French Apple Tart

For Jeremy's recent birthday, Craig very sweetly gave a gift not only to Jeremy but also to me, since I played just a bit part in the reason for the festivities ... :)

He gave me a cookbook - one of my very favorite things, of course! Simca's Cuisine was written by Simone "Simca" Beck, who co-wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking with the beloved Julia Child. The book "gives us her own cuisine in delectable recipes ... arranged in menus for every occasion."

I selected a recipe from the section entitled "Un Diner à la Compagne" [uh dee-NAY ah lah cohm-PAHN-yuh] - A Dinner in the Country. The apple-almond tart Simca recommended serving for dessert was perfect for my Tu B'Shevat [TOO bay sheh-VAHT] dinner, celebrating the Jewish New Year of the Trees.

Trees are very important in Judaism, as is tikkun olam [tee-KOON oh-LAHM], which is "repairing the world." Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai even taught the following lesson: "If you have a sapling in your hand and someone tells you the Messiah has arrived, first plant the sapling and then go out to welcome the Messiah." Planting trees is a means to providing food, shelter, and many other benefits to both current and - especially - future generations.

And so, on the 15th day of the month of Shevat (on the Hebrew calendar), it is customary to eat fruits, particularly those which come from trees. Many people partake of a seder, a formal celebration, in which ritual foods are eaten; these include fruits with an inedible shell, those with an inedible inner pit, and fruits with no shell and no pit.

Thus, this beautiful French tart with almonds, apricots, and raisins, as well as apples, combines traditional representative foods in one lovely, sweet, delicious dessert. It was perfect for the holiday, and would be ideal at any time that a simple but sophisticated dessert is needed.

On a completely unrelated note: in the past I've mentioned my fixation upon the Bocuse d'Or, the bi-annual culinary "Olympics" which took place in France last week. Here are the final results, for those who weren't parked in front of their computer screens obsessively watching the streaming presentation of meat and fish platters while sipping their morning coffee before work!

Best Promotion: Guatemala
Best Poster: Hungary
Best Commis ([coh-MEE] = assistant): Kristian Curtis, United Kingdom
Best Fish Platter: Norway
Best Meat Platter: United Kingdom
Bronze: Japan (the commis was in tears ... it was so sweet!)
Silver: Denmark (gold medalists in 2011)
Gold: France (they almost feel it's their birthright to win this, so they're very happy!)


French Apple Tart
(slightly adapted from a recipe in Simca's Cuisine by Simone "Simca" Beck)

Crust:

• 1-1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 cup butter, at room temperature
• 1/8 cup shortening, at room temperature
• 2-3 tablespoons (or more) ice water

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, and salt. With a fork, mix in butter and shortening until mixture resembles meal. Stir in 2 tablespoons water with the fork, until the dough starts to form a ball. Add water by the tablespoon if more is needed. Form into a ball, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Filling:

• 1/3 cup Solo Apricot pastry filling
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup sugar
• pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2 cup whole almonds, ground fine
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 2 large Honeycrisp apples, peeled, cored, grated
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• ice cream, for serving (either vanilla or rum raisin would be ideal)

Roll dough out into a 12" circle and place into a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom (or into a 9" pie pan). Press dough into the bottom of the pan and up against the sides, then trim dough even with edge of pan. Spread apricot filling over bottom of crust, then refrigerate while making filling.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, cinnamon, sugar, and salt. Stir in the ground almonds and the raisins. Stir in the grated apples, then pour filling into the prepared crust.

Place the tart pan onto a larger baking sheet, to catch drips, then bake for 20 minutes.

Prick the tart all over with a fork, then pour butter over the top of the tart and let it seep into the filling. Raise oven temperature to 375F, then bake for 15 more minutes until tart is golden and set.

Let cool completely, then remove rim from tart pan. Place tart onto a platter and serve with ice cream.

Makes 12 servings.

 
Tomorrow, by the way, is World Nutella Day - yay!!! So here are some recipes to choose from, for your celebration:

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love Tart

Peanut Butter Pancakes with Nutella Sauce

Banana Nutella Cake with Coffee Glaze

Krispy Kreme Peanut Butter Dream Sandwich

Chocolate Cake with Nutella Buttercream Frosting

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love Tart

Elvis Presley was noted for many things, among them his beautiful baritone, his white jumpsuits, his gyrations, and his beloved grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Since I obsess about food, let's focus on those sandwiches, shall we?

