Tomato Tart

A tomato tart had been on the extended to-do list for quite a while now. It's a common dish in both French and Italian cuisine, and it's great as an appetizer, a snack, part of a light dinner, or as a side.

We had been little piggies all week, so we decided that we needed a light, summery dinner. Our old stand-by Golden Corn Chowder, paired with a tomato tart, fit the bill perfectly. Plus, like I mentioned before, I like to OD on highly seasonal ingredients, and I figured this would help.

We used a very mild goat cheese, but you could use any cheese that melts well, such as comte, haloumi, or even mozzarella.

Tomato Tart

Crust

• 2 tablespoons almonds with skins, toasted and cooled
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 1/2 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 large egg yolk
• 3 1/2 tablespoons fruity olive oil (preferably French)
• About a tablespoon Dijon mustard (optional)

Filling

• 4 ripe tomatoes, sliced about 1/4 inch thick
• 1 1/2 tablespoons freshly chopped herbs (We used summer savory, thyme, and oregano. You could also use marjoram, tarragon, basil, or anything else you feel like throwing in there.)
• 3 ounces mild goat cheese
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 425°F with rack in middle.

Pulse almonds with flour, sugar, and sea salt to a fine powder in a food processor. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal with some small (roughly pea-size) butter lumps.

Add yolk and oil and pulse until just incorporated and a very soft dough has formed. Form into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill until firm, about 30 minutes.

Spread dough evenly over bottom and up side of pan.
Bake shell until golden brown all over, about 13 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool a bit.

When the tart has cooled enough that it's not very hot to the touch, arrange the tomatoes in a spiral. (Optional: first brush the crust with a thin coating of Dijon mustard.) Sprinkle half of the fresh herbs over the tomatoes, and spread chunks of the goat cheese around as well. Sprinkle the rest of the herbs over the tart, and season with salt and pepper.

Drizzle with olive oil, and bake in the center of the oven for about 40 minutes, until the tart dough is golden brown, the tomatoes are tender, and the cheese is browned.

Optional-drizzle with balsamic vinegar to serve.

This tart is good served either warm or at room temperature, but it's best the day it's made.

Plum and Nectarine Tart with a Brown Butter Custard and an Almond Crust

                                            

Nectarines are one of my favorite fruit varietals, but the past couple years, the nectarines have been rather lackluster--mushy, bland, blegh.

So I was ecstatic when I realized that for whatever reason, it's a good year for nectarines.

I bit into a particularly flavorful specimen, and brown butter came to mind. "Nick," I said, "Wouldn't these nectarines be great with brown butter?"

"Um, not really."

Undaunted, I decided that I wanted to make a tart that incorporated nectarines and brown butter. Almonds sounded like a good idea, too.

I ended up using plums as well as nectarines, which was a delicious decision. The brown butter flavor is very subtle, but this is an overall satisfying sweet.

You could really use any summer stone fruit in this tart--peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries--they'd all be good, so feel free to play around.

Plum and Nectarine Tart with a Brown Butter Custard and an Almond Crust

Crust

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup turbinado sugar (Sugar in the Raw)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup ground blanched almonds
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Custard

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
• Pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

 

• 3 or 4 (depending on their size) plums, cut into wedges
• 3 or 4 (depending on their size) nectarines, cut into wedges

 

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle (you can also use a hand-held mixer), combine the butter with the turbinado and granulated sugars, the almonds and the egg and beat at medium-low speed until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder and lemon zest and beat just until a soft dough forms. Scrape the dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Wrap the dough and flatten it into a disk. Refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes.

 

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°. Spray a 10-inch tart pan with non-stick cooking spray. Place the dough in the tart pan, and press it around until it covers the bottom and comes up the sides. Take care to patch any holes. Bake the crust in the center of the oven for 10 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 350.

 

In the meantime, in a small skillet, cook the butter over moderate heat until golden brown and fragrant, about 4 minutes; take the skillet off the heat and set it aside. In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer or the cleaned stand mixer, beat the eggs with the sugar, almond extract, lemon zest and salt. Add the flour and beat at low speed until smooth. Add the brown butter and beat the filling at low speed until incorporated.

 

Pour the custard into the tart crust. Starting from the middle and working outward, spread the fruit in a spiral. Bake in the center of the oven for about an hour. The tart is done when the edges of the pastry are deep golden brown and the custard is slightly puffed. If anything is browning too quickly, cover it with foil.

(Our view from the porch during out recent Ocean City visit.)

