Enda's Pineapple Tarts

 

What's Chinese New Year without the yummy homemade golden pineapple tarts. That's exactly what I'm missing this year.

I'm not the pickiest when it comes to pineapple tarts, but they are best when homemade. Many expert homecooks have their own secret recipes and I don't think we can easily say who makes the best pineapple tarts. Everyone have their favourites, and I have many. Like the fresh from the oven ones I chanced upon in Melaka years ago, the ones made by the mom-in-law of my 7th aunt which my family enjoys gratefully yearly, and then, Enda makes them every year with smashing success. She seems to vary her recipe every year. And this being the first Chinese New Year when I'm not back home in Singapore, she suggested I make my own pineapple tarts to satisfy my craving, and gave me her new easy-to-make recipe.

I haven't had time to make it yet, but looking forward to trying it out sometime when I feel less lazy. Afterall, even if the dough and filling may be fast to prepare, it is still quite tedious to have to make each and every little pillow of pastry look perfect. Meanwhile, I'm recording the recipe below so that I don't lose it.

Enda's Homemade Pineapple Tarts

Pineapple filling:

1 big pineapple

about 200g sugar

1 cinnamon stick

Tart dough:

1kg plain flour

500g butter

8 egg yolks

 

1 egg yolk for glazing

 

Make the pineapple filling first. With 1big pineapple, blend until like juice then cook in pot. Add 200g sugar, and more to your taste if needed. Add one cinnamon stick and cook until the mixture is dry.

While the pineapple filling is cooking, prepare the tart dough. Using an electric mixer, mix butter, sugar and eggs yolk together until well mixed. After that use your hand to mix in the plain flour until the mixture resembles a tart dough.

To make the pastry, pinch some dough off and roll with your hands into a small ping pong ball shape. Flatten and spoon some pineapple filling, and close it up. Repeat until the dough or filling is used up.

Brush the top of the pastry with a beaten egg yolk (or milk). Bake in a preheated oven for ?? (she forgot to give me the oven temperature and time, so got to check with her again).

 

Cooking crayfish/lobster the French way

One of the memorable scenes I still remember from the movie Julie and Julia was when Julie plucked up her courage to attempt her last recipe challenge from Julia Child's cookbook: to kill a live lobster and cook it.

I'm afraid I don't have the determination of Julie. First, I am not as diligent as her in keeping my food blog up-to-date (Yes, I'm feeling guilty about my long hiatus in trying new recipes and posting them here). Secondly, the act of killing something alive for my dinner plate is still too much for me.

Nevertheless, for our annual fancy Christmas meal in 2009, we still decided to try something new. Rare oysters is a French Christmas tradition that I decided we must stick to, since I love them more than Rémi. And our favourite deli supermarket was taking pre-orders for crayfish for Christmas, which we couldn't resist. I wasn't planning to kill the crayfish myself, but we ordered a live one anyway, as I was sure Rémi will take care of it. Not sure if it was a right move, but we kept the crayfish covered in newspaper in the fridge, hoping to sedate it. And it survived the cold and was still moving when we were ready to cook it the next day.

We don't have Julia Child's cookbook to guide us along, just some advice from Camille and Youtube tutorials. From Camille: for the more adventurous cook, use a sharp knife to slit the live crayfish from head to tail, that will give it a very quick death. After watching more video tutorials, Rémi decided he will opt for the coward option: throw the crayfish into boiling water, cover and cook for 3 minutes.

All the time, the cowardly me was hiding outside the kitchen :) and enjoying the finished result after.

Here's the recipe from Camille for the adventurous cook. We had replaced lobster with crayfish.

Crayfish Grilled with Tarragon Butter
Serves 2

1 crayfish
1 tablespoon of butter, softened
2 branches of tarragon
salt and pepper

Put the crayfish into boiling water for 3-4 minutes. So hopefully it didn't suffer for too long. The flesh will still be partially raw after 3-4 minutes.

Take out the crayfish and cut into two pieces lengthwise, from head to tail. Put into a baking tin, the flesh side up.

Spread soft butter all over and sprinkle salt and pepper. Grill for 5 minutes and spread butter on the crayfish once or twice during the grilling.

When the edge of the flesh has turned golden in colour, take out and transfer to serving plate. Pour the melted butter from the baking tin over the crayfish and sprinkle tarragon over. (Actually, we had chopped half our tarragon and mixed into the soft butter before grilling)

Note from Camille: it's best to kill the crayfish alive by slitting it into two, and skipping the boiling part. But this requires courage.

And yes, the lobster and crayfish can be used interchangeably.

And yes too, the end result was real yummy.