This is my final entry into Project PB&J - a contest for food bloggers which is being hosted by my friend Cindy of Once Upon a Loaf and her friend Christina of She Runs, She Eats.  The competition is in honor of National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, as well as Cindy's birthday, on April 2; and the rules required preparing a sandwich and/or a baked good with a nut butter and a jelly/jam or fruit.

So, as I thought of all the variations on the theme of peanut butter paired with fruit, how could I not think of Elvis' favorite treat?  And yet, that particular pb&j has already been done, hasn't it?  Hmmm ....

But it could be transformed into a different entity, couldn't it, taking the essential components and whirling them in my brain until I devised a different concoction with those flavors ...?

And so, I settled upon a dessert ... a dessert with a peanut butter-flavored crust ... a dessert with a peanut butter-flavored filling ... a dessert with a peanut butter-flavored topping ... and a dessert with bananas happily mixed in.

Thus, I present to you ... the Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love Tart!

Hunka Hunka Burnin' Love Tart


Crust:
1-1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled, cut into small cubes
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
3 tablespoons ice water


In a large bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar and salt.  Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles meal.  Mix in the peanut butter with a fork.  Add water 1 tablespoon at a time and stir with a fork; then knead gently until the mixture comes together.  Form dough into a ball, flatten into a disc, and wrap in plastic; refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F.  On a lightly floured countertop, roll out dough to a 12" round.  Place dough into a 9" tart pan with a removable bottom or into a 9" pie pan; trim edges.

Place a sheet of foil into the crust and fill with dry beans.  Place the tart pan onto a baking sheet; bake for 15 minutes, until the crust is set.  Remove foil and beans, bake for 5 more minutes until the crust is cooked, then let crust cool completely.

Filling:
2 cups Breyer's Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream, very soft
3 small bananas, sliced thin
1/3 cup Nutella
1/4 cup peanut butter-flavored Multi Grain Cheerios, ground (a fabulous marketing gift to play with!)
1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, ground
whipped cream, if desired

Spread the ice cream into the prepared crust; top with the sliced bananas, then freeze for 45 minutes until the ice cream is mostly set.

Spread the Nutella over the bananas, swirling it over the top.  (If the ice cream mingles with the Nutella, it won't hurt anything ... I know from personal experience!)  Combine the Cheerios and peanuts, then sprinkle over the top of the tart.  Freeze for at least 3 hours until firmly set.

Let the tart rest at room temperature for 10 minutes before cutting and serving.

Makes 12 servings.  Serve with whipped cream, if desired.

Be sure you play Elvis tunes while you prepare this.  Just as you should listen to arias while cooking Italian food, you need to listen to the King while making this tart in his honor!  Infuse your food with the appropriate spirit ....

Christmas Eve Pork Pie

I'm a mutt: Austrian and Irish on my father's side, and Scottish, French and Canadian on my mother's.

Sometimes I think I must be related to half of Canada. My maternal grandfather's family can be traced to the late 17th century, when the first ancestor left France and set foot on this side of the Atlantic. For generation after generation, it shows that virtually every surviving male married, fathered perhaps 16 children, remarried after his wife died, and had another 13 or so children with his second wife. I violated the tradition by having only one child!

But I continue the French Canadian tradition of serving pork pie - known as Tourtière [tohr-tee-AIR] - on Christmas Eve.

Yes, I also eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve like every good Jewish person who's not celebrating the big holiday (even though I do still put up a tree and exchange gifts with loved ones). But everyone knows I'm always here for the food; enjoying two wildly different cuisines just makes things more fun!

This is not a family recipe handed down through the decades, but rather one I've cobbled together myself. My mother's version had great flavor; but the meat was very loose and fell out of the crust, which is typical of every other recipe I've seen for this classic dish. So in addition to tweaking the filling by combining both pork and sausage, I've also added egg to bind everything together.

I'm sharing this with you a bit early because you need to make the filling and chill it before placing it into the pie crust and baking it. According to lore, wives' tales, or whatever else you'd like to call it, the pie is also best if made, frozen, and then reheated. I'm not usually efficient enough to do that, and this pork pie is still a family favorite ... start your preparations a day ahead, serve it for Christmas Eve, and you'll love it anyway!

