Strawberry Tart #Recipe @PegCochran

 

I was searching for an idea for dessert on Easter Sunday when I came upon this recipe on Your Home Based Mom. It looked so fresh and delicious! Strawberries are luscious right now so it was the perfect time to make a strawberry tart.

Pie Crust

 

I used my favorite shortcrust pastry recipe for this from Lydie Marshall's Chez Nous, French Home Cooking from the South of France.  Feel free to use any recipe you prefer or use store bought dough.

Place your dough in a tart pan and "blind bake" by lining the dough with aluminum foil and placing pastry weights or beans or rice on top.  Follow the timing according to your dough's partial pre-baking instructions.  Do not completely bake the pie crust--you will be baking it again with the custard filling.

 

Cream Filling

 1 8 oz. package cream cheese at room temperature

 2 Tbsp sour cream

 4 Tbsp sugar

1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp lemon zest

Strawberry Glaze

1  lb. fresh strawberries enough to fill tart pan
1/4 cup seedless strawberry jam
2 tsp water

Cream Filling - Directions

 

Place cream filling ingredients into a bowl and mix until smooth and creamy.

 

 

 

Spread cream filling evenly in the partially pre-baked pastry shell. 

 

 

 

Bake for another 12-15 minutes until filling is set and crust is browned. Allow to cool.

 

Arrange berries on top of tart, starting in the middle. I cut my strawberries in half but you can leave them whole if you prefer. 

 

Strawberry Glaze - Directions

Heat the jam and water over low heat until jam is melted. Let cool briefly and then glaze the tart with it.

OUT NOW!

Book #3 in the Open Book Series

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A murder in her quaint British bookshop drops American Gothic novelist Penelope Parish into her deadliest caper yet.

Penelope Parish is ready to close the book on her amateur sleuthing—from now on, The Open Book’s writer-in-residence will be sticking to villains of the fictional variety while she puts the final touches on her new novel. But when an author is murdered inside the bookshop, all of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke goes on high alert.
 
Now it’s up to Pen and the quirky citizens of Chumley to stop a killer and protect the charming British town she’s begun to call home.

 

 

 Book #1

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    Book #2

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Savory Fennel Apple Tarte Tatin - #Thanksgiving #Recipe from @MysteryMacRae

  

This savory version of tarte Tatin is a delicious vegetarian addition for your Thanksgiving feast. The dish is, traditionally, a dessert—a French upside-down apple tart made by covering the bottom of a shallow baking dish with a little butter and lots of sugar, adding apples, and covering the whole with a pastry crust. The butter and all that sugar turn into caramel while the tart bakes. The caramel becomes the topping when tart is inverted onto the serving plate.

This version also has apples, but only a passing nod to the load of sugar in the dessert. The fennel caramelizes into an amazing experience, while the apples and sage become a delicious sauce. Topping the whole with crumble goat cheese, when the tart comes out of the oven, is optional, but it’s a superb touch.

During this season, I’m thankful for family, friends, and food. My boys have cooked
beside me since they were old enough to watch from their highchairs. Here’s my youngest, Ross, helping a few years ago (34 years ago!). He helped with the Savory Tarte Tatin, too, and we wondered where the name tarte Tatin came from.

We turned to our trusty Food Lover’s Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst (a wonderful reference book). They told us the tart was created by a pair of French sisters who lived in the Loire Valley and earned their living making it. Further research found Friends of the Tarte Tatin, a website full of pages of information, including pictures of the sisters—Stéphanie and Caroline—more history of the tart, a recipe, and a bibliography. A fun site!

