Simple Apple Tart

It's been hovering in the teens all week and I cannot stop myself from sleeping in a little longer than I usually do. The dogs are allowed out for ten minutes at a time; I worry about colds and infection. They roam the fence and bark at a brown rabbit that has been in our back yard for a week. I worry the ground is too frozen for a burrow. I wonder how he got so lost.

And in the fog of steam from my coffee and steam from my breath, I bake to remember the fog of my childhood. Baked apples and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Oatmeal cookies and sweetened rice with milk. It's winters like these, the kinds that are quick and silent as a dagger, that make me glad I'm back in Pennsylvania.

I'll wait out this Polar Vortex from the comfort of my kitchen, the yellow light of the oven glowing in the palest shade of orange I have ever seen.

Apple Tart with Oatmeal Crust

I used a 14" tart pan for this recipe and I do recommend you doing the same, both for presentation and ease. I adapted my crust from this one and found it super simple and delicious, bringing me back to cinnamon oatmeal Quaker packets along the way. Feel free to try any other type of fruit for this tart, though I am particularly partial to apple.

Ingredients for Oatmeal Crust:

• 3/4 cup quick cooking oats
• 1/2 cup AP flour
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 6 TB butter, cold and cut into cubes
• Pinch of salt
• 1-2 TB ice water

Directions for Oatmeal Crust:

1. Prepare your pan and preheat oven to 350*F
2. In a food processor, combine all ingredients except the water
3. Pulse until fat is pea-sized
4. Turn motor on and add ice water until a dough just barely forms from the liquid
5. With floured hands, press crust into your tart pan
6. Bake for 12 minutes
7. Turn oven up to 400*F

Ingredients for Filling:

• 6 TB light corn syrup
• 2 TB molasses
• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 TB cinnamon
• 2 TB butter, melted

Directions for Filling:

• Whisk all ingredients 
• Pour over par-baked oatmeal crust

Assembly and Final Directions: Thinly slice two apples and top your tart filling with these. Add a squeeze of orange juice or rum for a spike and sprinkle with a tiny bit of sea salt and a little more cinnamon. Bake for an additional 15 minutes or until filling is set. To prevent your crust burning, you may want to use a bit of aluminum on the edges.

Allow to cool slightly before releasing from the pan and serve warm or cold with confecioner's sugar and ice cream.

Springtime...and a Tart

My mother has given up trying to plant anything beautiful in the yard of hers. Too much bad dirt, she says. Stunted apple trees and peaches that never seem to ripen in any hurry. Grapevines that choke the chickenwire fencing. The ground is shale, the rocks are jagged. The dirt is bad. The earth is worn down by the creekbed.

My mother gave up on making a garden, so she buys her produce from the dollar store. She buys flowers to hang from the porch rafters. She waters them with a soda cup she got at the gas station in town.  A bird’s nest pops up one afternoon and then baby birds pop up the next. One fell out of the nest and my dad threw it out behind the fence so the dogs wouldn’t get it. He didn’t tell my mom, kept it a secret from her I guess you could say.

There isn’t anything beautiful in that yard of hers.

Not that it’s promised, it never has been. The shale is rough and cuts up the hands. Grass grows in patches until late June, when it springs all at once. Then the dandelions, then the peach trees, then the snow. It’s a cycle I forgot. One I witness from my bedroom window. I’m staying here for a while, until my sister has her baby and I know what the hell it is I want out of life.

But it rained for three weeks straight and I drove the turnpike with my sunglasses on until eight at night. The mountaintops in the distance have steam on their fingertips and the bees that built their hive by the mailbox are plump and greedy. Lazy, tired. They don’t move when I draw the red mailbox arm up. They don’t move when my father comes home with a pizza for dinner. They dance along the mulch and draw cuneiforms in response to rainclouds. They know tomorrow it might rain. They know tomorrow their queen may be washed away. They know that the bird behind the fence might still be there and there’s nothing to do about it but wait for the grass to grow and the peach trees to twist their thirsty branches up, up, upwards.

It’s springtime in Pennsylvania. And I forgot how its reality comes in waves of dreams and pigment. In flashes of thunderstorms and screen doors slamming shut. It’s springtime and I wear a sweater on the porchswing. I avoid the baby birds, the beestings, and mailman. I sit and squint my eyes, wondering if it’s just as beautiful down the road as it is right here in this moment.