(Crabs! A special summertime treat.)

Erbazzone, or Herb Sandwich from Parma

WOW.

Wow that's a lot of snow, and wow I ate A LOT last night. It was just so good that I was not able to stop myself, even after I was so full I could barely move.

The problematic deliciousness was in the form of lots of spinach, cured pork product, and Parmesan wrapped in a pastry shell. Wow.

I love love love pie crust, which is why pie is so much better than cake. That's where this recipe started, with making the pie crust. Again, Mario tells me to cut in the butter with my fingers. So not happening. My food processor was one of the best $50 purchases I have ever made. I love you, food processor.

So while the dough was resting in the fridge, some finely minced bacon was sauteed. It was supposed to be pancetta, but blizzard #3 was approaching, and Whole Foods was too crowded to go wandering around in search of pancetta, and I did not intend to drive to Fresh Market for the pancetta that I know they have. Bacon was in the freezer, so bacon was in the herb sandwich.

Some onions were minced, and part of the onions, part of the bacon, some pepper and some garlic went into a separate bowl.

I suppose this was a way to add more flavor and texture when the pie/tart/sandwich was later assembled and cooked. I don't know.

The rest of the onions were sauteed with the "pancetta", and 2 pounds of spinach was added to the skillet. Two pounds of uncooked spinack takes up a lot of space, and Nick totally didn't believe me when I said that the spinach would cook down to a fraction of its original volume.

As I was pressing massive amounts of spinach into the skillet, I whispered to it, "Wilt! Don't prove me wrong!"

It wilted. I was supposed to add garlic at this point, but I forgot. Oops. I just added it later, because garlic is very necessary.

Holy cow. I just now noticed that the recipe instructs you to blanch the greens prior to adding them to the skillet. That makes so much more sense.

Even as I was shoving all of those greens into the skillet, I was thinking to myself that it would have made a lot more sense to have already blanched or steamed them. I was also thinking that the spinach released a TON of water, so why was Mario telling me that I might need to deglaze with water in order to get to the fond. Wow. I am such a genius.

Okay, so the spinach onion bacon mixture was allowed to cool a little, and the Parmesan, raw bacon and onion mix, and two eggs were stirred in.

The dough was then rolled out and the filling was placed on top. That is, the still-seeping filling that shouldn't have been seeping in the first place, but I didn't follow directions. I rock.


The second piece of rolled-out dough was placed on top and the edges were folded and crimped.



The sandwich baked for 20 minutes, at which point I brushed it with garlic oil and cooked it for 20 more minutes.

Reading this, it seems so quick and simple. Actually, though, it took forever. Nick and I usually eat late, but we ate very late last night. But when we did eat, wow I ate a lot. This pie/tart/sandwich thing was absolutely awesome. It smelled insanely good when it was taken out of the oven, and it did not disappoint.

Like I said, it was a combination of some of the best things in the whole world, so how could it not be great? I think I ate about 5,000 calories yesterday, but it doesn't count because it was a snow day. Right?

You're probably tired of hearing me talk about snow, right? And if you live in the Baltimore area, you're probably sick of dealing with snow.

This is blizzard #3 this year, and the second time in a week that a state of emergency and the hospital's corresponding code yellow have been called. Again, I am so lucky to not be stuck at work. Woo hoo.

Some Facebook buddies posted that we have now gotten more snow this year than both Buffalo and Alaska. That's totally crazy, but I believe it. Also, this is the most snowfall that this region has seen in recorded history.

Other Facebook people have published posts in which they detail the ways in which they are losing their minds. Especialy the people with kids. Even Nick is losing his mind because he's so bored.

Look:
He's out there shoveling in winds so strong that Facebookers are saying that it's scaring them. Apparently, the wind is strong enough to blow snow under the door and create a drift in the building's front entrance.

We had talked about building a snowman on the porch because that would be pretty cool, but I no longer know how to approach such an undertaking.

I guess we would first have to move that chest-high drift. Or maybe we could actually carve a snowman out of it.

I would just like to note, however, that I am not complaining about the snow (only because I haven't gotten stuck at work, knock on wood). I figure that if it has to be winter, it should be winter. It sucks when it's just cold and dreary. At least with all this snow it's less boring.

Speaking of bored, Nick's back, so it's time to cook more food.