Savory Fennel Apple Tarte Tatin

Adapted from The Complete Plant-Based Cookbook, by America’s Test Kitchen

 

Ingredients

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed (9 ½ by 9-inch), store-bought sheets are a great convenience

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon plus one pinch table salt, divided

2 fennel bulbs, stalks discarded (1 bulb cut into 6 wedges, 1 bulb halved, cored, and cut lengthwise into ½-inch-thick slices), look for bulbs that will be about 4 inches tall after trimming

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, halved, and sliced ½ inch thick

4 teaspoons chopped fresh sage

2 teaspoons sherry vinegar

2 ounces (½ cup) goat cheese, crumbled (optional – although it’s a terrific addition)

 

Directions

375 ℉

Adjust oven rack to middle position. Unfold pastry onto lightly floured board or counter and roll into 11-inch square. With pizza cutter of sharp knife, cut pastry into 11-inch circle. Transfer to parchment-paper lined baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and refrigerate while preparing filling.

swirl

Swirl 2 tablespoons oil over bottom of 10-inch nonstick skillet or seasoned cast iron skillet, then sprinkle with sugar and ¼ teaspoon salt.

arrange

Arrange fennel wedges in pinwheel shape, fanning out from center of circle. Fill in gaps with sliced fennel.

cook

Cook, without stirring, over high heat until fennel turns deep golden brown, 7 to 9 minutes (if pan isn’t sizzling after 2 minutes, cook slightly longer.

Off heat, sprinkle with apple, sage, and ¼ teaspoon salt. (Forgot to take a picture at this point - oops.)

be careful - hot skillet!

Carefully transfer chilled dough to skillet, centering over filling. Being careful of hot skillet, gently fold excess dough up against skilled wall all the way around. With a paring knife, pierce dough evenly over surface 10 times.

mm-mmm, chocolate pockets

We took the scraps of puff pastry, made little pockets, and filled them each with 5 or 6 chocolate chips. We baked them on a small baking sheet while the tart baked (about 15 or 20 minutes).

bake until deep golden brown

Bake tart until crust is deep golden brown, about 45 minutes. Transfer skilled to wire rack and let cool 10 minutes.

Run knife around edge of crust to loosen. Using potholders or dish towels, carefully place serving platter on top of skillet, and, holding platter and skillet firmly together, invert tart onto platter. Transfer any fennel that sticks to the tart. Sprinkle with goat cheese. (Also forgot to take a picture with the cheese!)

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all!

Something poisonous is coming March 1, 2022!

About Argyles and Arsenic – book 5 in the Highland Bookshop mysteries

In the latest novel in the Highland Bookshop Mystery Series, a murder at a baronial manor leads to a poisonous game of cat and mouse—with the women of Yon Bonnie Books playing to win.

Available for pre-order in hardback and e-book from your locally owned independent bookstore, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Or ask your public library to consider ordering it.

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990 and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

 

 

Leeks and Goat Cheese Tart a la Alice Waters

My daughter gave me a copy of renowned chef Alice Waters’ autobiography for Christmas, and I just got around to reading it. 

We lived in the Bay Area for several years (and my daughter was born there, in Alta Bates Hospital), and I worked on the Berkeley campus or in the town for a part of that time. Parking was always hard to find, so often I ended up parking off campus and walking to work—a path that took me right by Chez Panisse (Water’s iconic restaurant) on Shattuck Avenue. You may be incredulous when I tell you that I read the posted menus each time I passed—and back then a three-course prix fixe dinner cost $15!

Even that was a bit steep on a starving student budget, but my husband and I managed it a couple of times, and even took our daughter there on her first birthday (we shared the pasta primavera with her).

The book held some interesting surprises. The first was that Alice and I grew up in spitting distance of each other in New Jersey, in adjacent towns. And we used to shop in the same food stores in Berkeley. I still have a poster from the restaurant hanging in my house now.

And of course I have a copy of the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook from 1982 (which was about the time I was reading all those menus). The recipes make wonderful reading, although I’ve seldom had the nerve to try them. But I was looking for something different for this week’s post and I came upon a savory tart recipe that called out to me.