Pear and Strawberry Tart

Ingredients for Fruit Filling

• 2 pears (preferably Bosc), cored and sliced thinly
• 8-10 medium-sized strawberries, hulled and sliced thinly
• 2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon Gran Marnier (option, but I had some leftover from this post, so I said why not)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions for Fruit Filling

1. In a large bowl, gently mix all ingredients together to macerate strawberries and infuse the pears
2. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour
3. While waiting, work on crust

Ingredients for Crust

• ½ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup shortening
• ½ cup confectioner’s sugar
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 1¾ cup AP flour
• ¼ cup almond meal
• ½ tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 3-4 tablespoon ice water (fill a small glass of ice water and scoop out from it as you go instead of measuring beforehand)

Directions for Crust

1. In a food processor, pulse together all ingredients except the ice water 5-8 times or until the fat is processed to the size of a pea
2. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in ice water, one tablespoon at a time. When dough begins to come together, stop motor
3. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc
4. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for half an hour

Ingredients for Ricotta Topping

• ½ cup ricotta, full-fat
• 2 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar
• Pinch of salt
• ½ tablespoon vanilla extract

Directions for Ricotta Topping

1. Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl until combined

Assembly and baking instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil
2. Take rested dough out of the oven and roll into a round that is roughly ¼ inch thick (will be about 14” in diameter)
3. Transfer dough to prepared baking sheet
4. Spoon fruit filling into center of round and allow for a one or two inch edge around the circumference
5. Fold edges inwards to keep the filling in
6. Dot the fruit filling with ricotta mixture
7. Mix one egg with a little water and brush the dough with your egg wash
8. Sprinkle with a little more white sugar
9. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until crust is golden and brown
10. Serve immediately, but can keep for about 4 days

Summer Tomato Tart

It was cold today, freezing even.  This was the third downpour of the summer, which is unusual in San Diego, but greatly appreciated.  The dogs woke me up by six and I fell back asleep until eight.  I drank my coffee, two cups at a time, and lightened to the world crash down around me.  Murphy shook a little, you could feel it when you put your hand on his small barreled chest.  The birds didn't sing much in the rain, but you could see a squirrel from the back steps, walking the tightrope between two telephone poles. 

I never feel alive when I sit home all day.  I went out for coffee and got stuck in a downpour.  Steam rose up on my glasses and I squinted the rest of the way home.  I wanted something warm when I came home, something to comfort me.  I craved the tastes of summer--heirlooms, grotesque in their bulging beauty, local chèvre.  Laid on a bed of a brioche of sorts, eaten quickly to stay warm and sustain me through the night.

Summer Tomato Tart

Light, fluffy dough, smoky and sweet compote, and goat cheese create this updated mini-pizza.  Recipe makes four 4-inch tarts, but can be adapted larger or smaller portions.

For the quick brioche dough (adapted from here)

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup milk, heated to 110*F (warm to the touch)
• 1 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
• 2 cup flour, separated + more for flouring board and hands
• 4 tablespoons butter, cubed and cold
• 2 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg + 1 yolk (reserve remaining egg white for egg wash)
• When assembling:  6 tablespoons chevre 

For the tomato compote:

Ingredients:

• 1 large heirloom tomato
• 1 teaspoon + 1 tablespoon olive oil
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of pepper
• 3 basil leaves
• Half of medium-sized shallot
• 2 cloves garlic

Directions:

1. Place milk, yeast, and one cup of flour in small bowl.  Allow to sit, covered, for 20 minutes or until top is dotted with small bubbles
2. Pulse butter, sugar, salt, and eggs in a food processor for about 20 seconds.  Mixture will look curdled. 
3. Add yeast mixture and pulse a couple times to blend.
4. Slowly add one cup of flour through feeding tube with motor on until blended and smooth
5. Allow to rest for half an hour
6. Turn out onto a heavily-floured board and knead 5-6 times or until elastic
7. Allow to double in size in a lightly greased bowl, about one hour (during this time, make tomato compote, below, and preheat oven to 350*F)
8. Roll out into roughly a 12x12 square and quarter
9. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. 
10. Spoon compote into center of tart, leaving a one inch border.  Use remaining egg white to seal and press dough in on itself to create a border. 
11. Dot tops with chèvre and repeat for all four tarts.  Brush each with egg white 
12. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until browned and cheese begins to melt.

Directions:

1. Brush tomato with 1 teaspoon olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper
2. Heat grill on medium-high
3. Place tomato on grill and roast for five to seven minutes, or until skin begins to crack and is blackened
4. Turn over and repeat
5. Remove from heat and place aside in bowl to cool before handling.
6. Place in food processor, along with basil, garlic, shallot, and more salt and pepper
7. Pulse until smooth, but with a few chunks (5 pulses should do it)

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I wash the dishes with the windows open, it makes life feel tangible, crisp.  I don't take it for granted anymore, the beauty of air, of movement, of the lunar pull that brings the tides in.  Wind.  Rain.  The seasons.  The emotions of our world and how we've learned to cope with the dissonance between waking up to fog and puddles and going to bed with sunburns.  I don't take it for granted anymore, being able to breathe.

