Candied Cranberry and Chocolate Tart

I’m feeling a little left out of Thanksgiving this year. In the huge division of labor for the big day, I have no responsibility for any part of the meal. My dad will be shucking oysters. My mom will be marinading lamb (turkey-free zone here) and cooking her way through the four courses she’s managed to come up with. Family friends will be bringing dessert. But I will be racing to the airport and catching an early morning flight to North Carolina on Thanksgiving Day itself. With any luck, I’ll arrive in time to eat.I had to do something to satisfy the baking urge that possesses me before every major holiday. You know, that urge to take on an immensely complicated, finicky and tedious, show-stopping dessert, just so you can unveil it to ooo’s and aaah’s at the table? I channeled the Thanksgiving baking urge into this candied cranberry and chocolate tart, and shared it at a dinner party this weekend.

Even though I don’t care for the traditional Thanksgiving foods, having never grown up with them myself (marshmallows on sweet potatoes???), I do love the sour punch of cranberries. They appear here not in the traditional relish or jelly, but crowning a luscious dark chocolate ganache in a walnut crust. Tempered with plenty of sugar and cut by the bitterness of the chocolate, this cranberry dessert tinkled my latent Thanksgiving chimes. Maybe I can make it for my family next year.

Candied Cranberry and Chocolate Tart

Makes 1 9-inch tart

Truth be told, this dessert isn’t that finicky or labor-intensive. The most time-consuming part is the crust, but you can spread the work out over two or three days.

1 pre-baked walnut crust–see recipe below
12 oz. cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 tsp orange zest
6 oz. good quality chocolate, 60-70% cacao, finely chopped
3/4 c. heavy cream

For the cranberries: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat sugar with 1/4 c. water in medium saucepan. When sugar has dissolved, add cranberries and orange zest. Stir to combine. Pour cranberries onto greased baking sheet, and bake for 10-15 minutes. Let cool completely.

Make the ganache: Bring cream to simmer in a small, heavy-bottomed pot. When at a simmer, remove from heat and add chopped chocolate. Stir until chocolate has dissolved.

Pour into walnut crust. Let cool, then top with candied cranberries and their syrup.

Walnut Crust

1 large egg, separated
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 c. walnuts
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. unbleached, all-purpose flour
pinch salt
5 tbsp. cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 in. cubes

Spray tart pan with removable bottom with non-stick spray. Toast walnuts in 375 degree oven for 8-10 minutes or until fragrant. When cool, grind in a food processor until fine, but not pasty.

Beat the egg yolk and white separately. Measure out 1 tbsp of the egg white and add to egg yolk. Add vanilla and beat lightly. Combine flour, walnuts, sugar, and salt. Cut butter into flour mixture until largest pieces are the size of small peas. (Regarding cutting the fat into the flour, see my instructions for pie crust.) Add egg mixture, and mix with your fingertips until mixture is evenly moistened. Add a teaspoon or two of water if necessary.

Press mixture directly into tart pan. Freeze for at least 30 minutes. Line pan with aluminum foil, prick all over with a fork, line with pie weights (I use dried beans) and bake for 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven, until golden brown. Let cool completely on wire rack.

Pushing Daisies’ Apple-Gruyère Pie

Sometimes a picture is not worth a thousand words.

I know the above picture looks like your average, ho-hum apple pie. But trust me when I say that this is a very special apple pie, having the distinction of being the only post on this site inspired by a TV show.

Pushing Daisies is a quirky, magical-realist comedy with shades of Amélie Poulain and Tim Burton. It’s protagonist is a pie-maker who can bring the dead back to life with a touch–and kill them again with a second touch. Needless to say, the hapless pie-maker brings a dead woman back to life and falls in love with her, realizing that he can never touch her. In addition to all the macabre antics surrounding reanimated corpses and the like, the show features two spinster aunts who are afflicted both with social anxiety disorder and a great love of expensive cheese. Make sense? No…? Well, like I said, it’s quirky.

Well, anyway. The idea for the pie came about after I had bought an expensive piece of Gruyère, only to find upon getting home that it was hard and dry. I planned to return it, but that night, on Pushing Daisies, Chuck, the pie-maker’s undead girlfriend sends her cheese-loving aunts an apple pie with Gruyère baked into the crust. In an attempt to cheer them up and alleviate their social anxiety disorder, she laces the pie with homeopathic anti-depressants.

My own version lacked the homeopathic anti-depressants, but I borrowed the idea of grating Gruyère into the crust. I don’t know if the show’s writers are baking divas, but the Gruyère is a stroke of genius. Imagine a perfectly flaky, tender pie crust flavored with the salty piquancy of Gruyère, like a cross between a pie crust and a gougère. Unlike the cheddar traditionally used in pie crusts, Gruyère doesn’t turn oily and leathery when melted and cooled, but instead takes the texture of the surrounding flour. The crust holds between your teeth for just a moment, then shatters delicately into the juicy apple filling. And those apples! So juicy and fresh, they tasted like they had been picked that morning. (Which, come to think of it, they probably had.)

