The Dinner Files

I learned several things this weekend. First, there isn’t much of a reason to add roasted winter squash to fresh pasta dough. The pasta turns a barely perceptible darker shade of yellow, not the brilliant orange a person might imagine.

Second, a 10 x 15 lasagna feeds ten people just fine, as long as you have five pounds of roasted brussels sprouts on the table too.

Third, whole wheat pastry flour makes a perfect crust for an almond tart.

Fourth, said almond tart makes a very tasty breakfast.

Almond Tart

Yikes but this is an easy, crowd-pleasing dessert. I’ve changed it over the years and am thrilled (thrilled!) with the magic of this crust with the almonds. I’ve served it with store-bought vanilla ice cream, homemade ginger ice cream, fresh berries, and spiced pear compote.

1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

8 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons ice cold water

1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sliced almonds

1 cup cream

3/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon whiskey [totally and completely optional]

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

Mix the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces and work the butter into the flour mixture with a fork, pastry cutter, or – my favorite- your fingers until the mixture looks like cornmeal with some small chunks of butter still visible and some bits of cornmeal-like flour starting to cling together into large pieces.

Drizzle water and vinegar over the dough. Stir until dough starts to hold together. It will still look shaggy, but if you gently squeeze it into a ball most of it should hold together. Pat dough into a six-inch disk, wrap in plastic, and chill at least half an hour (and up to three days).

Preheat oven to 400. On a well floured surface, roll out dough to fit a ten-inch tart pan. Line the pan with the dough, trim edges, and lay a large piece of buttered tin foil, butter side down, on the tart crust.  Chill the covered crust about 15 minutes. Weigh down the foil with beans or pie weights, put the tart pan on a baking sheet, and bake until crust is set and starting to turn golden, about 20 minutes.

While crust par-bakes, combine almonds, cream, sugar, whiskey, and almond extract in a medium bowl. Let sit, stirring once in a while, until sugar dissolves and the whole mixtures thickens a bit, about 15 minutes.

Remove foil from crust, pour almond mixture into the crust and bake until crust is browned, filling is bubbling, and the surface is starting to caramelize [about 40 minutes]. Let tart sit at room temperature to cool for at least an hour before serving.

“Mama, it’s like a pizza!” Ernest said brightly when he bit into it.

It was like pizza, but with a pie/tart crust. So, in the end, not really like a pizza at all. But is was round and baked and topped with tomato and cheese, so the comparison certainly makes some sense.

What it was, in fact, was delicious. Much richer than pizza, of course. It was, perhaps, a little extra rich since I used half butter and half lard to make the crust – it’s my new thing and it is awesome, such flaky and flavorful crust I have never known, I swear. Mix 1 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 tsp. salt in a medium or large bowl. Cut in 4 Tbsp. butter and 4 Tbsp. lard until you have a corn meal-looking mixture with some larger chunks in it (a few can even be as large as a pea). You can cut in the fat with a pastry cutter, two knives, a fork, or, as I do, with your cool little fingers as long as you work a bit quickly. Stir in 3 Tbsp. ice cold water to form a dough. Dump dough onto a very well floured surface, knead it a few times to get it to hold together, and pat it into a disk about 6 inches across. Wrap the disk in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes and up to several days if you like to plan ahead. The dough is very soft and so needs to be well-chilled before you roll it out.

After chilling, return dough to that very well-floured surface to which you have added more flour to return it to its well-floured condition after patting the disk into shape. Roll dough out to desired shape and size – for this tart about 12 inches across. Turn the dough about 90 degrees after each pass of the rolling pin. This ensures that the dough isn’t sticking. If it does start to even seem like it’s thinking about sticking, lift half the dough up and throw a bit of flour underneath. Again, this dough is soft, which means it would very much like to try and stick to things. Don’t worry if it breaks or cracks – just patch it up. It will still taste divine and it will let everyone know you made it yourself.

