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Salade Nicoise Slab Tart! In Partnership with Maille and Silpat
It's funny how refinement of a palate can mean embracing the more rustic side to food. When I first began cooking, I thought that French food was a paradigm to strive towards. I realized that the food I still loved most was uncut edges and cracked tops. In some ways, it's a lack of stress in baking, a lackadaisical approach to the homemade that still intrigues me. It's the extra butter, the egg wash that tans, and the layers of hearty flavors that I gravitate more towards.
Recipes like this are more my style, and I learned that through the trial and error of hubris and pretension when it comes to cooking.
I look to the Midwestern casseroles my mother made, how economical and in different shades of cheddar cheese and golden potatoes. I think of how they stayed on the oven top to be picked at throughout the day with fingertips and by the forkful. I think about how natural it was to look at food for how it felt and not what it always looked like. If that was a lesson my mother taught me, it was in the space between conscious need and survival instinct: get dinner on the table and get laundry done and go to sleep for tomorrow.
So I've taken what came so natural to me and added a few French elements and came up with this tart - cracked and rustic and good throughout the day. With the help of Maille and Silpat, it was an instant hint when the in-laws came over to help with yard work this weekend and I remember how far we've come together, my partner and I.
Salade Nicoise Slab Tart
Ingredients:
- 2 medium-sized Yukon Gold or similar potato
- 15-20 green beans
- 2 eggs + 1 for egg wash
- 1/4 cup oil
- 1/2 TB lemon zest
- 2 teaspoon Maille mustard (I used their acacia honey and orange blossom for a brighter flavor against the fish)
- 5 cornichon, minced (Here I used their Cornichons with cayenne chili for some heat)
- 1/2 TB shallot or garlic (or a combo), minced
- 2 cans of high quality tuna, drained
- 1/2 heirloom tomato, sliced
- 2 sheets puff pastry, thawed
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 425*F and lay out your baking sheet with your Silpat
- In a large pot of boiling salted water, simmer potatoes, green beans, and 2 eggs for 8 minutes
- Strain
- While those are boiling, whisk together oil, zest, mustard, cornichons, shallots/garlic until well blended
- Pour over tuna and stir
- Shell eggs when everything is cool to the touch
- Roll puff pastry out onto a floured work surface and lay a layer of green beans, then potatoes, egg, tuna, and tomato. Repeat with remaining ingredients, leaving about an inch margin
- In a small bowl, whisk together additional egg yolk with a TB of water and brush a bit around the edge of the bottom puff pastry
- Place second sheet on top, pressing edge with a fork and crimp a bit to keep its shape
- Brush top with more egg wash
- Bake for 30 minutes or until puffed and golden brown
Springtime Cupcakes!
After three weekends of plans, we finally got a day to relax! Today, we're going to try to convince Nolan's parents to come over to mow the yard (we don't have a mower yet), and then maybe go into town to put our order in for our chickens!!
This is my first recipe of the new year with lemons. These cupcakes also have a unique ingredient that I think add value and flavor to them, so don't knock it 'til you try it!
Okay, gotta go drink another cup of coffee and get ready to prep the barn! Have a great Sunday!
Lemon and Mayo Cupcakes with Toasted Meringue!
So! You might be a little grossed out with the addition of mayonnaise in this recipe, but I think it really does add a richness that is sometimes lost in plain Jane lemon cupcakes. Also, as you may have seen in my instagram story, I used a small lighter that I got from the dollar store to toast the meringue and it worked perfectly (I'm kind of scared of kitchen torches).
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cup AP flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 4 TB unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs + 1 egg white
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 TB lemon zest
- Juice of 1 lemon
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare large muffin tin (or regular sized!) with paper liners
- Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder in a mixing bowl
- In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar
- Add eggs. It will look slightly curdled, but that's okay!
- Add remaining ingredients and mix until smooth and a pale yellow
- By hand, mix in dry ingredients, a quarter cup at a time, with a rubber spatula
- Divide evenly into your prepared cups
- Bake for 25 minutes or until browned for large, 18-20 minutes for regular-sized cupcakes
- Allow to cool before topping with meringue
Ingredients and Directions for Meringue: In a clean bowl of a stand mixer, whisk 2 egg whites on high and continue to beat until soft peaks form. Add a 1/3 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract. Keep beating until you get to stiff peaks. Use a piping bag (or even a regular ol' freezer bag!) and pipe onto your cooled cupcakes. Use a torch to toast meringue and serve!
Frozen Bananas, Kale and Caramel, Dollywood - and more!!!
After 6 years of talking about going back to Dollywood, we finally (over)packed our bags and made the 7 hour trip to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We left early, we stopped once for gas and once for coffee and made it there by check-in. We watched the landscape of Pennsylvania, with its still-brown trees and rushing creeks, expand into the lazy West Virginian mountains, which then flattened into verdant and beautiful Tennessee.
