Strawberry Cream Tart in a Gingerbread Crust

1 Apr

Last week it rained for seven days straight.  Now, in this part of the country that type of weather pattern may not be in any way unusual, but that does not erase the fact that it is also unpleasant.  Being as though I have lived here long enough to know that summer comes late to the Pacific Northwest (but also, thankfully, lingers leisurely into the autumn months), I coped with this long stretch of wet and dreary weather in the most reasonable manner possible: I pretended it was summer.

Imagine the days are long and sticky hot.  It’s too hot to turn on the oven during the day, so you wait until the sun sets before you satisfy your desire to bake something.  The heat of the day breaks at around 8PM, but there is a bright glow that lights the sky until well past 9PM.

In the morning, you head into the garden to pick some strawberries.  The berries are warm from the morning sun, and you can smell their sweet juice on your hands as you gather them.

By 10AM it is starting to get warm.  Knowing what the temperature will be like in just a few short hours, you plan ahead and start to assemble a simple cream filling for the tart shell you baked during last night’s reprieve from the heat.  Kept in the refrigerator, the cool cream, topped with fresh strawberries, will prove to be a welcome treat that cuts through the sweltering late afternoon sun.

And that’s how we made it through the week.  Though the berries didn’t come from our garden (we’ve got at least another two and a half months before we see any action in that area), and the days were not anywhere close to being even remotely warm, that didn’t stop us from enjoying this tart any less.  We pretended we were eating it in the backyard as we swayed lazily in a hammock and listened to the soft hum of the sounds of summer.

The good news is that summer will always turn up, even if you have to wait through another soggy and wet season in order to reach it.  The even better news is that you can make this tart now, no matter the season and no matter the weather, and that when it comes to enjoying the tart, there will be absolutely no faking required.

Strawberry Tart in a Gingerbread Crust

Gingerbread Crust

Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground powdered ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled butter, cut into pieces

1 tablespoon unsulphured molasses

2 tablespoons cold water

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, salt, and baking powder.  Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly and resembles cornmeal.  Drizzle the molasses and water over the dough, mixing with your fingertips until the crumbs of dough begin to cling together.

Gather the dough together and knead it into a ball.  Press it evenly into the bottom and sides of a 9″ tart pan.  Pierce crust on sides and bottom with fork.  Gently fit a large piece of aluminum foil tightly against the crust.  Fill with pie weights (you can use dried beans or large handful of pennies, but, being someone to bakes a great deal, I like to use these super handy ceramic pie weights) and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges of the crust just begin to darken.  Remove foil and weights from tart pan (it’s best to just gather up the foil by the edges and lift the whole thing out, weights and all), and continue to bake the tart crust for 10-15 minutes more, or until crust is firm and darkly browned.

Set aside tart crust until completely cooled, at least 2 hours.  (I let mine cool, uncovered, overnight.)

Strawberry Cream Filling

8 ounces vanilla yogurt (regular or nonfat)

4 ounces cream cheese

finely grated or chopped zest of 1/2 a lemon

12 ounces strawberries, hulled and sliced

In a bowl with a mixer on high speed, beat together yogurt and cream cheese until smooth.  Add lemon zest and stir to combine.  Pour yogurt and cream cheese filling into cooled tart shell.  Refrigerate until chilled and slightly firmed (it will never reach actual firmness, so don’t aim for a sturdy filling), about 2 hours.

When filling has chilled, arrange strawberries on top in whatever manner you choose.  I layered them in overlapping circles, but I promise you that the arrangement of your strawberries will in no way compromise the taste of your dessert.

Optional

If your strawberries are off season, as these were, and not at peak sweetness, you can apply a very light glaze on top of the berries to coax out a bit more strawberry flavor.  Simply toss a couple of large strawberries into a small food processor or blender, along with two tablespoons of water, 1/4 teaspoon of sugar, and a pinch of cornstarch. Blend together until smooth, then pour into a small saucepan set over low heat.  Stir over low heat until strawberry mixture has thickened slightly and just begins to simmer.  Let mixture cool slightly, then lightly brush over arranged strawberries until just covered.

