time for some r&r

The parents are coming! The parents are coming!

Oh, hey there. I was just having a Paul Revere moment there as I recall a recent weekend when my parents came to town and ALSO B’s parents came to town and then it was parentsapalooza and my brain almost melted. I had to make sure my parents saw my new place and were sparkled and dazzled to the point of blindness. I also wanted B and his ‘rents to feel comfortable and cozy and copacetic. And lastly I wanted to make sure everyone’s tummies were happy so that perchance, all of these lovely people may want to come back again and have a cup of tea with me or something.

The dinner part was easy, but I had to end on a high note: nothing too fancy-pants due to time constraints and the inevitable food exhaustion, but not cake-from-a-box because that’s not how we play around here.  It came down to fruit and ice cream – simple, classic, universally beloved, easily deconstructed to taste, and all of it could be made ahead of time – we have a winner!

First: this rustic rhubarb and raspberry crostata from Bon Appetit fit the bill for the best use of fresh fruit on a limited time table. What I was worried was a way too wet and sticky dough turned into wheaty bready crust (without too much filling leaking through), kind of like a Nutrigrain cereal bar or a Fig Newton. The filling was firm and a jellied consistency. I’d never worked with rhubarb before but this recipe was easy as you just slice ’em up and they don’t have to cook down all of the way before you bake. I did double the sugar to make it less tart. The results are a free-form fruit jam pizza which can be served warm or room temp and brings fans of both sweet and tart around the same table.

Second: This dulce de leche ice cream from Gourmet was touted as the best ice cream ever tasted. Count me in! The recipe specifies La Salamandra brand dulce de leche (a delicious caramel from Latin America) but it was so expensive: was it really, really worth it? OK, real answer: I dunno BUT  not having to make an ice cream custard with the risk of scrambled eggs absolutely was. This recipe is ridiculously easy and a no-egg ice cream that is this rich, creamy, smooth and flavorful was worth any price. However, maybe next time I could try Mexican cajeta (goats milk caramel) that is easily available at the local Mexican grocer here for a different flavor (and 1/3 the price).

And how did it turn out? Well, forks were lifted, conversation paused, and plates were cleared. At the end of dessert, B and I turned to each other amidst our parents’ chatting and we exchanged an excited, delighted glance that only we knew the meaning of: we’ve got the leftovers.

pie for the polish

My friend Adam has an annual memorial for his father by doing two of the things he loved best: having friends over and making potato pancakes. A lot of potato pancakes.  I so look forward to this evening of carb-loading gluttony every year, the crispy fried pancakes yielding just enough room in my stomach for a Polish beer or two. This year, he asked me to bring dessert and I thought to try out something Polish as a nod to his heritage – szarlotka, an apple tart. Of course, I made sure with Adam that he was OK with me potentially desecrating his food memories with my attempt at a childhood treat. He was not only OK , he promised to probably be drunk enough by dessert time for it not to matter; Adam’s cool like that.

I used this recipe from Richard Sax’ Classic Home Desserts. The instructions were clear and the recipe/ingredients passed Adam’s authenticity test.  Looked easy enough, just apples, cinnamon and a “cookie-like” dough. No rolling of doughs is a winning recipe in my book!

Whipping up the dough and cooking down the apples was rather easy. The challenge was that the book’s photo for szarlotka shows a beautiful latticed tart. What I found out instead, however, is that the “cookie-like” dough is as wet and sticky as, well, cookie dough and therefore does not lend itself to making delicate lattices no matter how many times you try to chill it (or however many hours of sleep you lose trying). In the end, I threw the rest of the dough on top of the apples and pieced it together as best I could. Once out of the oven, it didn’t really matter. Lattice or no, the tart looked golden and the aroma of cinnamon and apples filled up my kitchen.

When I brought it to Adam’s, having gorged on potato pancakes until we could all undo a belt notch or two, he brought out dessert. I told him my lattice woes and apologized for the results. He thought about it for a moment, and stated that he doesn’t remember szarlotka even having a top crust let alone a lattice. Excellent!

Oh and how did it taste? Well the “cookie-like” dough sure does taste like a chewy sugar cookie, sweeter and more crumbly than regular pie crust. The apples are not dressed up in anything too fancy, and the filling was like a chunky applesauce – not particulary distinctive, but comforting all the same. I do think the top crust adds some needed structure and texture, but if I make it again (and that would only be per Adam’s request) I’m just going to toss the whole thing on top and get more sleep next time.

