliced apple, positioned as delicately as I could in circling patterns.

Apparently this creation is called an apple flan ménagère. Brushed with an apricot glaze when fresh out the oven and served with a dollop of thick double cream, this was a quintessential English autumn served on a plate.