One note: Alice Waters was one of the first chefs to champion locally raised and impeccably fresh foods, and the results were eye-opening back then. The recipe here asked me to make my own puff pastry, but time and hot weather and fear of disaster pushed me to use the frozen kind (I apologize, Alice!). The filling, on the other hand, more or less follows the original recipe, although I cut back on the amount of leeks.

Leek and Goat Cheese Tart a la Alice Waters

1 pound leeks, with roots and green parts removed

8 Tblsp unsalted butter

salt and pepper
1/4 pound pancetta
1 egg
1/4 cup crème fraiche or 1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp Dijon mustard (mine had gone AWOL, so I used whole-grain mustard)
Pinch of curry powder
1/4 pound goat cheese
1/3 cup fresh bread crumbs

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degree F. 

Julienne the leeks (slice in thin strips lengthwise) and rinse them, in case there’s any grit. Drain them well.

Cook them in 6 Tblsp butter over low heat. After 10-15 minutes, season with salt and pepper, then cover and continue to cook (“sweat!”) for another 10 minutes. 

Slice (or dice) the pancetta into small pieces. Place it in a pan over low heat and render the fat (about 10-15 minutes). Pour off any fat and water in the pan.

Beat the egg lightly in a large bowl. Stir in the crème fraiche or heavy cream, the mustard, and the curry powder. Crumble in half of the cheese. When the leeks and the pancetta are cool, stir them into the mix.

Thaw the puff pastry and press it into a 9” pan (it doesn’t matter if the edges are raggedy). Place on a baking sheet. 

Fill the shell with the cool leek mixture. Crumble the remaining cheese over the top. Sprinkle with the fresh breadcrumbs. Melt the last 2 tablespoons of butter and pour it over the crumbs.

Place in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees (open the oven door and let the temperature cool before putting the tart back in)  and continue to bake for another 30-40 minutes.

Serve immediately! (It was delicious!)

And on another note (if I may blow my own horn), Murder at the Mansion, the first of the Victorian Village Mysteries, released on June 26th, has already gone into its third printing! That's a first for me, and I'm so glad people are enjoying it.

for details see 
www.sheilaconnolly.com

Cooking Challenges -- Leek Tart

Still in Ireland with my husband and daughter, and we're all trying to figure out how to work in the kitchen.

It's small, although I think my first apartment had a smaller one. It has one cupboard (china and glassware) and one set of shelves for supplies. That's it. It has a new fridge now, with limited capacity, which means we go grocery shopping about every day. It also houses the new washer, which I'm still trying to figure out. (And, hoorah, there is a new dryer, in the pantry.) The new stove and its separate hob (stovetop) sit in the shed, waiting patiently for installation, but it would have been chaotic to try to rebuilt the kitchen counters while we were in residence.

But still we eat! Usually we go out for lunch (since driving at night on narrow country lanes can be a bit challenging) and try to cook dinner (or supper, locally) in. I am sharing with you one of my most recent efforts, which was a mixed success. But it tasted good.

It all began at the farmers' market, where a local farmer had a lot of leeks, picked only hours earlier, still covered with dirt. But they were tiny and lovely, so I bought a bunch, and started thinking of what to do with them. I landed on the idea of a leek tart.

Small problem: I had no tart pan. Quickly remedied. Next problem: I am crust challenged, and if that weren't enough, I have no large surfaces upon which to roll one out, and I don't have a rolling pin. Ah well, I do have an empty wine bottle or two (French, of course) so I improvised. (Oh, and I had to find beans to weight down the crust while it pre-baked, but I couldn't find dry beans so I used dry peas instead.)

Wonder of wonders, I found a package of pre-made fresh pie crust at our lovely local supermarket, so I was ready to go.

So here are the vague instructions for Irish Leek Tart.

Line a tart pan with pastry. Line the crust with foil and fill it with pie weights of your choice. Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F (about 175 degrees C) for twenty minutes, or until the edges of the crust begin to brown. Remove from the oven and remove the pie weights.