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Black Bread Rolls and Food for Traveling

29 Mar

When you have to travel in a car for a very long distance, and, thus, a very long period of time, it’s a challenge to try and figure out what you can do to make your time trapped in a car a little less unpleasant.  Last summer, while undertaking a nearly 700 mile drive south, we prepared the car for the needs of a child: toys, books, and a makeshift desk top crafted out of a strategically-cut piece of plywood.  A couple of weeks ago, preparing for a drive that would be half as long with a turnaround time twice as fast (last summer’s trip netted roughly 1400 miles in 8 days, but our most recent trip spanned 900 miles in only 4 days), we planned not for maximum entertainment while in the car, but rather for maximum efficiency.

Maximum efficiency in this case relegated lunch and snacks to the car, allowing for the most efficient use of driving time with the least amount of stops (or so we thought, until a certain preschool-aged child decided that it was of utmost importance to announce his desire to visit a restroom every 20 minutes, but that’s another story).  It also meant that I was going to be able to plan a small menu of picnic-type items, which gave me a certain amount of pleasure.  I am a big fan of meals that consist of many small bites of many different things, so this was right up my alley.

The first order of business, as it is in life, was snacks.  I roasted some nuts, sprinkled them lightly with sea salt, then combined them with some dried cherries and dried cranberries.  To excite our child, I also threw in some chocolate chips (be sure to combine these items AFTER the roasted nuts have cooled off, lest you inadvertently end up creating some sort of chocolate/nut blob that will cool into the world’s lumpiest candy bar.  Which, come to think of it, actually sounds sort of appealing…).  Baby carrots are always welcome, so I added those to the snack pile.  Strawberries and blueberries were fortuitously on sale at the market, so they came along, too.  I sliced up a pear and an apple, packed them into a tightly sealed container, and moved on to lunch items.

In the interest of keeping things simple, I planned to pack what amounted to tiny little sandwich fixings, only without the messiness of spreads and condiments.  The best way to accomplish this, obviously, is with cheese.  You slap some cheese on slices of bread and you’ve got the beginning of many a delicious sandwich.  You can pack cucumber slices and slices of red pepper, and those apple and pears I mentioned earlier are absolutely wonderful when tucked in between slices of sharp cheddar cheese and spicy black bread.

And now, having listed all the foods we managed to pack into one canvas bag for one very long drive, I have to admit something.  The most absolutely essential element to everything we ate?  The bread.  We ate it slathered with almond butter, we ate it enveloping vegetables, cheese and fruit, and we ate it plain, as a snack, managing to totally obliterate the entire supply within the first day of our trip.

Dense, satisfying, and packed with flavor (including hits of fennel, chocolate, espresso, and rye), it’s almost tough to imagine getting into a car now without a little disc of this bread to keep me company.  Luckily, car travel is not required of anyone in order to enjoy this bread, so you can bake it and enjoy it in preparation of another event.  Like, for instance, the fact that it is Tuesday.  Or Wednesday.  Or Thursday.  You get the idea.

Black Bread Rolls

Adapted slightly from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Bible

2 1/4 cups warm water (105-115 degrees F)

2 tablespoons active dry yeast

pinch sugar

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted

3 tablespoons molasses

1 tablespoon instant espresso powder

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon caraway seends

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1/3 cup wheat bran

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

3 cups medium rye flour

3 to 3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

cornmeal, for sprinkling (optional)

1) Pour the warm water into a small bowl.  Sprinkle the yeast and sugar over the surface of the water.  Stir to dissolve and let stand at room temperature until foamy, about 10 minutes.

2) Combine caraway seeds and fennel seeds in a spice grinder and coarsely grind until no longer whole, but still slightly chunky (you can use a mortar and pestle for this, but I use an old coffee grinder).  In a large bowl using a whisk or in the work bowl of a heavy-duty electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, molasses, instant espresso powder, salt, caraway seeds, fennel seeds, bran, cocoa powder, and rye flour.  Mix until smooth and add yeast mixture.  Beat for about 3 minutes.  Add the unbleached flour, 1/2 cup at a time, and continue to beat (with paddle attachment if using a machine, or with a wooden spoon if mixing by hand) until too stiff to stir.

3) Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky, about 5 minutes, dusting with flour only 1 tablespoon at a time as needed to prevent sticking.

If kneading by machine, switch from the paddle to the dough hook and knead for 4 to 5 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and springy and springs back when pressed.  If desired, transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead briefly by hand.