Polish Apple Tart (Szarlotka)

Classic Home Desserts, 2010, Richard Sax

Dough

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Pinch salt

1 large egg

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Filling

6 large apples (3 McIntosh and 3 tart apples, such as Granny Smith, about 2 pounds total), peeled, cored, and cut into 1-inch chunks

1/4 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling

1 teaspoon mixed spices (ground cinnamon, ground mace, ground allspice, fresh-grated nutmeg, and/or cloves)

Confectioner’s sugar, for sprinkling

1. Dough: Sift the flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl; make a well in the center. Combine the egg, oil or butter, milk and vanilla in a cup; pour into the well. Stir with a fork, pulling in the flour from the sides of the well, until the mixture forms a soft dough. Transfer the dough to a sheet of wax paper and form into a disk; wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour while you prepare the filling.

2. Filling: Place the apples in a large skillet over medium heat. Cover and cook until the apples start to sizzle. Lower the heat and cook, stirring frequently, until the apples are very tender, usually 20 to 25 minutes. Stir in the sugar and spices. Remove the pan from the heat; mash the apples with the side of a large spoon to make a chunky puree. Set aside to cool.

3. Preheat the over to 350 degrees F, with a rack in the center. Butter a 9-inch fluted quiche or tart pan. (Alternatively, you can use a 9-inch springform pan or a square baking pan.) Pat about 2/3 of the chilled dough into the buttered pan, making an even bottom later and pressing the dough about 1 inch up the sides of the pan. Spread the filling over the dough.

4. Place a sheet of wax paper on a work surface; flour lightly. Pat out the remaining dough into an even circle about 1/8 inch thick. (This dough is too sticky and delicate to roll out easily.) Cut the dough into 3/4-inch-wide strips. Carefully lift the strips of dough with a spatula or dough scraper and arrange them in a lattice pattern over the filling, pressing the ends of the strips into the dough on the sides of the pan. Sprinkle the lattice with white sugar.

5. Bake until the pastry is golden, usually 45 to 50 minutes.

6. Cool the tart in the pan on a wire rack. Sprinkle the tart with confectioner’s sugar. Serve lukewarm or at room temperature, cut into wedges.

Makes one 9-inch tart; serves about 8

fruit fireworks

Look no further for an awesomely bright summer dessert for 4th of July or just your next weekend barbecue.  For a recent Very Important birthday party for beloved and brilliant Barney, I was invited to bring a dessert to accompany the birthday cake. I needed something light and fresh, fruity and summery, elegant and sophisticated, and the complete opposite of cake.  This nectarine and mascarpone tart, resplendent with its gingersnap crust, and studded with crystallized ginger, was a perfect find.

I increased the crust size for a 10 inch tart pan, but used the same amount of filling as the recipe.  I used just about an entire tub of Trader Joe’s triple ginger cookies (fresh, ground and crystallized ginger) for the super easy crust, which is like a crumbly crisp buttery gingersnap.  The filling itself is a creamy, tangy dairy wonderland with cream cheese, mascarpone, and sour cream.  The lemon zest is a must to brighten up the flavor and it ties in nicely with the stonefruit’s tartness.  Don’t skip the ginger bits in the filling or on top, they add a slight bite to make the flavor more complex and complements the sweetness nicely.  A tip: buy the crystallized ginger at Whole Foods or a food coop at the bulk section – so you can get a few tablespoons at a time (I don’t know how much crystallized ginger you use in life, but a few tablespoons will last me a few years).

The nectarines absolutely must be at the peak of ripeness, sweet and juicy without being tasteless and flat or mushy.  I even bought peaches as an alternative just in case.  For me, removing the nectarine pit was the hardest part of this recipe! For a more rustic tart, you could omit the glaze, but I did add the peach jam glaze which not only improved the presentation, but also helped the crystallized ginger stick to the fruit.  I added a few blueberries for a nice contrast in flavor and color.

I would definitely recommend adding the fruit just before serving / presenting if possible so that the juices don’t make the tart soggy.  I made the crust and filling (no-cook!) the day before and added the fruit the day of serving.  This tart sat out a few hours before serving, because let’s face it was pretty to look at and I was rather proud that it didn’t collapse in the car ride over – I held my breath the entire time. However, I think it would have tasted even better 30 minutes out of the fridge rather than at room temperature as the filling, although not runny, was too soft for my taste.  Even so, I would make this again in a heartbeat whenever stonefruit are in season and a Very Important occasion dictates a spectacular sweet celebration.

well, they can’t all be winners

A bad food day can be can leave you unsatisfied, but a bad week just leaves you discouraged.  This week, I came to such a point and had to just call it a day. First, we tried a new restaurant that was promising but proved to be lackluster. Then yesterday, a baking project failed miserably. The only saving grace for either endeavor was the spectacular presentation that hid the grim truth underneath.  So thanks to a tip from my friend Katey, I’d been trying out new restaurants thanks to some deals from BlackboardEats, a newsletter that offers discounts in SF, NY, and LA. I’ve had great luck at some of them (the heirloom tomato salad at Serpentine still makes me salivate just thinking about it), but Billy and my experience at Another Monkey was memorable for all the wrong reasons. I was excited to go because Thai food is by far my favorite cuisine, it had just recently opened, and the menu seemed to include some interesting twists on authentic regional specialities.  What I should have realized is that newness of the restaurant would color the experience entirely.