Clean the leeks and cut off the roots and most of the green tops (watch for grit!). Parboil for a few minutes to soften.

Lay the half-cooked leeks in the pie crust. Sprinkle with cheese (yes, I'm still working my way through a pound of good Cork gubbeen).

Make two cups of basic white sauce (3 Tblsp flour, 3 Tblsp butter, 2 cups whole milk/cream, plus a bit of salt and pepper). When it is ready, ladle it over the leeks in the crust (do not swamp them!), return to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes or so.

Wish I could show you a lovely picture of a pristine slice of tart, but it was a bit goopy. The whole might work better as a quiche, in hindsight. But the three of us consumed the whole thing!

Oh, right--there's that new book coming out in January: Many a Twist, the next book in the County Cork Mysteries. I'll save the rest of the details for later, when I get over jet lag.

Clean Sweep Week at MLK! Pear Tart #Recipe @PegCochran

Ah, the New Year. Ah, the fridge and pantry, cluttered with leftovers, food gifts we don’t quite know how to use, and impulse buys that leave us scratching our heads, wondering what on earth we’d planned to do with them. It’s Clean Sweep week on the blog, as we share our attempts to use up a few of those odd bits and ingredients. We hope we inspire you to make good use of a few of the curious finds in your cabinets.  

We have a plethora of pears at our house all ripening faster than we can eat them.  This delicious bounty is thanks to lovely gifts from Harry & David this Christmas.  I needed to do something with the ones that were a hair past ripe and on their way to rotten.  I couldn't bear to see them go to waste.

I thought a pear tart might be the answer.  Unfortunately most recipes called for ground almonds and orange marmalade and I didn't have any almonds.  I'd already made two trips to the grocery store--the first time I realized, as I pulled into a parking place, that I'd forgotten my purse.  I know--what woman forgets her purse??!!  So it was back home again and then back to the store.  All this to say I was NOT going out again.

All the recipes that didn't require almonds called for apricot preserves, and I didn't have any apricot preserves.  So I took a few liberties and combined some recipes to make a tart without almonds but with orange marmalade.

Here are the results:

Pate Brisee (Short Crust Dough)
Recipe compliments of Lydie Marshall's Chez Nous

This is one of my favorite dough recipes--always so easy to work with.

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (one stick)
1 cup flour
pinch of salt
2 to 3 tablespoons cold water

Cut butter into small pieces and put in freezer for five minutes.  Combine butter, flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor.  Process for ten seconds.  Add water (2 tablespoons if it's humid and three if it's dry weather) and process around 10 seconds until mixture looks like cornmeal.

Dump mixture out onto counter and with the heel of your hand, use a sliding motion to incorporate the butter and flour the rest of the way.  Form a disc and cover with wax paper or plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for fifteen minutes.

Roll dough into a circle and place in tart pan.  Roll rolling pin over the top to cut off extra dough.

Fill tart shell with pears.  Mine were so overripe that it wasn't possible to make the pretty circles you see on tarts in fancy bakeries.

Heat 1/2 cup orange marmalade and brush over top of tart.

Ready for the oven.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Place tart on lower rack and reduce heat to 400 degrees.  (Be sure to put a cookie sheet under your tart pan for easy removal from oven.)

 Breathe in delicious smells! Certainly better than letting the pears go to waste.

Warm tart would be delicious topped with ice cream or whipped cream but see my note about not going back to the store!

Lucille and Flo are back in the fourth Lucille Series book -- A Room with a Pew

A reviewer said:  "I love this series. The characters to me are so real that I feel that I might know some of them...In addition to their sleuthing to find Louis' killer, Lucille has to deal with her husband's diet to get his cholesterol under control. Also Lucille is trying the Mediterranean diet, and her thoughts about this are just too, too funny.  It's always a joy to visit with Lucille, her family and friends.  This series gives you a laugh on practically every page."

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Coming May 2016 - Berry the Hatchet

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Available now as an audio book - Berried Secrets

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