For me, going back was important. It was meaningful. It was where we used to go to when I lived in Kentucky, in Indiana. I've lost a lot of who I was then, growing up and older. I wanted to remember, to greet the town we spent weekends at when my mother worked nigh shifts and my father stuffed newspapers with coupons to make ends meet.
Each turn, each road, each store was in the grey space of memory and fabrication. I created fake memories, building on what felt familiar in the moment. I became my own unreliable narrator. Nostalgia became a tight rope and I tested the strength of how far I could go back in my mind with each foot step across town. I pushed ahead. Things weren't the same as they were; but I pushed ahead.
And in those moments of reflection and exhaustion, we filled the hours with new memories. Miniature golf while waiting for our tattoo appointments. We both got something done right before midnight: Nolan two hands and myself a fox and three rabbits. We ate large portions of dinner and dessert and walked it all off the next day. We rode the water rides two or three times and shared fries in the warm valley sun. We held hands, we shook the Ferris wheel cart. We bought postcards we forgot to send out.
We drove home on Easter, stopped for dinner, got our dogs and it all happened so fast, getting back into the routine of this new life in our new house.
Rose and Cocoa Nib Frozen Bananas
So two amazing things happened last week: we went to Dollywood and I got Kale and Caramel's (Lily) new book, The Kale and Caramel Cookbook! In my package was a little jar of rose and cocoa nib sprinkles. While we were walking around the amusement park, we came across a frozen banana stand. Well, I really wanted to celebrate both of these things--so I married them together into one easy treat!
Directions: Cut 4 bananas in the middle on a diagonal. Pierce each with a skewer or popsicle stick. Place onto a parchment-lined half sheet. Freeze for 15 minutes. Melt 12 ounces of dark chocolate in a small bowl, either in the microwave or in a double boiler. Remove bananas from freezer and dip into melted chocolate. Sprinkle with rose and cocoa nib sprinkles from Kale and Caramel. Freeze for another hour before you can enjoy!
A quick treat for Easter!
Nolan and I have our bags packed for the weekend. We're driving all the way to Tennessee to spend a couple days at Gatlinburg. I used to go to Dollywood a lot when I was a kid, when my family lived in Indiana and Kentucky and it was just a couple hours away. This trip will be around 8 hours and we'll switch back and forth (though I'm sure Nolan will do most of the driving).
We won't be home for Easter, but that's nothing new. Instead, we all got together for my mother's birthday this week and enjoyed the time we have together.
But if we did stay home for Easter weekend, I'm sure I would have to pull a rabbit-shaped Peep out of my hat, because I have been LAZY lately with baking! So here's a simple, easy, non-recipe for a Peep-flavored milkshake for you to sip with your nieces and nephews and the love of your life this weekend!
Easy Peasy Peepshake
Directions: For two small cups or one large milkshake, blend together 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff, 1 cup of vanilla ice cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 1/2 tablespoon sprinkles! And that's it!
Big news and a panna cotta!
FIRST SOME EXCITING NEWS!!!
Nolan and I are engaged! It took literally years and I have been waiting to share it with everyone, but I wanted some people in my personal life to know directly from the horse's* mouth (*I'm the horse). Yaaaaay!
And now the blog post....
Spring is finally here and so are new projects, plans, and vacations. This year, so far, we are going to Tennessee (Dollywood), Washington, D.C. (a Feist concert), Vermont (details to come), and Vegas/Seattle (work and vacation kinda thing). It will be fun.
One thing that I enjoy about being back home is the new custom of being surrounded by family and friends. I never had that in Pittsburgh when I was too stubborn to be around others. I never had that in California, when it was just us and work and the daunting reality of money running low. But it's different now and we go to baby showers and birthday parties on our Saturday afternoons.
Last week, we looked at wedding venues in my home town and had lunch with my sister and niece. So small and pink, so beautiful in her rabid curiosity. I fall in love each time I see her. That night, I went home and thought up this dish, so small and pink and fleshy. Delicate. Fun. Just for Lana, my little baby girl.
lood Orange and Coconut Panna Cotta
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
- 1 1/2 teaspoon gelatin
- 1/4 cup blood orange juice (feel free to reserve a couple little dices of orange to include in dish)
- 1 can coconut cream
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 teaspoon Grand Marnier
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Directions:
- On a pan, place four 6 oz ramekins. Grease lightly with oil
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together 1 tablespoon of your heavy cream, gelatin, and blood orange juice.
- Allow gelatin to bloom for 10 minutes
- While gelatin is blooming, in a medium saucepan, heat remaining cream, coconut cream, and sugar and stir continuously until all ingredients dissolve together
- Continue to heat until nearly boiling, with bubbles around the edges
- Take off heat, immediately add the gelatin mixture and whisk
- Whisk in remaining ingredients
- Return to stovetop and heat for a minute or so
- Remove from heat, divide into your dishes and refrigerate for 4 hours or until set
- When set, some of the fatty coconut cream will have risen to the top and solidified. When you turn it out you'll see the beautiful pink panna cottta underneath!