Let me start by saying that the restaurant itself is beautiful and chic with modern decor and sexy lighting with corners filled with Thai art and sculptures. They cleverly used groupings of upright copper or aluminum pipes as room dividers. Once seated, we were offered a great deal, a prix fixe menu for $30 that included a sampling of appetizers, soup,  3 small plates of curries with rice and a vegetable side, and dessert. Despite the bargain, we ended up eating maybe 1/2 of the food and left before dessert. And it wasn’t because we were overstuffed, either, and I rarely say no to dessert!  One hour and a long-nursed cocktail later, we received our first course, an appetizer sampler that was a beautiful platter of all the spectrums of brown.

Sure, most things were fried but in our case everything appeared to have been fried 15 minutes earlier. The crisp was long gone on the fish cakes, calamari and shrimp dumplings.  B did like the Chiang Mai pork sausage, although they were a bit leaden. And in what should have been a clue to us from the get-go, the spring rolls were dry and flavorless. Look, it doesn’t take much to make a good spring roll. Keep it moist and pack it with aromatics and the freshest ingredients and you won’t have your authentic Thai restaurant card taken away.

After 1/2 an hour we received some tom yum kung soup which had none of the steamy, savory quality (or flavor) that was expected. The next course was  a sampling of entrees. We had the pumpkin curry with tofu, beef with mango and cashews, and eggplant with shrimp and scallops in chili sauce. The pumpkin curry was adequate. As in, I would pay $5 for this for takeout at lunch but I’ll never remember that I ate it. The eggplant dish (usually my favorite) was lacking heat or complexity, two things I always associate with well-made Southeast Asian food. We also had a side of pea shoots with garlic that actually tasted fresh and was flavorful, but after chewing for 7 minutes I had to spit it out.  At this point, looking at the 2 hour mark, we decided to bail on dessert. The plus was that the cocktails were a definite hit. The lemongrass gimlet, made with vodka, was refreshing and delicious. I also had a strawberry Thai-style caiparinha made with jalapenos, which sounds strange but the sourness of the pepper really balanced out the sweetness of the drink.  Hopefully with time they’ll improve the food and service to match the decor and cocktails, but there are far too many places to eat here for me to go back and try again.

Luckily, I don’t own a restaurant, because I would be an inconsistent mess. Usually my baking experiments produce something edible, if sloppy-looking, but yesterday the opposite was the case. I’d made this tart of berries and lemon curd many years ago to rectify a prior culinary offense. As a poor student, I invited my friend Jeffrey over for dinner and then proceeded to serve him store-bought pasta with jarred sauce. I threw in the “poor student” bit above, but I admit that it was no excuse for a truly horrifying meal. So, at his housewarming party I tried to impress him with this tart (it’s made from scratch!) and it worked well enough to absolve me from humiliation. B and I had a cookout to go to and I thought this would be perfect for a gorgeous summer day. I love the tartness of lemon curd and the grocers are all bursting at the seam with fresh berries. And let me just admit that the results were inviting, no?

The truth is, it was a complete disaster. I could not for the life of me get the crust right. It’s a basic pâte sucrée, but in the 10 years or so since I last made this I have apparently lost all ability to make a pastry dough. (Yes, that’s the last time I tried). So I scrapped that and made an easy graham cracker crust which may or made not hold up its shape (I suspect the latter). The death-blow was the curd, though. I love lemon curd and it really isn’t that difficult to make. You just have to be careful to keep it stirred to prevent the eggs from cooking out and maintain a creamy smooth consistency. It’s easy for me to tell you this now because it is precisely what I failed to do. I could have saved it, I suppose, by straining it at the end but I even took a shortcut there as I was racing to get it to the fridge to have enough time to chill and set. In the end it didn’t matter, as the result is a grainy, slightly curdled lemon pudding that’s no where silken enough to call a true lemon curd. I plated it up, hoping that a nice presentation might sway me to serve it anyway, but no dice. I suppose I’ll only share it with B, where there is no judgement over grainy curd and pastry dough failures, and resolve to stow away this recipe for a day when I feel particularly invincible in my apron.

my chocolatey valentine

Look, you don’t need some faux-holiday to indulge in some serious chocolate, but if you’re going to celebrate or anti-celebrate valentine’s day, chocolate overkill is a pretty good way to go.  Sometimes chocolatey goodness is equated with sickly sweetness like so many embarrassingly fleeting high school crushes.  At some point, a chocoholic’s taste matures and broadens, and you realize that the intensity of cocoa tastes better when it bites back a bit. So for those of you craving more complexity in your chocolate, I present to you a chocolate tart with bite.