My pie and I went to a pot-luck that evening, and believe me, this pie is a dreamy, swoon-worthy, be-sure-you’re-sitting-down-when-you-taste-it, best-crust-ever kind of pie. After snagging the tiniest piece to take home with me, I was left with a little pinprick of regret. Perhaps I shouldn’t have shared my pie with quite so many people. Or maybe next time, I should add a healthy dose of homeopathic anti-depressants so I don’t miss the pie quite so much when it’s gone.

Note: The pie crust recipe below contains extensive instructions, summarizing everything I’ve ever learned about making this finicky dessert.

Charlotte Charles’ Apple-Gruyère Pie

Makes 1 9-inch, deep-dish apple pie

3 lbs. tart red apples (Northern Spy, Romes, Empires, or Harralsons)
1/2 c. sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
5 tsp. cornstarch or all-purpose flour
1 egg, lightly beaten

1 Gruyère Pie Crust–recipe below

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Take dough out of fridge.

Peel, core and slice apples into quarters. Slice each quarter thinly. Mix with other ingredients.

Roll the larger piece of dough into a disk about fourteen inches in diameter. I use a piece of parchment paper dusted with flour to prevent sticking. Flip parchment paper over 9 inch deep dish or 10 inch glass pie plate, and ease dough into plate.

Roll smaller piece of dough into circle twelve inches in diameter. Pile apples into pie plate, scraping any juice on top of the apples. Place smaller round of dough on top of the apples. Seal two crusts together, brush with the beaten egg, and make three parallel slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Place pie on a cookie sheet to catch any drips, put in oven, and reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees. Bake 50 minutes to an hour, or until you can see the filling bubbling up between the slits in the crust. Cool on a wire rack at least 20 minutes before serving.

Gruyère Pie Crust

Making pie dough is governed by three principles. 1) Use leaf-lard. Spare me your gasp of horror; leaf lard makes the most tender pie crust around and unlike Crisco, contains no transfats and doesn’t leave an unpleasant, soapy taste in your mouth. Don’t use lard from the grocery store; it is most likely rancid. Leaf lard should smell pure. Buy from a butcher, or order here. And okay, if you are utterly opposed to lard, you may use butter. 2) Leave pea sized lumps of butter in the dough. Under the pressure of the rolling pin, the lumps of butter flatten into thin sheets that alternate with the flour. In the heat of the oven, they create the flaky layers that characterize the best pie doughs. 3) Keep in mind the pie ough rule of escalating insanity. The more your pie dough makes you weep, gnash your teeth and lie on the kitchen floor convinced that the whole enterprise is a complete disaster, the more likely it is that your pie dough will be heavenly. Beware the pie dough that is easy to work with; it will most likely end up dry and tough.

While everyone from Cook’s Illustrated to Rose Levy Berenbaum recommends the food processor for quick and easy pie crusts, I have never had luck with it. The food processor overprocesses the dough, and my crusts end up tough. If you use the food processor, only use it to cut the butter into the flour. After that mix with a fork. If you don’t use a food processor, a pastry blender will do. You can use your fingers, but you run the risk of melting the butter with the heat of your hands, ruining the effect of those pea sized pockets of butter. Luckily for me, my icy, grim reaper fingers pose no such threat to the pie dough.

Makes one double-crusted 9-10 inch pie.
2 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp. sugar
13 tbsp. cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1 in pieces and stored in the fridge
7 tbsp. leaf lard (or more butter, if you must)
2 oz. Gruyère, grated with a microplane rasp grater
6-7 tbsp. ice water

Mix flour, salt, sugar and Gruyere in a large mixing bowl or bowl of a food processor. Using a food processor, pastry blender, or your fingers, cut in the large until no large pieces remain. Add the butter, and cut into flour until the largest pieces of butter are the size of large peas.

Remove flour-butter mixture from food processor, if using, and place in a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle ice water over flour in increments of one tablespoon, toss with fork after each addition. (Try not to add too much extra water, but I usually end up going over the recommended amount.) When dough clumps together when squeezed in your palm, gather dough together into two disks, one slightly larger than the other, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Sources: Regan Daly’s In the Sweet Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated.com

Two Roasted Vegetables and a Tale of Childhood Trauma

Roasted Butternut Squash and Roasted Brussels Sprouts

The publication of Jessica Seinfeld’s cookbook has set off a veritable storm of discussion about the best ways to get your children to eat their vegetables. Jessica Seinfeld’s own methods include tricking the kiddies by baking spinach into brownies and squash into macaroni and cheese. She even goes so far as to suggest leaving an empty box of Kraft macaroni and cheese on the counter while you working your magic with various pre-pureed vegetables. I will refrain from entering the fray here with my own (very strong) opinions on the matter, other than to share a repressed memory which emerged in the wake of all the coverage about childhood food trauma.

