Gina DePalma: Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen
This is not a book on bread, but it is beautiful and required reading. From my mentor, Gina De Palma
Bernard Clayton: The Breads of France: And How to Bake Them in Your Own Kitchen
Peter Reinhart: The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread
Daniel Leader: Bread Alone: Bold Fresh Loaves from Your Own Hands
Daniel Wing: The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens
Peter Reinhart: Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas For Serious Bakers
Always on the lookout for mirabelle plums, I found jars of sugar preserved plums, imported from Germany, at the local cheese shop. Once home, I removed the pits and placed the plums in an almond batter. The batter was used to fill tarts with tops. I like tops on tarts. There is more flakey goodness to go around. The recipe comes from Jane Grigson's Fruit Book, a sweet and informative read.
I was flipping through the pages of Pierre Herme's Desserts cookbook when I came across the recipe for this tart. This cookbook was written by Dorie Greenspan, and I love anything that she writes. She has a keen eye for observation when baking, and her writing reflects that.
The tart was a hit at home, and one that I'll enjoy tweaking later on. The tart shell is a blind baked pate sucree made with all-purpose and almond flours. The banana slices are sauteed in butter and then caramelized with a little sugar. So you end up with soft banana inside and crunchy caramel coating the oustside. The slices are placed on the bottom of the tart shell. Rum macerated golden raisins are layered on top of the banana slices. The chocolate filling is prepared by melting butter and chocolate separately. The melted chocolate is gently whisked into some beaten eggs and sugar. Then the butter is slowly whisked in to create an emulsion. The filling is poured over the bananas and raisins and then gently baked for a short time. The resulting confection is awesome - satisfying, warm, and not too sweet.
Today was a Greenmarket day, and I was on the hunt for pears and winter squash. What a surprise, then, to find these beautiful raspberries at the Berried Treasures stand. We spoke to one of the vendors and it was then all so obvious. The warm weather that we have been experiencing has also meant a longer season for many fruits and vegetables. I really love the baby leeks at the Sweet Mountain Berry stand, and they too are still available because it has been so incredibly warm.
The best way I knew to highlight how beautiful these raspberries are is in a very simple tart. The tart shell is partially baked and then filled with a honey custard, which is then baked to set. The raspberries were placed on top and lightly brushed with a honey glaze. The custard is just sweet enough to balance the acidity of the raspberries.
What could be better than an apple tart on an autumn day? I made this tart for dessert this past week. And while Ken and I are on different schedules (my days off are Saturdays and Sundays and his are Wednesdays and Thursdays), we've divided up the cooking. He makes dinner for me on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and then I make brunch on Saturdays and Sundays.
This past week I wanted to make dessert to go with one of his dinners. I brought home Empire apples from the Greenmarket and made the pate brisee, apple puree and clear caramel over the weekend. On Wednesday, when I got home from work, I assembled the tart. I rolled out the brisee and lined the tart shell and then spooned the apple puree into the tart shell. I sliced the remaining apples thinly and cooked them lightly in the clear caramel. I arranged them on top of the puree and then baked the tart.
Plums have most definitely arrived at the Greenmarket, and I picked up some Santa Rosas to make these tarts. The tart dough was made with a high ratio of butter and no eggs, which means that its buttery, rich, and quite delicate. You need a spatula to pick up the tarts.
The crumbly topping is the same topping I used to make the blueberry buckle. And it's fairly quick to put together: First, in a medium bowl, mix together all of the dry ingredients: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup demerarra sugar, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon sea salt. Then cube 6 tablespoons cool, unsalted butter and cut the cubes with a pastry blender or fork into the dough (you could also use your fingers). Once the butter is blended into the dry ingredients, use your finger tips to smoosh the mixture together to create large clumps.
The plums were a bit tart and I used a little more sugar than I normally would for the filling and a touch of flour for thickening. I baked them for thirty minutes until the filling was bubbly and the shells were golden.
I have to admit that although this tart happened quite by accident, it is nonetheless delicious.
I came accross a recipe to poach and preserve peaches in a brandy syrup. The photo was stunning and inspired me to try the recipe. I purchased some absolutely beautiful peaches at the Greenmarket, bought some brandy and was ready to go. The recipe called for dropping the whole peaches into a pot of boiling water for one minute. You were then instructed to remove the peaches, halve them and peel off the skin. What I didn't realize was that my peaches were clingstone and I couldn't remove the flesh from the pit without damaging the flesh.
So I took the flesh and pureed it. I placed it back on the stove in a medium pot with some granulated sugar and lemon juice and simmered it to remove some of the water and concentrate the puree.
From there, everything was relatively simple. I made a pate brisee crust, which I blind baked. Once the crust cooled, I spread the puree over the top and then placed sliced peaches decoratively on top of the puree. I sprinkled the top of the tart with granulated sugar and then placed it under the broiler for about 5 minutes.
The most enjoyable part of the tart was that it was not overloaded with sugar. The flavor of the peaches really stood out and were perfectly complimented by a flaky, buttery crust.