Herb Sandwich from Parma

Erbazzone

(Slightly Adapted from Molto Italiano)

Dough

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cake flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons high-quality lard or unsalted butter, chilled
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, chilled
• 7 to 10 tablespoons cold water

Filling

• 5 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, minced
• 3 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 medium red onion, cut into a 1/4 inch dice
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 1/2 pounds spinach, beet greens, or swiss chard leaves, or a blend, blanched in boiling water till barely wilted, drained, squeezed dry, and chopped
• 1 cup Parmesan Reggiano 
• Salt
• 2 large eggs, beaten

Garlic Oil

• 2 tablespoons high-quality lard or extra virgin olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, minced

To make the dough, combine the flours and salt in a food processor and mix for a couple seconds. Add the olive oil (or lard) and the butter. Pulse a few times until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Move to a large mixing bowl and sprinkle with 7 tablespoons cold water. With a spatula, gently mix. If it is too dry, add more water, a little at a time. Gather the dough into a bowl, wrap with plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes.


To make the filling, in a small bowl, combine about 1/4 cup of the pancetta with a little of the garlic, about 1/4 cup of the onion, and a generous amount of pepper. Set aside.


Cook the remaining pancetta in the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat until it has given off much of its fat, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining onion and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, or until the onion has softened.


Uncover, raise the heat to high, and cook until the filling is a rich golden brown. Add the spinach, reduce the heat to medium, and cook until the greens are tender, about 7 minutes if you're using one of the heartier greens. 


Stir in the remaining garlic and cook for another 30 seconds or so, until fragrant. If a brown glaze has formed on the skillet bottom, add a little water and simmer, scraping up the brown bits, until the water has evaporated. Turn the filling into a bowl and let it cool.


Add the Parmesan and the reserved pancetta mixture to the filling. Taste for seasoning and blend in the eggs.


Set a rack as close to the bottom of the oven as possible, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.


For the garlic oil, combine the olive oil (or lard) and garlic in a small pan and heat over medium until fragrant. Remove from the heat.


Brush a 14-inch pizza pan with olive oil. Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll one piece to about a 14-inch circle, and place it on the pan. Spread the filling over the pastry, leaving about a 2-inch border.


Roll out the second piece of dough to a 14-inch round. Dampen the edges of the bottom crust with water, top with the second round of dough, and pinch the edges together. Fold the edges over toward the center of the torta, and crimp. Make a few slashes on the top of the crust for steam to escape.


Bake for 20 minutes. Brush the crust with the garlic oil, and bake for another 20 minutes, or until the top is pale gold and very crisp and the edges are golden brown. Cut into wedges to serve.

Beets, Salad, and a Lemon Tart

This is the time of year when I begin to crave sunshine, fresh air, buds on the trees, and dresses without tights.

Well, that's not going to happen, so I figured I would make a lemon tart that would give me some bright tartness, the freshness of lemons, and some sunny yellow.

As I previously mentioned, I had some leftover Meyer lemons, and I was beginning to worry that they would go to waste. Also, I was on call and therefore couldn't do anything cool like drinking wine, so I figured I'd bake.

This is what my brother Garrett said about being on call: "It's like walking around with a metal briefcase handcuffed to your wrist. Makes you feel important and awesome, until someone saws your arm off to get it." That pretty much sums it up. Before I was actually a nurse, I used to think that being on call seemed rather cool and glamorous. What was I thinking? It sucks.

Anyway, the 10x10 cookbooks have several tasty lemon desserts within their covers, but I had had my eye on this one for a while, because I like the way egg whites are folded in at the end. More on that later, though.

Mario Batali says, "I love the warm glow this gives me, both in the making and the eating." Yeah, I could go for some warm glow right now.

So I made the pastry dough by toasting (without burning!) almonds, grinding them up, and combining them with flour and sugar.

For some reason, my dough was way too dry, so I added some olive oil. Why olive oil, you ask? I was inspired by the Epicurious recipe for a Lemon Curd Tart With Olive Oil, because it's one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten. My uncle almost had a heart attack over it.

So the disks of dough went into the fridge to rest for a while. Okay, so it's supposed to make one disk of dough, but there was just too much. Something's fishy here...

The three lemons were then juiced.


These are not bleach stains. They are what happened to my cheapo Target shirt when it made contact with the lemon juice. That's okay, though, because I only wear this shirt around the house, for this very reason.

After I messed up my shirt, some egg yolks were beaten with some sugar until they reached the ribbon stage. He didn't say that, but that's what he meant.