I was suffocating in my old life.  I was asphyxiated with my responsibilities, with a life I wasn't sure was mine at all.  I lost sight of the small details.  I worried more about the fabric than the thread.  I worried more about the patchwork existence I had made for myself than the way it all seemed to fray when I would try to sleep at night.  Unravel until I had to hold a hand to my dog's chest and feel his heartbeat.  Feel my own.  Convince myself it was all a nightmare, that I wasn't $90,000 in debt.  That it was all worth it.  That I wanted to be in California.  That I was lucky.  That I wasn't a failure.  That it was all worth it.

There used to be moths that flew at the window and made small thumps at night.  There used to be coyotes that laughed at the moon and ate stars in their hollows.  Nothing could keep me awake more than knowing I wasn't the person I wanted to be.  I used to press my fingernails into the palms of my hands and try to convince myself it was stigmata.  The moths that rose in my stomach I used to mistake for butterflies.  The coyotes in the darkness weren't laughing at the moon, but at me.  For thinking I could ever be happy if I didn't know myself first.

I used to think the word lilac was pretty and I liked how it ended in a C.  I thought about this when I was pouring some day-old coffee that I was going to microwave until it could burn my aching tongue.  I remember that morning.  It was the morning I decided to leave.  To leave the home I created.  I wasn't happy, I wasn't breathing.  I was checking my pulse at three in the morning, trying to race the minute hand, trying to keep my dog's breathing as gentle as my own. I thought about all the pretty words I would be sharing alone, convinced myself it was worth it to leave again.  Pack up, move away.  Debt and regret wouldn't follow, only this manifest destiny of creativity that I would forge ahead with.

I thought about this when I packed the cardboard boxes, taped them at the bottom so they'd be secure.

I thought about this when I couldn't stop shaking, how cold it was the first night in my new apartment.

I thought about this when I put myself with a paring knife and had to wash the wound clean by myself.

I thought about this when it was dead silent in February and I had to use an inhaler to sleep.

I thought about all this when I was making this tart this week.  How envious I was of those people whose life marches on, one first in front of the other.  How mine has staggered, fallen, tripped on its own night gown.  Maybe because it's still sleeping, resting, waiting to shake and yawn when the coyotes are sleeping.  When the moths fall silent, dusty and dead.  When I finally realize not everything was promised to me and I could have worked at all the things that I left behind in big cardboard boxes.  

California was a perpetual summer, sleepy and groggy and never fully connected to all the other pieces of my life.  This tart is a testament to that time.  Basil and lemon, the aromatics of the hot season.  Close your eyes and it's carefree, open them and you're staring at that To-Do list that never seems to get done.

Lemon Tart with Basil Meringue

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For the Tart Shell

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 sticks butter
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1 ts vanilla 
• 1 3/4 flour
• 1/2 tablespoon lemon zest
• pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients in a food processor, pulse until forms a mass and still a bit crumbly
2. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead two or three times with hands, make sure to lightly flour top, so it does not stick or the butter melts on your hands
3. Pat into a 10-inch circle and wrap with plastic wrap
4. Refrigerate for half an hour
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
6. Take out of fridge and roll out to 10-inch tart length.  Form into pan and cut off excess dough
7. Weigh down dough with aluminum foil and baking beans, prick holes in dough with fork
8. Bake for 20 minutes
9. Remove foil and beans, bake for 12 more minutes
10. Remove and allow to cool.  Begin working on the curd

For the Lemon Curd filling

For the Lemon Curd, use this recipe from a previous post.  Adjust the sugar to be 1 1/2 cups and use the zest and juice of four lemons.  Pour into prepared tart pan and allow to cool to room temperature

For the Basil Meringue

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/2 c basil leaves
• 2 large egg whites, room temperature
• 1 ts cream of tartar
• 1 TB lemon juice

Directions:

1. In a food processor, pulse sugar and basil leaves until diced finely and basil leaves have released oils.  Mixture will look like a runny pesto. Set aside
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg whites on medium until they begin to froth.  Add about 2 tb of the sugar and the cream of tartar.  
3. Set mixer to medium high after about three minutes and whisk about mixture has doubled in volume.  Continue to gradually add sugar.  Add lemon juice.
4. After two minutes, turn to high and let beat until thick and can stand up on the whisk.  
5. Using a rubber spatula, scoop basil mixture into egg mixture and gently fold until well incorporated

To assemble:  Pour lemon curd into prepared tart shell and then pour meringue onto the curd.  In a 350 degree oven, bake meringue and tart for an additional ten minutes to set and cook eggs.  Take out of oven, allow to rest before serving.   

