Food is so inspiring. Especially during these months of abundance, when gardens and orchards seem to be overflowing with their bounty. When I saw all the different varieties of plums at the market last week, I couldn’t help myself. I bought one of each color (or each variety). They ranged in the most beautiful jewel tones I have ever seen. From amethyst to ruby, black opal to peridot, the vibrancy and deep richness of these colors were seducing. At home, I was even more happy when I put them all on a plate together. They happily stared back at me in their vibrant coats, slightly glistening in the morning light. I left them there for a few days, just enjoying their beautiful colors in my kitchen, until I realized that they needed to be eaten together. As one. In a tart.
For this tart, I used the flaky pie dough recipe from Baking with Julia (Child, that is. Have you seen the DVD of her showing you how to do this? It’s fantastic and utterly Julia. Try renting it from your local library!). She is a big proponent of lard–and I must confess–this does help quite a bit with the texture and overall exceptional quality of the dough. If you do use lard, or some sort of shortening, just make sure it’s non-hydrogenated. But for the fruit filling, I went with my instincts–no real recipe, per say. The colors spoke of their flavor, their tight skins hinting at their juiciness. And although the plums were a little tart (not a bad thing when baking fruit!) I just added a scoop of local raw honey, then a few dribbles of vanilla, tossed it together, and baked.
Margit, one of this year’s pietopia winners, pointed me in the direction of a fantastic book by Nigel Slater called Appetite. In it, he describes a recipe as a living thing, “something allowed to breathe, to change its nature to suit our ingredients, our mood, our desires.” Food can really let us tap into our most inward expressions, things we can sometimes have a hard time connecting with for one reason or another. Slater encourages his readers to take in the spirit of the recipe, and to recognize that our ingredients, feelings, and hunger are not variables that can be subjected to a strict formula and “laid down in tablets of stone.” Break the rules, follow your appetite.
Recipes are wonderful frameworks, places that we can see how others are combining flavors and textures. But they don’t need to be always followed strictly by the book. Even with baking, there is wiggle room for adding or simplifying recipes and tastes. Pie dough, in particular, becomes something that you follow the recipe in the beginning, but then you get to know it with your hands. How the feeling of the butter and the flour should be between your fingers, how a little bit should taste on your tongue. The recipe simply helps get you to that place of certainty with your own hands. Do you ever find yourself stressed out in the kitchen because you missed an ingredient, didn’t follow an instruction to the T, or didn’t stir the dry into the wet all at the same time? Try starting with something simpler in nature. Something that doesn’t take ten pots and twelve bowls to make. Something that speaks to you because you want to taste that specific flavor. And it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, sometimes the more simple the recipe is, the easier it is to over-under do something, because there are less ingredients. But that’s OK. Take a deep breath and try again. And taste it along the way! You’ll be amazed by your results.
Summer Plum Tart
6-8 summer plums, varying colors and shapes
3 tablespoons fresh honey
1 capful of vanilla extract
1 carton fresh raspberries
Wash, slice, and throw out the pits of the plums. Toss them with the honey, vanilla, and raspberries. Set aside.
Julia’s Flaky Pie Dough
5 1/4 cups pastry flour or all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 1/2 sticks (6 oz) cold unsalted butter
1 3/4 cups shortening (non-hydroginated, Spectrum is a good brand) or lard
1 cup ice water
To make the dough by hand, mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl. Add the butter and, using a pastry blender or your fingers, cut it into the flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Be patient–this takes a while. Break up the shortening and add it in bits to the bowl. Still working with the pastry blender or fingers, cut in the shortening until the mixture has small clumps and curds. Switch to a wooden spoon and add the ice water, stirring to incorporate it. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and fold it over on itself a few times–don’t get carried away. The dough will be soft, but it will firm sufficiently in the refrigerator.