The lemon zest and juice were added to this mixture, and placed in a double boiler. Making lemon curd requires that you stir this stuff constantly for 15-20 minutes. Should you fail to do this, you might curdle your curd, which I of course have done in the past. It's sometimes fixable, but it can be nasty.

So just to be careful, I pulled a stool up to the stove and planted myself on it so that I wouldn't get distracted, wander away, and curdle the curd.

It's a lot like when I worked in a restaurant that required that the servers make the whipped cream and plate the desserts. It was totally stupid, but that's a different story. Well, I liked to make the whipped cream, and I would put the cream in the industrial stand mixer, get bored just when I should have been paying attention, wander off, and come back to butter. Eventually, I was not allowed to make the whipped cream.

So when Nick saw this setup, he initially made fun of me, but when I explained what I was doing, he said, "Oh. I would do that, too, then."

Before I did the double boiler part, though, I pressed the tart dough into the tart pan. Mario tells you to roll out the dough, but I figure that part of the fun of making a tart crust as opposed to a more tasty pie crust is that you don't usually have to do any dough rolling, as the dough is too crumbly, it works just fine to press it into the pan, and rolling vs. pressing will not effect the final presentation.

The tart dough was initially covered with aluminum foil, which was in turn covered with beans in order to prevent the crust from puffing.

After 10 minutes, I was required to remove the bean and foil contraption. Have you ever tried to do this? It's not easy, people. And if those beans fall all over the inside of your hot oven, it really sucks. Luckily, I managed not to make a mess.

Five minutes later, when the tart crust was supposed to come out, I noted that while I would have liked the bottom to be a bit more browned, the edges were burning. I knew 450 was too high, Mario. I was too lazy to make a foil rim at this point, so I'll just hope that the dough isn't undercooked, because that's gross.

So at this point the egg whites that had been separated from their yolks were beat into stiff peaks.

The stand mixer is wonderful for tasks like this, but I unfortunately bent my whisk attachment on some really hard brown sugar while making Christmas cookies this past year. It was just one more thing in a long line of things I broke that week, including my car and the Christmas tree, and it prompted Hunter to text me this: " You should just sit down for a week. Think of what you've done. Those mojo faeries are really shittin' the juju beans of suck." I really was tempted to have myself placed in a medically-induced come until I stopped being a moron, but I persevered.

But that means that when I use the stand mixer now, it makes a horrible, head-hurting noise. I'm extremely sensitive to sound, but even Nick and Hunter will tell you that the stand mixer now makes a very unpleasant noise.

So when the egg whites had reached the required degree of stiffness, I breathed a big sigh of relief.

The egg whites were then folded into the lemon curd and poured into the crust.

As I had mentioned, this is the part of this recipe that had intrigued me.

The rest of this recipe is rather standard, but I had never seen a tart recipe that called for beaten egg whites to be folded into the rest of the filling.

I figured it had the potential to be fluffy and airy, or it could be spongy and chewy. Obviously, I was hoping for light and airy.


The verdict? Definitely light and airy. It's a lot like eating a very tart, lemon-flavored meringue on a crisp cookie crust.

I got what I was going for with the tartness of the lemons, which Nick liked. He and I agreed that it's a refreshing change from the gelatinous consistency of your average lemon tart. Not that there's anything wrong with that consistency; this is just more refreshing.

Speaking of refreshing lemon desserts, I highly recommend the Lemon Pudding Cake, also from Epicurious. It's very inexpensive, very quick and easy, and I'm absolutely mad for it. You make one batter, pour it all in to a souffle dish, and the finished product is like a very smooth, light lemon pudding topped with a light meringue. Get it? One batter, two textures. It's like magic, and the taste is like a distilled lemon meringue pie.

Do you see that huge missing piece? I would really love to tell you that Nick helped me with that, but I have to confess that I ate that whole piece. Like I said, the light filling is very refreshing but addictive in its tartness, and it's also very light, which tricks your brain into thinking that you can eat the whole tart. Anything with contrasting flavors or textures, like chocolate covered pretzels, tends to be highly addictive, and this tart works on much the same principle. That's why it's going to work with me before it does any more damage. It's a good thing I wear scrubs.

Or maybe it's not. My uncle one day came to a brilliant conclusion, which he dubbed the Hermit Crab Theory. The Hermit Crab Theory states that you will expand to fit the clothes that you are wearing. Therefore, if you wear baggy scrubs to work, like the OR scrubs that labor and delivery nurses are required to wear, you will likely begin to expand in order to fill those scrubs. Unfortunately, I have found this to be true.

