Bakewell Tarts

It's a stupid reason to make tarts, but I was looking for a recipe that uses jam in it. I had some mediocre jam that I wanted to find a use for, without having to put it on my toast. So I thought of a Bakewell Tart, which has a layer of jam under a frangipane filling. But there's a reason for that old adage of using the best ingredients you can. In the end, I just couldn't bring myself to ruin a lovely pastry with jam that lacked any kind of decent flavour. Unless I'm struck with a brilliant idea soon, I'm going to throw the stuff out. (Mea culpa, mea culpa!)

I was surprised by the variety of recipes out there for Bakewell tart, especially the number of eggs required. Some of them have so many eggs, it must be more of a custard. I ended up using a recipe from one of my most reliable sources—Deb Perlman of Smitten Kitchen.

Bakewell Tarts 

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen. 

Yield:  five 4-inch tarts or one 9-inch tart.  Serves: 8-10 (I only have four small tart pans, so I had extra tart dough and filling left over—enough for one more tart. I've put it in the freezer, ready for use.)

Be warned, both the filling and the dough spend a few hours in the fridge/freezer, so this is a good candidate for preparing ahead of time and baking when required.

Tart filling:

1 cup blanched almonds, coarsely chopped

1 1/2 tablespoons flour

2/3 cup sugar

110 grams unsalted butter, cool room temperature

1 large egg

1 large egg white

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 1/2 teaspoons orange or lemon zest 

4 tablespoons raspberry conserve

Tart dough:

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup bastard sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

110 grams (partially) frozen unsalted butter

1 large egg

Tip: Put the butter for the tart dough in the freezer for a half hour or so before you start.

1. Make the tart dough.
   Butter the tart pans. In the food processor, mix the flour, sugar, and salt.
   Cut the cold butter into small pieces and scatter over the flour mixture. (The butter has to be very cold, but butter that is frozen solid is harder to cut,  so I always use butter that has been frozen for 30-45 minutes.)
   Pulse just until it forms a course meal (the largest pieces should be the size of a pea).
   Using about 1/5 of the dough for each tart, press it into each tart pan and up the sides. Try to press and handle as little as possible, just enough to get the dough stuck together in the form.
   Prick with a fork and put back into the freezer for an hour or two.
2. Make the frangipane.
   In a food processor, finely grind the almonds and flour, then add the sugar. Add the butter, almond extract, and grated lemon rind and mix until smooth.
   Add the eggs, blending thoroughly.
   Transfer to a bowl or container, then cover and chill for 3 hours.
   Clean the food processor, as you'll need it again.
3. Pre-bake the tart shells.
   Preheat the overn to 375F/190C.
   Take some aluminum foil and cut it into squares that roughly pit the tart shells.
   Butter the shiny side of the foil, fit it into a tart shell, buttered side down.
   Place the tart pans on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
   Remove the foil. If the pastry has puffed a lot, press it down a bit with a spoon.
   Return the tart shells to the oven bake for another 5 minutes.
   Remove and let cool.
4. Assemble and bake the tarts.
   Preheat the oven to 350°F/180C, and take the frangipane out of the fridge.
   Spread a generous tablespoon of jam in the bottom of each tart shell.
   Spread the chilled frangipane over the jam. I used by my fingers to break it into little pieces and a knife to carefully spread it out. You don't need to make it too smooth, since it will flatten out while baking.
   Sprinkle the sliced almonds over the top of the tarts.
   Bake them for 30 to 40 minutes until golden. A cake tester inserted into center of filling should come out clean.
   Let cool and then remove the tarts from the pans (this is where removable bottoms really make things easy!).
5. Optionally, sift some icing sugar over the tarts before serving.

Busy Sunday

Yesterday morning, a glorious sunny day, the first true spring day (20 degrees!), I found myself sauntering along the Albert Cuyp Markt—3 or 4 blocks of vegie/fruit, cheese, charcuterie, cheese, poultry, fish, and clothing vendors. Part of the pleasure of the market is the people watching, and the snatches of overheard conversations in that awful Amsterdam working class accent, lunch a sandwich from Tjin's Exotic Broodjes, poking into the Pittenkoning (one of my favourite kitchenware stores), and just reveling in the sun.

