Chard Tart with Pine Nuts

I remember you making chard pie when I was younger, Mom, and I got to thinking about it this week when I bought some tender, lovely Swiss chard. I didn't want something too eggy -- not a full-on quiche, but rather a light, creamy pie with lots of chard.

I used this crust recipe, which has become my favorite for both savory and sweet uses. It's pretty rich, but if you're going to go to the bother of making crust, why mess around?

I used the food processor this time, and it worked fine. I rolled out the dough, pressed it into a tart ring, brushed it with plenty of egg white, and put it in the fridge to chill.

For the filling, I sauteed in olive oil:

1 very small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 big bunch Swiss chard (1 lb?), including stems, chopped

I let that cool slightly, then added it to a bowl in which I had beaten together:

3 whole eggs + the leftover white (the other leftover white was used to brush the dough)
3 oz cream cheese (I had no Parmesan, which is what I would have used; this gave it a nice mild smoothness.)
1/2 cup half and half, roughly
salt
pinch of nutmeg
lots of black pepper

I poured the filling into the tart shell -- it was very wet, another reason to make a rich crust -- and sprinkled the top with a handful of pine nuts. I baked it for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

As with most egg dishes, it was much better once it had cooled to room temperature. It was mild and clean-tasting, and the pine nuts seemed impossibly sweet, almost candied, against the dark green chard flavor.

Grandma's Birthday

In a final flurry of entertaining, we had Grandma's birthday party today. First Ron and I played a recital of a Mozart duet sonata, the Chopin two-piano rondo Opus 73, and a jazzy Gershwin arrangement. With champagne.

For lunch I made salad plates consisting of a layer of lettuce on which I placed a mounds of curried chicken salad*, curried lentil salad, grapes, and glazed pecans. I made a batch of blueberry muffins to serve with the salad.

For dessert I made a French chocloate tart.

*I read in a catering book years ago how to prepare chickens in bulk for various dishes. You put whole chickens in a roasting pan with an inch of water, then tent them loosely with foil and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and 45 minutes. This keeps them moist but has a lot more flavor than poaching. I used two chickens and then made broth with the carcasses in the crockpot. Last night we had some of the chicken broth in Red Chile Sauce, which I served over thick Sonoran masa cakes.

South American Food

Sam and Grace came over for dinner on Friday. We sat outside for the cocktail hour, with wine, fresh veggies from the garden, and Swiss chard empanadas which I baked outside.

For the main course we had Argentinian chicken, a quinoa pilaf, and zucchini cooked with corn. And Easy Almond Tart for dessert. I make this tart so often--it's not enormous like my other tart recipes, and so easy, and everyone loves it. I am reporting here that Sam ate two pieces.

Mushroom-Swiss Tart

This was very good as impromptu dinners go. On Friday I really, really felt like cooking, but we had a strange assortment of things in the fridge -- no meat, lots of mushrooms -- and I was sick of frittatas and pasta dishes. Enter the mushroom tart.

The filling consisted of:

• an onion and a container of mushrooms, sauteed in olive oil and simmered with a little sherry
• three eggs
• parsley
• Amish Swiss cheese, cubed
• salt and pepper
  

For the crust, I used the recipe mentioned in this post. Here it is with my slight changes:

***
Super-Serious Crust

• 7 T unsalted butter, cold
  
• a pinch of salt, or more, depending on whether the recipe is savory or sweet
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I used White Lily. This is a very good use for Southern flours.)
• 2 egg yolks
• 3-4 tbs cold water

Mix the flour and salt. Cut in the butter quickly with a fork and/or fingers. Add yolks and water and mix briefly to form a dough. Roll into a ball and chill for at least 1/2 hour. Roll out quickly on a floured board with a floured rolling pin. Fold into quarters to lift into tart pan, then unfold and shape as desired.

In this case there was a lot of dough, so I folded it way over to make a messy top crust for the tart.

***

One of the reasons the crust was so good was that I used butter from Happy Cow Creamery in Pelzer, SC. I've always wanted to buy their butter, but it comes in huge 2-pounds blocks with no measurement markings on the wrapper. Since Annie Postic told me I could freeze it, and since I got a kitchen scale for my birthday, I can now weigh the butter to measure it and keep it in the freezer so it won't go bad.



And such butter it is. It's got so much flavor -- on bread you need only the thinnest smear. I love it.

We had thin slices of the tart with a salad topped with a sort of diced red pepper vinaigrette/relish.