To make the dough in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, put the flour and salt into the bowl and stir to mix. Add the butter and mix on low until it is cut into the dry ingredients and the mixture looks coarse and crumbly. Add the shortening in small bits and continue to mix on low. When the mixture is clumpy and curdy and holds together when a small bit is pressed between your fingers, add the water and mix only until it is incorporated. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and fold it over on itself two or three times, just to finish the mixing and to gather it together. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or as long as five days.
Note: Julia spent so much time on her recipes, perfecting them, each word a necessary step, in order to give people a chance to make food delicious in their own homes. Notice how she wants you to really look at it (clumpy, curdy) and to feel it (press between your fingers) in order to understand what it is your are doing. Give it a try! Getting your hands dirty is not only rewarding, but fun. And you can always wash them when you are done:).
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a circle about 1/8 inch thick and fit it into a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press a little of the overhang against the edge of the pan so that it produces a small ledge protruding over the inside of the pan. Place partchment paper down in the center then pour in a lot of dried beans until it is very full. This will help keep the sides of the tart on the sides, instead of sliding down to the center. Bake at 375 F for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Let cool while you make the filling or check your email.
After slightly cooled, pour the fruit filling into the center, making sure to get all the juice from the bottom of the bowl. Bake at 375 F for about 40-45 minutes, or until the fruit is nice and juicy, maybe even a little crisp on some of the edges. Enjoy!
ps–for some more fun photos of Pietopia this year, check out the Portland Farmer’s Market Flickr link! There are some really good ones 
.
A few months ago, some friends gave us two huge jars of canned apricots. “My mother cans them every year,” he said. “They have a HUGE tree in their yard and literally nothing goes to waste.” “And,” his wife chimes in, “she sends us a crate of them every year, we are up to our ears in backlogged apricots!” Amazing! I thought. It sounds like a dream I sometimes have (seriously)–going into my pantry or kitchen or shelving area and finding row upon row of colorful, tantalizing, and amazing canned goodness! Apricots, pears, plums, peaches, cherries, succotash, tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, carrots, bok choy, jicama, cabbage, and I am sure I’m forgetting a few, are all there lining the shelves in their glossy (glassy) glory. These two huge mason jars of apricots have been sitting in our dining room for some time now. That’s good, because they have been in plain sight and prompting me to subconsciously stew over what to make with them. Deep down, I’ve known for some time now that little puff pastry danishes with the apricots would be in order–so when I re-discovered the recipe in the Baking with Julia (Child, that is) cookbook, I immediately got busy and started in on them.
The puff pastry took two days to make. It sounds intimidating, but it’s really a matter of patience more than anything (which, is challenging in and of itself!). First, you make a very basic dough–water, flour, salt. Then, you roll it into a circle with “flaps” coming off of the four sides. You do this by first rolling out a circle, then putting your rolling pin in the center to start, you roll out first towards the top to make a flap that protrudes out. Make sure you do this for each side. Why? Because when you fold in the pound of butter shaped as a square–yes, you heard right, one pound–you wrap it in the dough like a present.
Roll the dough out with the butter inside into a rectangle, about 18-24 inches. If it starts to squish through the dough, wrap it in plastic and set it in the fridge for a half hour to firm back up. Then try again. Once the dough has been rolled once, fold the rectangle length-wise, with the folds on your left (like a book) roll it out and do it again (that is a total of three times so far). Roll it out one more time if it’s cold enough, then fold on top of itself, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for an hour or over night. Make four thumb marks on the side of the dough so you remember how many times you’ve rolled it. The next day (or hour) roll it out two more times. The butter should be nicely incorporated–it might coagulate a little bit on the ends which happens, but otherwise, it should be a part of the dough by now, not seeing chunks anywhere.