This tart is potent, spicy, rich and just a bit sweet – dare I say a bit more adult than those crushes of yore.  This is not for the faint of heart, the bit of pepper adds a subtle kick but the ginger really heats things up.  The chocolatey-ness is so intense, a tiny sliver is all you need and it goes well with whipped cream or ice cream.  If you love your desserts with a bit of spice, you have just found your true valentine.

Dark Chocolate Tart with Gingersnap Crust

Bon Appétit, December 2007, Molly Stevens

Crust:

8 oz gingersnap cookies

1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Pinch of salt

Filling:

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 large egg yolks

1 large egg

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon all purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped crystallized ginger

For crust: Preheat oven to 325°F. Finely grind gingersnap cookies in food processor to yield about 1 1/2 to 1 2/3 cups. Add melted butter and salt; mix until moistened. Press crumb mixture firmly onto bottom and sides of 9-inch diameter tart pan with removable bottom.  Place pan on rimmed baking sheet.

For filling: Combine bittersweet chocolate and cream in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk over low heat until chocolate is melted and smooth. Remove saucepan from heat. Whisk yolks, egg, sugar, flour, pepper and salt in medium bowl to blend.  Very gradually whisk chocolate mixture into egg mixture until smooth and blended. Pour chocolate filling into crust. Bake chocolate tart until filling puffs slightly at edges and center is softly set, about 30 minutes. Transfer to rack. Sprinkle chopped crystallized ginger over tart. Cool tart in pan 20 minutes. Gently remove tart pan sides and cool tart completely.

12+ servings

as easy as peach tart

Some parts of the country have had extensions in their peach season (oh global warming, how delicious you are!) and we get to luck out as a result.  I like fruit pies, but get a bit grossed out if they’re too syrupy.  Especially cherry – the smooshy cherryskin carcasses always gave me the creeps.  Enter the tart – light, delicate, and fresh.   This recipe tastes like summer on a plate – the peaches are front and foremost, lightly highlighted with a drizzle of honey, a pat of butter, and a sprinkle of almonds.  Top it with some whipped mascarpone, and you’ve just made some humble peaches very happy.

Honey-glazed Peach tart with Mascarpone Cream

Bon Appétit, August 2003

Crust

1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 tablespoons powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

3 and 1/2 tablespoons ice water

Filling

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

6 ripe medium peaches, peeled, halved, pitted, cut into 1/2 inch thick slices (about 4 cups)

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 tablespoons sliced almonds

2 tablespoons peach preserves, melted

Mascarpone cream

1 cup chilled whipping cream

6 tablespoons mascarpone cheese

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

For crust:

Blend flour, sugar, and salt in processor.  Using on/off turns, cut in butter until pea-size pieces form.  With machine running, add enough ice water by tablespoonfuls to form moist clumps.  Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk.  Wrap in plastic; refrigerate 1 hour.  Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to 12-inch round.  Transfer to 9-inch diamter tart pan with removable bottom.  Trim overhang to 1 inch.  Fold overhang in and press to form double-thick sides.  Press inside edge of crust to push it 1/8 to 1/4 inch above top edge of pan.  Pierce bottom of crust with fork.  Refrigerate 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400°F.  Bake tart crust until golden, piercing with fork if bubbles form, about 25 minutes.  Can be made 1 day ahead – cool, wrap in plastic and store at room temperature.

For filling:

Mix sugar, flour, and lemon peel in large bowl to blend.  Add peaches and toss to coat.  Pour into baked crust.  Drizzle honey over peach mixture; dot with butter and sprinkle with almonds.  Bake until peaches are tender and almonds are toasted, about 35 minutes.  Brush fruit and almonds with peach preserves.  Cool 15 minutes before serving.  Can be made 6 hours ahead – store tart at room temperature.

For mascarpone cream:

Using electric mixer, beat cream, mascarpone, sugar, and vanilla in large bowl until peaks form.

Slice tart and serve with dollops of mascarpone cream.

Makes 6-8 servings