Needless to say, I came home with some goodies and today I spent the day cooking. I've cooked for the week and that has included:

• Fish Pie, based on several recipes and trying to scale it down to a two-serving version. Not entirely successful, but there's a lot of promise and I want to work it out into something that really works.
• Apple-Cranberry-Custard pudding. What would I get if I topped apple and cranberries, plus brown sugar, lemon, orange peel, cinnamon and black pepper (!), poured a sauce of egg, milk and some Birds Eye custard powder over it, and baked for half an hour? This was an attempt to cut some fat by using a custard instead of a crisp topping. It proved to be quite tasty, but may need even more custard. 
• Osso Bucco, from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Similar to one in our family cookbook, but without the porcini. 
• Hummus, based on Jane Brody's version in Good Food Book. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough lemon juice, so I used apple vinegar, lemon peel, and sumac to get the balance right. I'm really liking what sumac does to it.
• Red Pepper and Bean Spread, based on one from Smitten Kitchen, but with more garlic, quark instead of cream cheese, and red pepper flakes and sumac (instead of lemon juice) to punch it up a bit.
• Moroccan Roasted Vegetables from Moosewood New Classics for a couple of lunches this week.

It was a lovely day!

Christmas Dinner 2010

The Dutch are not big turkey eaters and they don't tend to eat the same thing every Christmas, although duck, hare, and venison seem to be popular.

Me, I'm a traditionalist and like to have poultry at the center of my Christmas dinner. However, turkey is a bit much for a single person, even with guests, so I'm making chicken. Today's menu:

Mushroom Soup
Dry-brined roast chicken
Bread-potato stuffing

Sweet and sour cippoline onions

Cranberry port sauce

Roasted squash, mashed with butter, salt and pepper

Braised brussels sprouts

Apples in Calvados

Mushroom Soup

This is a lightly-bound soup that depends for its flavour on the mushrooms and a good rich-tasting beef stock, or fond. I use a very good commercial fond, but you can of course use a good home-made stock.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
300 grams mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 red onion or large shallot, sliced in very thin semi-circles
60 ml sherry
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste
parsley for garnish

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil and butter over medium high heat, until the butter foam subsides.
2. Add the mushrooms and sauté until they release their moisture.
3. Add the onion and sauté for another 1 or 2 minutes.
4. Add the flour, sherry, and thyme and continue to cook for 2 minutes.
5. Add the beef fond, and simmer for  15-20 minutes.
6. Serve and garnish with parsley.

Apples in Calvados

This recipe comes from a cookbook put out by the largest supermarket chain in Holland, Albert Hein. It is a simple, light dessert that can be made a bit richer by serving it with ice cream. I got it from my aunt, and she is the one who is making it today.

2 apples
100 ml calvados
1 packet vanilla sugar*
3 tablespoons sugar
grated lemon peel
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, ice cold

1. Peel and core the apples and cut them into 6 slices.
2. In a saucepan, bring the calvados, vanilla sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice to a boil.
3. Add the apple slices, lower the heat, and cook gently for 10 minutes.
4. Spoon the apple slices into dessert bowls.
5. Beat the butter into the warm calvados sauce and then pour over the apples.

* If you can't get vanilla sugar, try adding a teaspoon of sugar and a 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract.

What to Do with Fresh Figs

You'd think that after living on my own for over 35 years that I would get the hang of cooking for one, I even bought a cookbook called The Pleasures of Cooking for One, which is a pleasant read and has some good sounding recipes, none of which I've made.

So what got into me to purchase a flat of fresh figs, which bruise easily and don't keep well? Of course I ate a few fresh, but that still leaves 14 figs that I had to use up this weekend. Here's what I did.

Fig Compote
This is another fruit recipe from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. The caramelized syrup is very yummy.

1/2 pound fresh figs
1/3 cup butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons honey

1. Preheat the broiler
2. In a cast iron frying pan, melt the butter, brown sugar, and honey for one minute.
3. Add the figs and cover them with the syrup.
4. Put the pan under the broiler for 5 minutes, and stir the mixture occasionally to keep it from burning.
5. Serve the compote hot over pancakes or porridge.  

Fig Cobbler

I also found a recipe on the internet for a fig cobbler with a cheddar cheese lattice crust, which to me automatically puts it out of the running as a cobbler. I thought the combination of a savoury cheese with the sweetness of the figs might be pleasant, but I was distinctly underwhelmed. I tried to punch it up a bit by adding a smidgen of cayenne pepper to the fruit (which was a nice touch), but the fruit and crust just didn't combine well.