Lemon Tart

French Fridays with Dorie: November Dinner Snapshots

In a less formal manner I've been cooking along with the French Fridays with Dorie group this month. Since its the last day of November I thought I'd share with you the last 3 recipes I enjoyed making and, more importantly, eating this month. The first one can be found here. There's a classic, a revelation, and an homage in the mix. While most of these items were served as parts of other meals, I realize that that all these recipes are the makings for one perfect Friday night dinner.

An apology for the poor lighting. I dislike using a flash, but nighttime eats at this time of year sure make it tricky to take a decent photo. Sure hoping Santa brings me my light for Christmas! Pumpkin Flans with Walnuts and Gorgonzola

The Revelation: I scoped this recipe out within minutes of cracking open the book. Its basically a pumpkin pie custard, but with a savoury bent, topped with toasted walnuts and melty gorgonzola cheese. I confess I don't really love pumpkin pie. I'd rather fill my pastry with other things. When I was younger I was known to eat the entire contents of the pie filling and leave behind a sad, scraped clean, pie shell. Turns out even then I knew the filling really is the best part in this case. While the recipe calls for a simple can of pumpkin puree, at this time of year I always have piles of gem like squash. Roasting  them is esay, and this way I'm eating local squash as opposed to pumpkins from who knows where.

This was a perfect first course with a crunchy salad. A last minute drizzle of full flavoured Pine honey brought it all together and paired beautifully with the nuts and cheese. I profess I love pumpkin, I'd just rather have it for dinner.

Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux

The Classic : Translated as "Roast Chicken for Lazy People", this recipe is the French version of quick and easy recipes for the busy cook. In actuality the chicken does take over an hour to cook, but the preparation and method of cooking is so simple that once you get it in the oven you'll have plenty of time to set the table, make a salad and unwind with a glass of wine and some Glee. A simple roast chicken is certainly one of my absolute favourite meals and something worth mastering. Over time I've developed my own recipe, but I'll admit I loved the dump in the pot technique here, which is all it was. Tossing in some vegetables means you've made a side dish without thinking about it and they'll flavoured with chicken juices and bronzed with chicken fat. The addition of a couple slices of stale bread put on the bottom of the pot which soak up chicken juices and caramelize as the chicken cookes are litte little bits of gold to fight over at the dinner tables. Like stuffing, but better.

And while I wouldn't consider it for Les Paresseux, the accompanying jus is a must when it comes to roast chicken. One extra step to harness those beautiful drippings and drizzle over your plate.
 
Caramel Topped Semolina Cake

The Homage: Dessert was a cross between creme caramel (also known as Flan in Spanish cuisine) and my favourite winter breakfast as a child, Cream of Wheat. The simplicity, yet elegance of this dish is a reminder to me of the beauty of French cuisine and why its hands down the cuisine that keeps drawing me in the longer I cook. A simple mixture of milk and wheat cooked to a porridge consistency, along with some sugar and eggs and a handful of raisins. In a pan lined with smokey caramel, the cake is cooked until puffed and flecked with brown. The cake is turned out to reveal a surprise soaking of amber caramel which still drizzles down the side of the cake.

Meyer Lemon Tart

Lemon Tart turns 2 today! Happy Birthday to me! I feel proud that I'm still here, still taking pictures of my food (and better ones, luckily!)and still writing about it. I'm so grateful that there are people the world over who read my words, leave comments, share their triumphs and a passion for food with me. And I still have so many things I am passionate about I want to share with you : my love of tea and wine, cheese and chocolate and memories of my travels.

For those of you who've been here before, thank you. I hope I've inspired you to cook something new, I hope you've learned something from coming to these pages and I hope I've entertained you. For those of you new to this site, I sincerly hope you'll return. And as a birthday present to me, if you've enjoyed some of what I've done here pass along a link to a friend, or if you haven't already subscribed to receive updates via email, please do so you never miss a post. I love hearing from you, so don't be shy and leave a comment. I love dialogue about what's cookin'!

In honour of this day I am doing what seems appropriate : making another lemon tart. You already know my favourite, but there are still some other candidates for runners up. I've chosen this one because, like that favourite, its so easy. There's no cooking of the filling and you don't even need to juice the lemons. You simply throw everything into a blender and whir for a few minutes then dump into the precooked tart shell. Its richer and creamier than my usual because its got butter AND cream, but is still elegant and light at the same time. I'm quite smitten with it.

As a birthday present to myself I've just got my hands on the first of the meyer lemons and because I do so adore them, I've chosen to make this a Meyer Lemon Tart. Because you use the whole lemon, a Meyer is the perfect candidate as its pith is less bitter than a Eureka lemon. But don't despair. If, like many people, you can't find any of those fragrant and expensive Meyers, this tart can just as beautifully be made with regular lemons. 