I’ll give you the rest of the recipe below, but making the puff pastry itself is pretty involved and deserves it’s own explanation! Sometimes a girl (well, me anyway) just needs to get into her kitchen and make something challenging. Instead of putting on my boxing gloves, I put on my oven mits–needless to say, I don’t actually use oven mits, but you get the idea. If you are new to baking, you may want to research puff pastry a little more. My explanation was quick and step by step images really help. But don’t let intimidation or the little voice in your head saying “ya right! puff pastry?!” stop you! Keep on keepin’ on, my friends, and if it doesn’t turn out the first time, it more than likely will your second or third try. This is a great recipe though and I highly recommend Julia Child’s cookbook, Baking with Julia, for this very purpose. She is a master explain-er! (but of course!). I love how detailed her books are–she’s not only good with explaining with words, but there are nice step by step photos too. If you try puff pastry, or ever have tried it, I’d love to know about your experience!
Puff Pastry
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups cake flour — I used all regular flour and it worked out alright
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/4 cups ice water
4 sticks (1 pound) very cold unsalted butter, shaped into a square
*see above for instructions
The Apricots
*if you don’t have any canned apricots laying around, here’s a way to make some quickly yourself
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
8 apricots, halved and pitted
A few hours (or as long as 2 days) ahead poach the apricots: bring the water and sugar to a boil in a 3- to 4-quart saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the apricots and simmer for 8-10 minutes, or until they offer just a little resistance when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife. Take the pan off the heat and let the apricots cool in the syrup. Drain an pat the apricots dry before using. If keeping the apricots for longer than a few hours, cover and refrigerate them.
The Pastry Cream
1 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 large egg yolks
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 vanilla bean or 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Put the milk, sugar, salt, egg yolks, and cornstartch in a 2-quart sauce pan. If your’re using a vanilla bean, split it in half lengthwise, scrape the soft, pulpy seeds into the pan, and toss in the pod. If you’re using vailla extract, keep it in reserve until the cream is cooked. Stir with a wire whisk to ble, bring to a boil, whisking constantly, and let the pastry cream bokl for 30-60 seconds, at which point it iwll have thickened and the whisk will leave tracks as you stir. Take the pan off the heat and scrape the pastry cream into a strainer set over a bowl. Push through the strainer, discard the vanilla bean. If you are using extract, stir it in now. Cover the bowl with plastic, pressing the plastic wrap up against the surface of the cream and top the layer of plastic with ice cubes. Leave the ice cubes there until the cream cools.
The Pastry
Puff pastry recipe
2 cups (approx.) sugar
1/2 cup apricot jam
2 teaspoons water
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Working on a lightly floured surface (cool marble is ideal, although my kitchen table worked fine too), roll the puff pastry to a thickness of between 1/8 and 1/4 inch. Flour the edges of a 4 inch cookie cutter round and cut 8 rounds from the dough. Stack the puff pastry scraps neatly, trying to keep the layers in place and refrigerate to use in another recipe (coming soon!). Clean the work surface and sprinkle it generously with sugar. While you work on one round, keep the others covered with plastic wrap. Rest a puff pastry round on the sugar and dust the top of the round lightly with flour to facilitate the rolling. Roll out the round until it elongates into an oval about 8 inches long. Don’t roll all the way to the ends–you want the ends to be a little thicker so that they’ll puff up higher around the apricots (also, if you roll over the ends you risk pasting the layers together). Brush the flour off the top and put the oval on the large unbuttered baking sheet, sugar side up. Repeat with the remaining pastries, leaving little room between each pastry on the sheet–these are going to puff up, not out.
Spoon a walnut-sized dollop of pastry cream onto the center of each oval and set 2 apricot halves side by side on the cream so that they resemble eggs sunny-side up. Bake the pastries for about 35 minutes, The pastries should be golden and beautifully puffed, and the sugar should have caramelized.
Julia and Paul Child called their kitchen the beating heart of the household which is truly fitting. In my house, there is no other room that is more lived in, visited, or used than the kitchen–ha, no surprise there really . So when I went home for the holiday, I had to fit into my packed itinerary a quick visit to the Smithsonian to see Julia Child’s kitchen in the real.