As a child, I liked vegetables. Kale, cabbage, broccoli, bitter gourd, asparagus: I ate them all. I never even knew that I wasn’t supposed to like them. Until the day I was at my best friend’s house during Brussels sprouts night. Vicki’s mom was from England and her cooking was, unfortunately, very British. On that evening, she carried a large, sulfurous-smelling dish to the table. “Brussels sprouts!” she announced. “Now, no complaints,” she said, catching the expression on Vicki’s face. “You both have to finish your Brussels sprouts before you leave the table.”

You both? I look up in alarm. My own mother was not only a good cook, but was philosophically opposed to forcing her children to eat anything she didn’t like herself. The circumstance of being forced to eat something disgusting was unprecedented. Surely I wasn’t expected to eat whatever lurked inside that bowl.

But without further ado, Vicki’s mom heaped a large mound of greyish-green, slimy, overcooked Brussels sprouts onto my plate. What could I do? I choked every Brussels sprout past the large lump in my throat to get away from this nightmare of a dinner as soon as possible. They tasted every bit as horrible as they looked and smelled.

More than twenty years later, this injustice still rankles. It’s one thing to force your culinary ineptitude on your own child; it’s quite another to force it on someone else’s. It was years before I learned to like Brussels sprouts again. And what of the injustice done to the sprouts themselves? What on earth did the poor Brussels sprout do to deserve such a fate as being boiled to greyish-green sliminess?

Surely Brussels sprouts deserve much better treatment. It’s just as easy to roast the sprouts briefly in a hot oven to caramelize their natural sugars, making them succulent and slightly sweet.

And if your kids still won’t eat Brussels sprouts, try slow-roasting butternut squash, dusted in flour and generously drizzled with olive oil. It’s the contrast of textures that make this dish. The flour and oil render some of the squash pieces crisp, while others bake to a satisfying chewiness. The squash at the bottom of the dish becomes smooth and silky.

And if your kids don’t like the squash either, then give them a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and enjoy these roasted vegetables yourself.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

The very best Brussels sprouts have been kissed by the first frost of autumn. Make sure that the sprouts are fresh; avoid ones with yellow outer leaves.

Brussel sprouts, cut in half
enough olive oil to coat
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Toss sprouts with olive oil. Spread on cookie sheet. Roast 30-40 minutes, or until sprouts are tender when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife.

Butternut Squash Provencal

1 butternut squash
1 clove garlic, minced
5 tbsp flour
1 tbsp fresh sage
salt and pepper
olive oil

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Peel butternut squash, making sure to remove every trace of pale orange and green that lurks beneath the surface of the peel. Make sure the deep orange flesh is exposed completely. Remove the seeds and the stringy flesh attached to the seeds. Scrape cavity thoroughly. Chop squash into 1 in cubes.

Toss squash in flour. Place in buttered casserole, making sure to leave excess flour behind. Generously salt and pepper the squash, sprinkle with minced garlic and sage, and toss again. Generously drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 2 hours, or until squash is completely tender when pierced with tip of a sharp knife.

Pickles, pickles, pickles

After spending an entire weekend in the kitchen, canning and pickling with my neighbor, Kassie, I am left with a renewed appreciation for the generations of women for whom canning was a survival skill, not, say a fun experiment. Peeling vegetables all day and sweating over a pot of acrid boiling vinegar is an uncomfortably hot and sticky experience even if you sign up for it voluntarily. Imagine rising at dawn to harvest vegetables, followed by a long, hot day in the kitchen without the benefits of air-conditioning (not that I have a/c) or even electric fans.

I am waiting to post pickle recipes until I have gathered empirical evidence that 1) our pickles won’t kill anyone, 2) our pickles won’t make anyone sick, 3) our pickles actually taste good. I’ll let you know in a month.

Until then, head over to Kassie’s blog to see the fruits of our labors.

Oh, and here is the box of tomatoes that we peeled:

My New Toy

For the first time in my life, I am the proud owner of a digital camera. Yes, I was also the last person to get an Ipod, and back in the day, the last person to buy a CD player. Since I’m new to blogging and cameras in general, I didn’t want to get the fanciest camera around, so I went with the “good value for the money” camera, as opposed to the “so expensive it should come with the services of a professional chef to cook for your blog” camera.

But although relatively cheap, isn’t it great? Here’s a picture of some baby choy sum that I sauteed for dinner the other night with galangal and spring onions. Doesn’t it look as green as–hey what’s that on the bowl? A price tag?!? The whole world can see that I bought the bowl for $1.49 at TT’s market? Why didn’t I notice that before?

Oh well, I can take the price tag off and redo tomorrow. Oh, wait. Is there any choy sum left? No! I ate the rest for lunch today. Argh!

At least I have the consolation of knowing that even at its very worst, my food photography always looks more appetizing than this.