Daring Bakers : Crostata di Marmallata

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

Pastry is my thing. I'll just come out and say it. I'm good at it, I understand it, I know how to work it into submission. I can't say that about anyone anything else in my life. As with anything, this sense of skill comes simply from experience and since pastry is the dessert category I adore the most, I've made sure I've had lots of experience with it.

So when I heard this month's Daring Bakers challenge would be an Italian tart, called a Crostata, I flipped my hair back and confidently said to myself "well, that's an easy one for me, where's the challenge there?"...

If you ever wondered what humble pie actually looks like, apparently its a sweet Italian pastry filled with apricot jam. Yup, I spoke too soon. When I walked into that kitchen I was promptly [curse alert] bitch-slapped by this simple mixture of flour, butter, sugar and egg.

Crostata is an Italian tart made with Pasta Frolla, the Italian version of pate sucree, which as far as I can see is identical to the French version. My entry into the world of tarts and pastries began with a similar recipe of sweet crust dough. I got good at it, through repetition. This kind of pastry is tricky to work with. Its sugar content makes it beautifully tender and also very fragile. It can be overworked easily therefore losing its delicate nature, and it falls apart, oh how it falls apart. Over the years my recipe changed and I discovered that pressing the dough into the tart shell yielded a still beautiful tart shell without the frustration of trying to roll it out. I also discovered that a recipe using only the egg yolk made for an easier dough as well. So I left that original recipe in my pastry past.

Pear Butter with Vanilla and Lemon

I've been making this for a few years now. It came about rather naturally as a box of pears I had intended on canning became riper faster than I could deal with them. Since canning overripe pears simply turns them into mush, this pear butter was a natural addition to my pantry. If you are wondering why one would mix pears and butter and put it in a jar, I would probably say "why not?!" But in actuality there is no butter anywhere near this preserve. It's just the next step past sauce - a simmered mixture of fruit, sometimes flavourings, and a bit of sweetener, cooked until a spreadable consistency is achieved, which is where the butter name is obviously derived. It can be spread on your morning toast like jam or eaten by the spoonful. I love its absolute "pear-ness" in my oatmeal or slathered inside lacy crepes for dessert, doused with the appropriate caramel sauce or stirred into plain yogurt for a nice break from berry or vanilla flavoured.

While pear butters flavoured with spices are common, I think the strong spicy flavours of cinnamon, star anise, cardamom and cloves tend to cover the flavour of the pear up too much and I say keep those other spices for the apple butter. If you have beautifully fragrant, ripe pears I like to marry them with the comforting flavours of vanilla and lemon which accentuate rather than cover the natural flavour of the fruit.

While apple butter is probably the most common type of fruit butter due to its low moisture content and high pectin, which makes it cook to the desired thickness quicker, almost any fruit can be cooked to a butter stage. Pears are a natural candidate because of their already natural buttery texture, although their higher water content definatly makes them take a little more time and attention than apples.

This recipe first requires that you get your hands on at least 10 pounds of pears. Any less and its simply not worth the hours of stirring. Get yourself to a orchard, fruit stand or packing house in your area which still have pears in their storage, or have a friend going out of town pick them up for you, as I did. If that fails you, head to your farmers market. The key with this preserving stuff if to find it in season, plentiful and affordable.

 

Potato Gratin : A French Friday's with Dorie selection

 
I've been busy cooking from Dorie's new book this month and enjoying ever bit of it. I love that I'm actually using this book to its fullest, right away. How many of us buy such beautiful cookbooks that we love that we really don't use enough? I am guilty of this as well. Since this month is all about American Thanksgiving for my foodie friends to the south, there's been a rather informal round of French Friday's with Dorie. We've been instructed to cook the 4 selections on our own schedule throughout the month of November.

The Potato Gratin is really just a more sophisticated sister of the Scalloped Potatoes that I grew up with. The idea is the same - thinly sliced potatoes cooked in the oven bathed in milk or cream - but topped with a brown, crusty Gruyere cheese topping : that's the Gratin part. What you end up with is tender, moist, cooked potatoes held together by starch and dairy proteins and a satisfying cheesy topping. Its comfort food at its best.

This flexible side dish actually makes me happy its cold, rainy or snowy outside, because that is when food like this tastes so good. Its adaptability makes it a favourite of mine  since its as comfortable beside a roast chicken and a pork tenderloin as it is beside a baked salmon fillet or any manner of vegetarian dishes.