South American Dinner

Maybe the Republicans are right, and the country will lapse into moral decline now the Democrats are in power. Starting with us--this was the second morning in a week that we woke up to unwashed dishes and the multi-bottle litter of entertaining.

I served a South American dinner for six. The menu:

Sweet potato chips (purchased)
Basque sheep cheese
Nuts
***
Shrimp Cebiche
Vegetable Cebiche (hearts of palm, broccoli, mushrooms)
Homemade Bread
***
Chicken in a Red Chile Sauce with Peas and Olives
Quinoa Pilaf
Pickled Onions
***
Fruit Tart

The loaf of bread pictured above contained 1 cup unbleached flour, 1/2 cup spelt flour, 1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, and 1/4 cup coarse cornmeal. I used molasses for the sweetener.

The tart was pretty with mixed berries, all on sale this week!

Remember we wondered how to make pickled onions like Santos? I found the method in The South American Table by Maria Baez Kijac.

Peel a medium red onion, cut in half, and slice into paper-thin half moons. Cover with hot water and soak 15 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Add the juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper to the onions, mix well, cover, and let stand at room temperature for three hours or until they turn pink. Best served the same day.

Fall Dinner

I've been either a lazy blogger or unimaginative cook this week. But tonight we're having a very suitably autumnal dinner at Grandma's. She is making a pork roast and applesauce, and I'm bringing roasted vegetables and a pear tart.

I used Anne Postic's recipe from the Free Times for the tart. My dough didn't hang together because I only had whole wheat flour, so I pressed it into a tart pan instead of making a free-form shape. It smells wonderful.

Leek, Potato, and Mushroom Tart

Hey, I made a good pie crust! Like, the real way: cutting the butter in with a fork and a cool, fast hand, then chilling the dough, then rolling it out, then folding it up so I could move it and unfolding it in the pan.

This is a new thing for me. I hadn't tried the real thing in several years, partially because I thought I didn't care that much about pie crust and partially because the whole procedure seemed fussy. But I think that was just me being defensive about my poor pie crust skilllz.

Of late, I've been alarmed by the premade frozen pie crusts we sometimes buy -- who knows what's in those? And my simple oil crusts have been tough and nasty. So when I decided to make a roasted vegetable tart thing the other night, I knew I had to make a real crust.

The egg yolks were the trick. I used this recipe for the crust. For the filling I sort of followed the recipe except that I used fewer potatoes, left them in bigger chunks, and added a whole bunch of quartered cremini mushrooms. I also added the two egg whites left over from making the crust. And I used a deep springform pan, so the vegetables had plenty of space.

The whole thing was wonderful. It wasn't eggy or creamy at all. At that high temperature, each vegetable roasted up perfectly, with internal juiciness but lots of browned surface. It was a little oniony -- these were unpredictable local leeks, and they were not as mild as I would have liked. Otherwise, though: perfect.

October Recital Food

I usually have my first piano party of the year in October before Halloween. This year we had music ranging from Haydn to Muczynski, and food from pumpkin candies to Raspberry Tart II.

I found a fabulous pumpkin cake recipe in the October 2007 Bon Appetit. It has raisins, coconut, and lots of grated orange peel for flavor. The recipe calls for cream cheese frosting, but the cake is great on its own. I'll be keeping this one.

Pictured above is another raspberry tart. As you know, a 12-inch tart is the very easiest way to serve dessert to a large group--this one yields twelve to sixteen servings. Have we recorded this recipe for posterity yet?

Fruit Tart

Crust
1 cup butter, softened
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Combine ingredients (I use the food processor) and press into a 9x13-inch baking pan or 12-inch tart pan. Chill for 30 minutes. Bake at 350º for 30 minutes. Cool.

Cream Cheese Layer

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup whipping cream, whipped

Mix cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla; fold in whipped cream. Spread over cooled tart crust.

Fruit Topping

The original recipe calls for a can of blueberry pie filling! I use a layer of jam topped with plain fruit, or a layer of sugared fruit. For instance, I might stir some strawberry jam until it's spreadable and apply a thin layer, then arrange whole strawberries on top. In this case, I used some raspberry fruit spread topped with plain fresh raspberries.

I got this recipe from Barbara in Hawaii--do you remember her? She was (and is, though I haven't seen her for 20 years) really something: a wonderful soprano; an avid sports fan--she knew everything about football and sumo wrestling--never play Trivial Pursuit with her; a cat lover; and a librarian.