Rainclouds.

I've been thinking of dimensions.  Sizes and expansiveness.  How, if I shout at you, you hear me only so far away. How memories echo like voices and it gets muffled the longer it rings out. A king size bed is 80 by 76 inches, but it's been the smallest island nation these last couple weeks.  Dimensions and space-time, moments that feel like static, hopping between eyelashes and rug burns and the small, prickled hairs that cover the nape of your neck.  All of it in the in-between, the almost-touching.  Like God and Adam's fingertips. It thunderstormed in San Diego, the world was a grayish colored that's normally reserved for mothers who stress too much and the dawn fog at the marinas.  it made me lazy and hopeful, a little insane and I tried to convince myself that I was the same person three years ago.  But the country is expansive and it would take me thirty-odd hours to drive home in my rented, Japanese-made car.  Thirty miles to the gallon, they advertise.  How many gallons until I'm seeing the same rainy storm clouds, when I turn my head and look westward behind me?

I'm going home soon, the real home.  The one with five bedrooms, six cats, and two parents who don't love each other, but love the comfort of one another. It's a big house and it floods once a year.  I grew up in that house and they remodeled since I last saw it.  Two years ago was when I was in Pennsylvania last and even then I told my mother I wanted to move.  And when the opportunity presents itself, I'd get in my rented, Japanese-made car and drive fast, fast, fast on the turnpike.

I'm going home soon and I want to see rainclouds and if the world fell apart without me there.  I want to be as cold-to-the-bones as possible, where you're almost burning because it's so cold.  I want to keep my window open and freeze to death under flannel sheets.  I want to experience feelings again--good and bad, repressed and resented.  I will come home to one lonely dog and parents hopeful that I haven't just fucked my life up.  And maybe there will be snow on the ground and maybe there will be patchy, grey-brown grass.  The mall is going to close soon.  Maybe it's exactly how I left it, because Appalachian time moves in a slow-fast past in space-time.  You can drive twenty miles and the engine can echo off an apple orchard and you never have to apologize for nothing.

I made a pie this week and brought it to work.  The office flooded the next day. The pie was made from foods in that state of in-between.  Frozen cherries and almond paste made a month ago.  It was cold when I made it and there was steam coming from my fingertips when I got out of the shower that morning.  I wasn't home, but I was frozen to my bones.

Balsamic Cherry Tart with Frangipane

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/4 sugar
• 3 egg yolks (depending on altitude and dryness of flour), separated
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• a large pinch salt
• homemade almond paste from here (make ahead of time), room temperature
• 2 TB heavy cream
• 2 TB brown sugar
• 3/4 lb frozen cherries
• 2 tb balsamic vinegar
• 2 tb honey
• Juice of half a lemon
• water to cover

Directions:

For the crust:

1. Prepare a tart pan (with a removable bottom, preferred) with butter or a light cooking spray
2. In a food processor, pulse butter and sugar together for about two minutes until incorporated and light
3. Add 2 egg yolks and pulse to combine
4. Add flour and salt and mix until ball forms
5. Knead very gently onto a floured surface (should still be pretty crumby, but solid)
6. Press into prepared tart pan and set in fridge.
7. Preheat oven to 375 (do this step now, so it doesn't seem like you're waiting forever for the oven and to save energy)
8. When oven is preheated, take tart pan out of fridge and bake 10-12 minutes, or until just golden brown
9. Let cool while preparing other ingredients

Filling:

1. In a mixing bowl, use a hand mixer and whip almond paste, one egg yolk, cream, and brown sugar together until light and full incorporated.
2. Using a rubber spatula, fold onto tart crust and spread evenly.  Set aside
3. In a small saucepan, combine remaining ingredients and simmer until juices begin to come from fruit and liquids reduce by half.  Stir occasionally.  Here, we are trying to steep the cherries with balsamic flavor while cutting some of that sweetness and replacing it with a brightness from the honey and lemon.
4. When cherries are fragrant and just beginning to break down, take off heat and strain.  Making sure to be gentle on the cherries as to not break them completely
5. Position on top of almond paste mixture and press gently
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, until frangipane is puffed and cherries are bleeding their juices
7. Allow to cool completely, serve for breakfast