Tourtière (French Canadian Pork Pie)

1 pound bulk breakfast sausage
1 pound ground pork
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Spike Salt-Free All-Purpose Gourmet Natural Seasoning (a lovely marketing gift) or Mrs. Dash
2 large bay leaves
3/4 cup chicken stock
2 pie crusts (for a double-crust pie)
2 eggs
1 egg yolk + 2 tablespoons water

In a large saucepan, combine the sausage and the pork; brown the meat, breaking it up as it cooks. Add the onion, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and seasoning; cook until the onion is translucent, stirring frequently. Add the bay leaves and the chicken stock; bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has been absorbed. Place filling into a bowl, cover, and refrigerate until cold.

Preheat oven to 425F. Roll out one crust and place it into a 9" pie dish.

Stir the 2 eggs into the pork filling, then spoon filling into the pie dish. Cover with the remaining crust, crimp edges, and cut slits into the top.

Beat the egg yolk with the water and brush the egg wash over the pie.

Bake for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 350F. Bake for 40-45 more minutes until the pie is golden. Let the pie rest for 10 minutes before cutting.

Makes 8 servings.

The Saga of the Broken Apple Tart

'Tis the season to pick apples, fa la la la la la la la la. Whether you pick them at an orchard or at a farmers' market or at a grocery store is up to you. But you must pick them!

And while there are lots of cobblers and crisps and applesauce in all of our futures after we pick our apples, I thought I might make something a bit more elegant and also use the tart pan I just found again after moving last month.

I made a Caramel Apple Tart ... sigh.

Of course, I have to admit that my cooking venture with the apples didn't start out as a tart; my original plan was to make dairy-free caramel apples for my co-workers, one of whom has a dairy allergy. But the caramel was too hard, and became too brittle to bite into.

So I smashed the caramel off the apples and melted it with a bit more of the non-dairy milk substitute I'd used in making the original batch. I poured the now-liquid mixture into a greased pan, refrigerated it, and hoped to cut it into soft caramels.

But ... the ingredients separated and the greasy butter substitute rose to the top, coating everything in a layer of slime. It was pretty disgusting! (Remember, just 'cause I write about food doesn't mean that everything I make is a success! We all have our trials, our errors, our experiments, our humiliations ....)

So, then, after venting in frustration as my plans had gone so significantly awry, I still had apples to use up.

Et, voila! An apple tart!

I contributed some caramel sauce and some leftover streusel topping from a different baking project to the cause, and thus was able to clear some items out of my refrigerator while also redeeming my afternoon of kitchen adventures.

And the tart turned out beautifully - gorgeous, with tender apples coated in sweet caramel.

My ego was restored!

That is, until I tried to slice the tart for its photo op. I just didn't have any "mazal" - luck - with my apple ventures on this particular day. Each time I tried to cut a piece, the back crust crumbled or the bottom crust only came up partially from the pan ... oy! Sometimes it's easier to just go to the grocery store!

But once again, I pulled a proverbial trick out of ye olde hat. I simply scooped up the crust, filling and topping and plopped some onto a serving plate. A never-unwelcome scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, and ... voila!

I present to you an elegant French dessert which will now be known as Tarte Cassée de Pomme [tart cah-SAY deh POHM]: Broken Apple Tart.

Broken Apple Tart

Tart:
1 pie crust, at room temperature
8 apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/4" slices
2/3 cup caramel ice cream sauce

Streusel:
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup cookie crumbs (from Nilla wafers or graham crackers)
1/2 ounce sliced almonds
1/8 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375F.

Place the pie crust into a false-bottomed tart pan (or a pie dish). Press crust into the bottom of the pan and up the sides; use a knife to trim excess dough.

In a large mixing bowl, combine apple slices and caramel sauce; pour into the crust.

In a small bowl, combine all of the streusel ingredients; sprinkle over the apples.

Place the tart pan onto a larger baking sheet because the caramel sauce seeps a bit, and bake for 50 minutes until top is golden and the apples are tender when pierced with a knife.

Let cool to room temperature, then try to serve it in slices. When it won't cooperate, simply scoop it up, place it on a serving dish, and offer it with ice cream or whipped cream ... and no explanations of what its original incarnation was supposed to be!

Makes 8-10 servings.