I owe the entire concept, the very idea for this tomato tart to Sam over at Chews Wise, who, after making a peach galette much like my peach crostada, used the remaining tart dough to make a savory tart of “sauteed leeks, mustard and tomatoes, and basil. You cook the galette crust flat for 10 minutes, then take out, schmear on mustard, put on leeks, tomatoes and basil and put back in oven for another 20 minutes or so. You don’t fold the edge over, just leave it flat, like pizza.” He got the idea from a 2003 New York Times story.

And he was right, it is a perfect dish for my blog. But I didn’t smear anything with mustard, I smeared the partially-baked crust with some of the tomato conserva I made, added sliced tomatoes and a bit of fresh mozzarella, sprinkled the whole thing with salt and called it dinner.

A note on pie crust: See the crust in the picture? See how it is past golden and heading straight into brown territory? That is what properly cooked pie crust looks like. Cooked pie crust, in fact, smells of cooked pie crust. There is a trend afoot of bakeries and restaurants and, I’m sure, home cooks, of not baking pies and tarts all the way. It’s like the half-cooked tender-crisp way with vegetables has spread into the pastry world. While hot-but-crisp asparagus is a fine thing, a pale and half-baked crust is an unfortunate creature unable to stand up to fillings, never meeting its full flaky potential. The phrase “half-baked” is a negative descriptor exists for a reason. Bake that crust!

Crostada, galette, free-form tart, pan-less pie – whatever you want to call it I made a peach one. Our CSA claims the bumper crop of peaches we’ve been enjoying this summer has come to an end and that these were the last of them.

I made a crostada last week when some dear friends visited. I churned a bit of homemade vanilla ice cream to go along with it, too. The adults oohed and aahed while the kids hit the freezer for Popsicles.

But the crust was so flaky (I used half butter and half lard, a dangerously good combination) and the peaches so sweet and juicy and the bit of cinnamon and nutmeg so perfectly highlighted that sweetness that I wanted to try again and pay attention to what I did.

Nothing could be easier – well, this one would have been easier if I hadn’t bothered to peel the peaches, but bits of peach skin end up being the reason I thought I didn’t like peach pie, so I always peel them.

I then tossed the peaches with some sugar to taste (I used about 1/4 cup, many people would want more I imagine), a sprinkle of cinnamon and a few gratings of freshly grated nutmeg, and a teaspoon of instant tapioca because I like my crostada filling to thicken up a  bit. While that hung out in a bowl for a bit I rolled out the crust into a large circle. I may have mentioned this tip before, but it bears repeating that the trick to rolling out dough is to start on a well floured surface and turn the dough a quarter turn after each roll to make sure it isn’t sticking. No need to flip over or any other such fussy nonsense.

I transferred the quite delicate and soft dough (which became an amazingly tender and flaky crust) onto a baking sheet and piled on the peach mixture.

Then you just need to fold up the sides and pinch them lightly into place before sprinkling the whole thing with some castor sugar that you have hanging around in the back of the cupboard from when you made Rye Cookies.

The whole thing then needs to be baked in a hot oven for a good long time – this one took almost an hour and a half (45 minutes at 400 and the rest at 350). Since I hadn’t bothered to seal up the cracks along the edges, it leaked quite a bit. It may not have looked so fabulous on the pan, but it was lovely on the plate, and tasted like the last burst of summer.

A full recipe-style recipe is over at Local Foods as Peach Crostada.

I was going to make this leek tart Saturday night, but while putting the crust dough together I sort of lost the will to see it through and realized that I didn’t really have time to let the crust chill properly and I wasn’t really sure it would all work out, so I overcooked some rice instead.

I pulled the well-chilled dough out of the fridge last night, rolled it out, sliced and cooked the many leeks that came in the farm box this week, rooted around for some dairy products to enrich my creation, and wondered what kind of cheese it was that I was grating to sprinkle on top. The whole wheat buttermilk crust was dandy. Was it perhaps a bit silly to work that whole grain into a dish so laden with butter, cream, and cheese? Perhaps. But it also added a bit of substance to the dish. Grounded it, if you will.