roasted parsnip pie

I made a parsnip pie back in 2007, and here's a new version. 

Crust:

• 8 oz. flour
• 4 oz. lard
• 1½ oz butter
• ⅓ c. water
• ½ tsp salt

Filling:

• 18 oz. parsnips
• chicken stock
• butter
• allspice berries
• thyme
• 8 oz. crème fraîche
• 4 eggs, separated
• nutmeg, grated (I used about an ⅛ of an inch nutmeg)
• salt, pepper

Make the crust as you would any other (that's modified from Tartine's recipe), or use your favorite recipe. The lard seemed like a good idea for Thanksgiving. Chill overnight or at least while preparing the parsnips.

Chop and roast the parsnips at 375ºF with some allspice, thyme, and a few knobs of butter, with a half inch of chicken stock in the pan.

Meanwhile, roll out your crust, bake for ten minutes (also at 375ºF) with foil and pie weights and another eight without, until it is fully baked.

When the stock has evaporated form the parsnips, replenish, and roast until they are soft and caramelized (about an hour).

Purée the parsnips, adding enough stock to make it smooth. Pass this through a conical strainer (chinois), food mill, or sieve, so that the allspice and any fibers are taken out.

Add egg yolks one at a time, then fold in crème fraîche and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and more thyme. Beat the whites to soft peaks and whisk into the parsnip mix (you don't need to be gentle—it's not a soufflé, it's okay to beat to get it smooth).

Pour into the prebaked shell and bake for about 45 minutes at 325ºF, until set.

And here it is:

steamed kabocha cake (kabocha no mushigashi)

This is a recipe that I've modified from Hiroko Shimbo's The Japanese Kitchen. The recipe is very flexible — I've used different flours, different squash (or sweet potato), and I've added fresh cranberries or currants in lieu of raisins (or left both out). It is always a hit, and is my most-requested dessert.

Ingredients:

• 6 oz. roasted kabocha (I prefer roasted to steamed, and I've doubled the quantity)
• 5 cloves, ground
• ½ tsp. grond ginger
• 2½ tbsp. cake flour (used here, but I've use whole wheat pastry or all-purpose flour as well)
• ⅓ c. rice flour (I've use mochiko in the past, Shimbo calls for joshinko, and here I used an all-purpose stone-ground variety)
• 4 eggs, separated (or 3 if you have extra large ones)
• 5 tbsp. sugar
• pinch of salt
• ⅓-½ c. each zante currants and walnuts tossed in a tablespoon of rice flour

Prepare a pot to steam: if you have a springform that fits in a bamboo steamer, that's great. But springforms are often too tall. In that case, I have a rack on the bottom of a stockpot that will fit an 8- or 9-inch springform pan with water going up to the rack. Line the springform with parchment.

Blend the kabocha, spices, and egg yolks (the spices are optional, but seem appropriate for Thanksgiving) in a medium bowl.

Beat the whites to soft peaks with the salt, adding the sugar a tablespoon at a time as you reach the soft peaks. Fold the whites, a third at a time, into the kabocha mixture. Sift the two flours together and then into this mixture, being careful not to deflate. Do the same with currants and walnuts.

Steam for 25-40 minutes (about 25 in a pot, longer if in a bamboo steamer), until a toothpick comes out clean.

"mrs. child's famous sticky fruitcake"

As Julia Child notes, "[t]his cake isn't sticky at all, but it started out that way during my first experiements, and the name has remained, as a family joke."¹ And thus began my first experiment with fruitcake. I've made panforte and convinced my fruitcakephobic family to relish that, and Child's fruitcake seemed like good introduction to fruitcake (she has yet to fail me, from pastry to roast chicken).

 The fruitcake began with me making mixed peel: I blanched lemon and orange peel in water and then cooked them in syrup (I wasn't about to buy the overly processed peel at a grocery store, and I've never seen the higher quality stuff of which British pastry chefs talk).

The base is four pounds of peel and fruit: I used the aforementioned candied orange and lemon peel plus raisins, sultanas, zante currants, figs, candied ginger, sour cherries preserved in alcohol, unsulfured apricots, and prunes. This sits overnight with a pound of nuts (I used pecans and walnuts), a pound of mincemeat (I used some from Dan Lepard's recipe: I should have made it a month ago, but this'll be fine — and now I'll have mince for a Christmas pie), ⅔ c. rum, ⅓ c. bourbon, 1 tbsp. espresso, ¼ c. molasses, and a mix of 1 tsp. cardamom, ½ tsp. each cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace, and 1½ tsp. salt.

Above left is what that looks like after 24 hours of maceration, above left is tossed with 3½ c. flour with 1 tbsp. baking powder.

To that mixture is added ½ lb. butter that was creamed with 2 c. sugar, ⅓ c. brown sugar, 2 tbsp. vanilla and six eggs. This is then spooned into buttered and floured tins lined with parchement. I ended up with four loaves a little under a pound each, one toping two pounds and a sixth weighing in at almost three-and-a-half pounds (the smaller caked baked for 80 minutes, the larger for 120-130).

These smell lovely. I sprinkled more bourbon and rum atop, wrapped them up, and we'll see how they are in a month (if I can wait)!


¹Julia Child, From Julia Child's Kitchen (New York: Grammercy, 1975), 583.

apple nougatine tart

There's something about Tartine's apple nougatine tart that is simple and spectacular. The apples (three varities) are sautéed in butter and sugar beforehand, which creates a stable texture for the tart, reduces extra moisture, and creates a buttery-carmalized fillling.

The sautéed apples are layered in a fully-baked crust after being tossed with lemon juice and zest (which I used to deglaze the pan and reduced slightly). 

This is covered with a mixture of sliced almonds, sugar, and lightly whipped egg white (I prefer it slightly whipped to make the crust light).

And voilà: one of my favorite ways to consume apples. And it travelled well on the CTA to a friend's for dinner.

tatin

I've finally found the perfect combination of Midwest apple varieties for tarte tatin — and I can't remember one of them. Coming from Massachusetts, it's been a hurdle keeping track of local varieties, especially when I can't find apples that I had come to expect. One of the apples above is Winesap — a fabulously tart apple. The other is also a tart baking apple, and together the tart has a lemony aroma and taste that makes it one of the best that I have made.

duck + chestnuts

Duck breast, dry rubbed with thyme, salt, and pepper, seared and finished with a wine-duck-cherry sauce (reduced wine, duck stock, sour cherries that have been soaking in grain alcohol with hibiscus and orange peel, and the faux-demi-glace that you get when making duck confit). This, with Julia Child's purée of chestnuts, which has left me with fingers numbed from peeling hot chestnuts but nevertheless sated, thinking it was well worth it.

sour cherry, apple, and pear pie

A blend of sour cherries (frozen from July), pears, and apples — with cinnamon, cloves and a bit of sugar and tapioca flour — made for a delightful fall pie.