4) Place the dough in a greased bowl.  Turn once to grease the top and cover with plastic wrap.  Let rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

5) Gently deflate the dough.  Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.  Grease or parchment-line a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal, if desired.  Divide the dough into 12 equal portions.  Shape each dough portion into a round ball and place seam side down on the baking sheet.  Flatted each ball with your palm.  Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in bulk and puffy, about 25 minutes.

6) Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.  Place the baking sheet on the center lower rack in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until slightly browned and firm to the touch.  Transfer to a rack to cool.

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Garden Spaghetti in a Lemon Butter Sauce

25 Mar

There are only three people who live in my house, but all three of us have vastly different preferences when it comes to food.  One of us is a former nearly life-long vegetarian who has only conceded to eating meat if it a) hails from the sea, or b) does not in any way resemble something that was once attached to an animal (this means no bones, no skin, and no “chewy bits”).  Another one is a human food depository with the metabolic rate of a hummingbird, a person who, if pressed, will only list one single food that falls into the realm of being not entirely favorable (this food is water chestnuts and, really, it’s not that they are regarded as inedible so much as they are simply relegated to the bottom of the list of preferred foods).  The third person is a child, and this generally means that the foods most highly regarded by his palette fall into the category of being carbohydrates: bread, pasta, rice, crackers, and fruit.

So what’s a person to do, other than try and conjure up a dish that will be eaten—and, in hope, enjoyed—by all three people?  And how does one go about building such a dish?  I’ll give you a hint: the first step is pasta.

The second step is butter.

You’d be hard pressed to find a person who doesn’t enjoy the simple pleasures of a basic pasta tossed with a bit of butter, oil, and sharp parmesan cheese.  The best thing about pasta bianco (or bianca, depending on who you ask and how much he or she wants to show off a perceived prowess for Italian pronunciation) is that it’s like a building block for any number of dishes one might like to construct.

You start with pasta, cooked al dente with a little bit of the pasta water held off to the side.  The sauce starts as gently heated butter or olive oil (or both), perhaps with a bit of garlic and red pepper flakes thrown in.

You can stop there, tossing the pasta with the butter and oil and then adding a satisfying handful of parmesan cheese to the mix, or you can move on, adding flavors and bulking up the dish to see how far you can take things before you meet that good middle ground of having a dish that is still primarily made of pasta (child’s preference), but also bursting with fresh vegetables and crunchy textures (slightly meat-o-phobic former vegetarian’s preference).

The third person, of course, will most likely be happy no matter what, seeing as the dish is plentiful and, you know, made of food, therefore satisfying his basic list of requirements as related to meals and consumption.  The best part about this pasta, however, is the fact that it is highly delicious, which is arguably the most important element of any dish, no matter who is eating it.

 

Garden Spaghetti in a Lemon Butter Sauce

1 lb dried pasta (spaghetti, linguine, or another long variety)

1 lb broccoli, washed and trimmed into long-stemmed florets

1 tablespoon olive oil

3-4 tablespoons butter

2 cloves garlic, smashed and very finely minced

2 lemons, juiced and zested, the zest finely grated or chopped

optional: 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

6-8 oz fresh spinach, washed and trimmed

1 large handful Italian parsley, trimmed and coarsely chopped

parmesan cheese, for sprinkling

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, then cook pasta according to package directions.  During the last minute of cooking, drop in broccoli florets and briefly swirl around to allow for even distribution and cooking.  Drain pasta and broccoli, setting aside 1 cup of pasta cooking water.  Return pasta to cooking pot, toss with 1 tablespoon of olive oil to prevent sticking, and set aside.

While the pasta is cooking, melt butter in a small saucepan set over low heat.  When butter has melted, add in minced garlic and gently simmer for about one minute, allowing the garlic to release a lovely smell, but being careful not to let it brown.  Add in lemon juice and lemon zest, and, if using, red pepper flakes.  Carefully simmer for another minute, then remove from heat.  Carefully stir in reserved cup of pasta water.

Pour lemon and butter mixture over pasta and broccoli.  Toss well to mix.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, place a handful of spinach on a plate, place pasta over spinach, then sprinkle pasta with parmesan cheese and chopped Italian parsley.

This should make 6 large servings for 6 normal people.  In my house it serves one adult, one preschooler, and one Perfect Eating Machine, with a modest bit remaining for leftovers.

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