Easy Almond Tart

Here's our breakfast fruit from this morning: kiwi, white peach, navel orange. I love this time of year when we're overwhelmed with fruit choices.

Here also is a tart recipe to contribute to your ongoing research. It is rather sweet, but I usually serve just a small sliver with some fresh fruit on the side.

Easy Almond Tart

Pastry
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoons water

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In food processor, pulse flour, sugar, salt, and butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.

With processor running, add vanilla and water and mix until dough just comes together. Press into 9” tart pan. Bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Remove and reduce oven to 350 degrees.

Filling

¾ cup sugar
¾ cup whipping cream
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon orange-flavored liqueur
½ teaspoon almond extract

1 cup sliced almonds

Whisk together sugar, cream, salt, liqueur, and almond extract until slightly thickened.

Stir in almonds and mix thoroughly. Pour into prepared crust. Bake until top forms a crust similar to pecan pie, 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

Variations: I love to make an Almond Joy variation on this, stirring in shredded coconut and chocolate chips along with the almonds (a total of one cup).

Apple Tart

This weekend I experimented with tarts for a piece I am writing for the Free Times Entertaining section. It's more complicated than what I want to put in the article, but I muddled my way into a really good bourbon-apple tart with vanilla pastry cream.

I wanted to make an apple tart. I didn't want to use cinnamon, because I wanted to get away from the classic apple pie flavor. And when I asked Lawson whether he wanted apple tart with or without a bottom layer of pastry cream, his response was emphatic: more, yes, all of it, please.

I used the simplest tart crust recipe -- the one you posted under Blueberry Tart, actually -- and let it cool. I filled it a vanilla pastry cream using whole milk and 4 egg yolks, though honestly I think a simple cornstarch-based vanilla pudding would have been even better. I chilled that while I sliced up three Golden Delicious apples, two of them peeled, and sauteed them in 3 tablespoons of butter and half a cup of sugar until they were gooey and translucent. I arranged the slices on top of the pudding, then added some bourbon to the pan and reduced all that a little bit before glazing the tart with it. It was so good. I only wish there were someone besides the two of us to eat it.

In other food news, last week I was treated to a fried bologna sandwich from the local Exxon station, unlikely source of pork-based home-cooked local country foods. It tasted, surprisingly, like a good grilled hot dog.

Raspberry Tart

This has been a bountiful berry season. This week it's raspberries. To make this tart I used the crust from the Fresh Blueberry Tart below. For the filling I mixed 8 ounces mascarpone with 1/4 cup raspberry jam, then topped it with 1 pint fresh raspberries.

Pissaladiere

I made pissaladiere for the first time this week. It was pretty good -- not transcendent, but pretty good. I read a bunch of recipes but ended up using no particular version.

For the crust I used my standard no-rolling-pin recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Like you, I don't really get flaky pie crust; I feel the crumbly pat-in-the-pan versions are just as good any other crust I've had. Anyway: 1.5 cups flour, 5 T butter, and about 3/4 t salt -- more than the recipe calls for.

I put two beaten eggs and some grated Parmesan in the bottom of the crust to seal it and hold everything together. On top of that I put a whole bunch of caramelized Vidalia onions -- two medium onions reduced to a dark gold color. Next came four anchovies, broken up; a teaspoon or so each of fresh basil, rosemary, and oregano; and two medium tomatoes, one chopped and drained and one sliced. On top of that was a bit more Parmesan and some oil-cured olives. I baked the whole thing for about half an hour.

I'd like to know Aunt Katherine's pissaladiere recipe. If she doesn't see this post, maybe you can ask her when you see her next week to put it in the comments or send to us.

Fresh Blueberry Tart

Here's the best blueberry recipe! I made the crust in my little convection oven outside. To date I have made many meals in it, including baked sweet potatoes, oven fries, sausages, polenta slices, bread, and Piedmont Peppers.

Crust
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes

Preheat oven to 350°. Blend flour, sugar, and salt in processor 5 seconds. Add butter; pulse until clumps form. Gather dough into ball. Press dough over bottom and up sides of 9½ -inch tart pan with removable bottom; pierce all over with fork. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes. Cool.

Filling
¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
6 cups fresh blueberries

Whisk sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium saucepan to blend. Gradually add 2 tablespoons cold water and lemon juice, whisking until smooth. Add butter and lemon peel. Add 2 cups berries and mash coarsely. Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and boils, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Fold in remaining 4 cups berries. Transfer to prepared crust and refrigerate until cold.