It was truly inspiring. Not because it was grand or had super fancy equipment but because it was real. You could tell it was lovingly put together and meant to be a place for gathering. It was warm, easy to move in, and had all of her tools and equipment placed on the walls and in reach for easy access while in the mode of cooking. It made Julia seem more like a person and less like the untouchable cooking goddess she has become to the public. She truly just loved what she did and wanted to share it with everyone. And that is it! No hidden intentions, no sideline motives, just good food and cooking.
I recently finished the book The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, by Kathleen Flinn. There was a part where she was describing how she met Julia at a food writers conference in West Virginia in the mid nineties. They ended up sitting next to each other during one of the seminars and at the end Julia turned to Kathleen and said “I always love to come to this workshop. You learn so much”. This amazed Kathleen and she thought to herself, you are Julia Freakin’ Child, I thought you knew everything there was to know about food and cooking already! When Kathleen politely told Julia this, Julia just laughed and said “Oh, no, you can never know everything about anything, especially something you love”.
Julia’s passion and humbleness have always inspired me. This wasn’t the first example I had heard or read about, but this particular example from Kathleen Flinn has really stuck with me. I think it shows Julia’s greatness as well as her sheer humanness. And I aspire to approach my own passions and life with as open mind, heart, and soul as did Julia.
Today I made my first souffle–the first of many! I cracked open my vintage copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and got busy. It came out perfect–as Julia so lovingly and painstakingly sought to help home cooks achieve through her precise and thorough writing. I appreciate her clear directions and how they are laid out. Alice Waters must have been inspired by how Julia wrote out recipes, because her cookbooks have a similar voice throughout the recipe. Give this souffle a try–it was surprisingly easy and amazingly light with a wonderful flavor. I made it for a late morning Sunday brunch; it would be wonderful served with a mimosa, some fruit salad (pomegranate seeds, blueberries, kiwi, and tangerines), and a slice or two of crisp bacon.
Bon Apetit!
Souffle Au Fromage (Cheese Souffle) a la Julia Child
The souffle sauce base
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Generously butter a 6 cup souffle mold and sprinkle with shredded cheese evenly throughout, set aside. Measure out all of your ingredients.
3 tablespoons butter
A 2 1/2 quart saucepan
3 tablespoons flour
A wooden spatula or spoon
1 cup boiling milk
A wire whisk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
A pinch of cayenne pepper
A pinch of nutmeg
Melt the butter in the saucepan. Stir in the flour with a wooden spatula or spoon and cook over moderate heat until butter and flour foam together for 2 minutes without browning. Remove from heat; when mixture has stopped bubbling, pour in all the boiling milk at once. Beat vigorously with a wire whisk until blended. Beat in seasonings. Return over moderately high heat and boil, stirring with the wire whisk, for 1 minute. Sauce will be very thick.
4 egg yolks
Remove from heat. Immediately start to separate the eggs. Drop the white into the egg white bowl, and the yolk into the center of the hot sauce. Beat the yolk into the sauce with the wire whisk. Continue in the same manner with the rest of the eggs. Correct seasoning. (May be prepared ahead to this point. Dot top of sauce with butter. Heat to tepid before continuing).
The egg whites and cheese
5 egg whites
A heaping 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
A pinch of salt
3/4 cup (3 oz) coarsely grated Swiss, or Swiss and Parmesan, cheese
Add an extra egg white and cream of tartar to the ones in the bowl and beat with the salt until stiff. Stir a big spoonful into the sauce. Stir in all but a tablespoon of cheese. Delicately fold in the rest of the egg whites.
Baking
Turn the souffle mixture into the prepared mold, which should be almost three quarters full. Tap bottom of mold slightly on the table, and smooth the surface of the souffle with the flat of a knife. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. Set on a rack in the middle level of preheated 400 degree F oven and immediately turn heat down to 375 degrees F. Do not open the oven door for 20 minutes. In 25-30 minutes the souffle will have puffed about 2 inches over the rim of the mold, and the top will be nicely browned. Bake 4 to 5 minutes more to firm it up, then serve at once.
