mincemeat!

I've wanted to make a real mincemeat, and then Dan Lepard, the fantastic baker and food writer at the Guardian, posted a recipe.

Here's the boozy mix of currants, sultanas, prunes, raisins, apples and spices — it sat for a month, being mixed once and topped with booze a hanfdul of times (I used, at varying times, bourbon, brandy, or rum).

Here it is mixed again and topped off with a bit of rum, in my favorite crust (Tartine's recipe).

 Topped with lattice...

And completed.

 And voilà!

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.

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.

apple nougatine tart

This is another great recipe from Tartine, which has provided some great results in the past. I was actually amazed that I mentioned it in a post but have few details — I'm assuming we ate it all before I got to take photos.

It's a [pre-baked] flaky pastry crust filled with apples sautéed in butter and sugar (with a pinch of salt) that are tossed with lemon juice and zest. The tarts get covered with a mixture of egg white, sugar, salt and almonds, forming a delicious nougatine crust. The trick is for the apples to be cooked until not too soft, with some caramelized, some softer, some firmer. Once that all comes together the result is not to sweet with a brightness from the lemon. This was also one of my best pastry efforts crust-wise.

pear-quince-apple pie

Poached quinces. Apples (two varieties, whose names I forget, but both hardy, heirloom baking ones). Bosc pears. And an all-butter crust.

tarte tatin

Everyone loves a tarte tatin.

autumnal

I've been thinking about parsnip pie — I'd like to make one (or some) for Thanksgiving — so I gave it a go last night. Two medium parsnips were roasted with salt and olive oil and then puréed with a clove of garlic, two eggs, milk and pepper. I baked them in small tart shells made with a sage-thyme crust.

And voilà... they were quite good. Not as cute as I'd hoped, but I thought quite delicious.

Then there was homemade pasta with sautéed purple cauliflower, purple kale and bâtons of sunchoke. Last week I made mashed sunchokes — this was a much better use of the sunchoke.


And then there was an ad hoc bosc pear crisp (we were out of apples): simple, very very good — and I tried whipping some crème fraîche that I had made and it was incredibly good. Tangy, not sugary-sweet like whipped cream. Really quite delicious.

squash blossoms, steak frites

I bought ten squash blossoms yesterday morning at the market -- and then stuffed them with a mixture of sorrel, ricotta and pine nuts. I beat an egg white with a pinch of salt until airy but still soft, beat in the yolk and then beat in some brown rice flour. I coated them in that and fried them until light brown. They were very very good.


Since we had the oil (grapeseed), and hadn't really had dinner (it was probably nine by this point), we wanted something fried for dinner. And I thought "steak frites" -- given, I've never cooked steak, in fact I hadn't eaten it in a very long time. But it sounded really good. We made small-cut fries, sautéed spinach and seared four portions of steak cooked from medium-rare to well-done. It felt really decadent and was really delicious. It also turned into a heated discussion of meat ethics, which seems appropriate for four one-time vegetarians eating steak.

And I finished that with my first tarte tatin of the season. Today felt like a day in September, and that was nice.

week's end...

A week (and then some) of canning comes to a close. Off to New Jersey and Delaware with Luke -- so canning, cooking and the like can be held at bay until Friday (at the earliest). Made a nougatine tart at work for the "demo" -- the small convection oven, as much as it is small, defies the "middle rack" logic and the almonds were carmalized (read burned, but everyone loved it). One coworker declared it her new favorite dessert. Who wouldn't? Almonds, apples sautéed in butter, a flaky crust... it's a whole lot of heaven.

& lasagne

Stephanie was here for a wedding, and Jonathan due to his new location. So...

While the tomatoes were brining, I made lasagne -- a white lasagne with delicata squash, carrots, mizuna and the standards (ricotta, paramsean, parsley).

Meanwhile, Jonathan documented the lasagne noodles on the rack. (Nothing special this time around, just eggs, semolina and salt...)

And then Stephanie and Jonathan prepped apples for the nougatine tart that was heavenly. Recipe courtesy of Tartine.

(I'm having a major internal debate: grad school or cooking school?)