So let's talk about something that does not contain a stick of butter--I had mentioned beets in the posting title. I love some roasted beets in the wintertime. I find them quite comforting yet refreshing, and I like them as part of a salad, with pasta, or with some crusty bread spread with a tangy cheese.

Most recipes will tell you that it's really easy to roast the beets, and then peel their skins off with a paper towel the way you would peel roasted peppers.

Well, that's a bunch of crap. I prefer to peel them with a vegetable peeler before they're roasted. That way, you don't have to fool with a burning hot ball of slipperiness that is actually not inclined to give up its skin.

Plus, I like the little marbled patterns that the peeler creates on the surface. Beets are so pretty.

I ate one salad that consisted of beets tossed in some commercial creme fraiche

(which is way thicker than mine, probably because I'm doing it wrong) with some lemon juice, salt and pepper, and served over baby arugula simply dressed with olive oil and pepper.

The next night, however, I made the most awesome salad ever.

Well, not really, but it was pretty good, and it was quite nice to sit by the fire and eat it with my fingers (everything is better when eaten with the fingers).

To make the salad, I made a large julienne of some beets, sprinkled them with salt, pepper and lemon juice, and put a dollop of creme fraiche on the side. Next to this was a simply dressed bed of baby arugula topped with finely shaved shallots, lemon juice, and julienned prosciutto.

All of the flavors were just perfect together. The tangy creme fraiche perfectly complimented the earthy sweetness of the beets, and the peppery, bitter arugula played well with the sweet shallots and salty depth of the prosciutto. I have to confess that I don't always love raw (I know that it's cured and therefore not raw, but you know what I mean) prosciutto, despite the Italian in me. In fact, it's probably downright blasphemous to say that. The prosciutto with the arugula, however, was absolutely perfect. That's what I mean about trying things until you find a way to like them. I figure that just about anything can be delicious when it's in the right context.

You may have noticed the piece of cheese in the background. I made the mistake of going to Whole Foods while hungry the other day. But it turns out it wasn't a mistake, because it made me get the best cheese EVER.

Actually, that title will probably always go to Parmesan Reggiano, but this cheese rocks. It's a goat cheese, but very mild for a goat cheese. It's more creamy and less dry than you would usually expect from a goat cheese, and its subtle flavor reminds me of some kind of cheese that I had in Europe forever ago. Not that that's a very helpful descriptor, but I guess you could say that it tastes like a real cheese, as opposed to the overly pasteurized stuff that you frequently get in the States.

The rind is covered in rosemary, but it's not the kind of rosemary that makes you feel like you're trying to eat a pine tree, but it's getting stuck in your teeth. No, this is the kind of romsemary that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Interestingly, this cheese is not so good with my usual crackers. You might notice that there's a box of Kashi crackers in the background of almost every picture. I'm madly in love with them, and eat them with most cheeses, but this cheese only really shone with a baguette. It was also yummy when I licked it off my finger, and I don't always enjoy cheese without a starch vehicle. It's just that good.

The cheese, by the way, is called Brin D' Amour a.k.a. Fleur du Maquis. I have no idea how to pronounce that because I really suck with the whole French thing, so I'll just call it Awesome.

Lemon Tart

(From Molto Italiano)

Pastry

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup ground toasted almonds
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 large egg
• Pinch of salt

Filling

• 3 lemons
• 4 large eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup sugar

To make the pastry, toss together the flour, almonds, and sugar in a medium bowl. Cut in the butter until the mixture is the consistency of fine bread crumbs. Add the egg and salt and mix well, kneading gently. (I did all of this in the food processor). Form the pastry into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate while you make the filling.


Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan.


Grate the zest of 2 of the lemons. Squeeze the juice from all 3 lemons.


In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar with an electric mixer until very thick and pale. Beat in the lemon zest and juice. Transfer to the top of a double boiler, set over barely simmering water, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture becomes thick, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool slightly.


Roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper into an 11-inch circle. Fit it into the tart pan and trim the excess dough. Prick the bottom of the dough all over with a fork, line with foil, and fill with dried beans, rice, or pie weights to keep the bottom from puffing. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the foil and beans, and cook for an additional 5 minutes, or until pale golden brown.


Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat the egg whites until they hold very stiff peaks. Fold them into the cooled lemon mixture.


Remove the tart shell from the oven and reduce the temperature to 325 degrees. Spread the lemon filling evenly in the tart shell. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until the filling is thoroughly set. Cool completely on a rack.