There are sour cherries at the Greenmarket! Their season is very short - they don't last long. I couldn't resist picking up two containers and making a sour cherry pie for the fourth. During the week I am up in the Catskills at Bread Alone, mixing dough. I come home to Brooklyn on Tuesday evening and my favorite pastime is to stop by the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesday morning and pick up what is in season. And while my blog is focused on bread and pastry, fruit and dessert, and so I only write about the dessert aspect of a meal, I also really enjoy picking up vegetables for the savory part. The season for garlic scapes has just passed, but the first ears of corn have arrived. Currant berries have begun to arrive, and sour cherries are almost finished. What pleasure and joy to stop and watch the bounty of fruits and vegetables change and the season passes by.
When someone says 'sour cherries' to me, I think of cherries that have no sweetness to them whatsoever. Sour cherries are tart, but they do contain a small amount of natural sugars. They are actually quite perfect in a pie. They create a wonderful sweet and tart taste. And they don't loose their shape during baking. (They are also very easy to pit.) It is also fairly common to find sour cherries dried. I am a particularly big fan of the dried Montmorency cherries available at Trader Joe's.
If someday I have a bakery of my own, I dream of what I might offer. There would be beautiful breads - the best baguettes, dark ryes, rustic country levain, sweet and savory fougasses. And there would be pastries - croissants, cakes, tarts.
Tarts are something that I endeavor to perfect. One of the key elements to the tart is the crust, and there are three basic kinds: pâte brisée - a flaky crust that is not sweet, pâte sucrée - a sweet crust, and pâte sablée - a sandy, cookie-type crust. I have a wonderful pâte brisée recipe that I use when I make quiche. It is so flaky that is almost ressembles puff pastry. It's the pâte sucrée recipe that eludes me. I've tried many recipes, and most are either too sweet or not delicate enough.
My favorite pâte sucrée recipe comes from Maury Rubin's Book of Tarts, from the City Bakery. It is also the most difficult to work with. His recipe is the most delicate - it contains a lot of butter in proportion to the other ingredients. His also is not too sweet. The recipe uses egg yolks instead of whole eggs, which adds to the delicateness. Egg yolks contain fat, whereas the white adds additional water. Because of the high proportion of butter, the dough can quickly go from being too hard to roll out to too soft, as the butter softens to room temperature. It is also more difficult to blind bake - if the oven temperature is not hot enough when the tart shells go into the oven, they tend to want to slide down the sides of the rings since the water from the butter is not evaporating off fast enough.
Tart shells aside, part of the fun of making tarts is using seasonal fruits. I have the most fun going to the Union Square Greenmarket on Wednesdays and browsing through the stands for beautiful fruit. Right now strawberries fill the stands, and I am a big fan, thanks to Gina, of the tri-star variety. The fruits are small and sweet and remind me of the tiny fraises des bois. I purchased a container and made several tartelettes - Maury Rubin's pâte sucrée tart shell, cream cheese pastry cream and tri-star strawberries. The acidity of the strawberries balanced the richness of the pastry cream, and the tart shell provided a crunchy textural component. All in all, so delicious that I want to make them again!
The Shakers had a penchant for preparing food in simple but very unique ways, and this tart is a great example of that. The filling is made of only lemons, sugar, eggs and a pinch of salt. What is unique to this tart is that the lemons are sliced thinly, peel and all. They are combined with granulated sugar and then sit overnight. The sugar extracts liquid from the lemons, including water in the skin, and this has a softening effect. The next day the eggs and salt are mixed in and the filling is baked in a tart or pie shell.
What I particularly like about this tart is that the filling is thin and is encased between two very flakey, buttery layers of pâte brisée. This creates a perfect balance between the filling, which is quite tart, and the pastry.
Some interesting facts about the Shakers: They arrived in America from England on the eve of the American Revolution. At their height, in the mid-ninteenth century, they numbered more than 6,000. They lived in communal villages from New England, West to Ohio and South to Kentucky. They practiced celibacy and Shaker women were given equal rights in 1787. Today, there remains a single Shaker village in Maine.
Shaker cuisine developed as their communities developed, which happened during the federal period of American history just after the Revolution at a time when creating a unique American cuisine was popularized. Their focus was on native ingredients and healthful, wholesome cuisine. The Shakers were very successful orchardists, and fruit not only played a role in desserts but was also used in drinks, sauces, and savory dishes. The Shakers in Kentucky had access to lemons via trips made to New Orleans to sell their goods.
I think of Quiche Lorraine when I think of quiche. The delicate custard is filled with a generous amount bacon and Gruyère cheese and surrounded by flaky, buttery pastry. Although cheese is not traditionally found in Quiche Lorraine, it is a common addition. Quiche was originally made with bread dough instead of flaky pastry dough, quite similar to pissaldière or pizza.
Lorraine is located in the Northeast of France. Although it is separated from Alsace by the Vosges mountains its cuisine is still influenced by Alsatian cuisine. This means that it has wonderful charcuterie, and smoked bacon is a traditional ingredient in the region's cuisine.
