Absolutely Homemade Tarte Tatin

Finally, more success in making tarte tatin. Our pilgrimage back home to learn the art of French home cooking has not been in vain!!!

A few thoughts why I love home cooked food so much:
1. They do not always look dressed up like in restaurants, but they certainly look and smell yummy.
2. The pleasure starts even before the meal is served at the table -- especially the anticipation as the aromatic smells of whatever that's cooking on the stovetop or baking in the oven fills the kitchen and dining area.
3. They give you a warm fuzzy feeling, as they are cooked with love and joy.
4. They are usually (though not always) healthier.

Back to our lesson on tarte tatin. Being lazy, I did not take note of the recipe as the dessert was being made. In fact, I don't think Rémi's maman referred to any recipe at all, as this is probably as easy as frying an egg to her. As she was peeling and slicing the apples (that came from her garden), she was passing some to a greedy me, and baby Pablo. At the same time, she was also making a blueberry tart (as we couldn't agree on which to have for dessert since they are both nice, she decided to make both), so it wasn't a structured tarte tatin lesson per se.

Despite a lack of a precise recipe (which I never follow anyway), I managed to take down some notes and came up with some guidelines/tips/steps that contributed to our last night's tarte tatin success.

Steps to making tarte tatin

Dough:
Pate Brisee (salty tart dough)
You can also use premade filo pastry bought from the supermarket

To make the apple filling
5-6 apples (or enough to pack up tightly the base of the tart tin), peeled and sliced into thick pieces.
Butter (according to your fat conscious. I used about 25g or less but feel free to use more)
Sugar (50g + another 50g or less to sprinkle over the base of the tart tin)

Put apples, butter and sugar into a frying pan and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, until the sugar has caramelised and the apples are cooked (do not overcook the apples though). Add a little water if necessary.

Grease the tart tin with more butter. Sprinkle the other half of the sugar over the base of the tart tin. Pour the caramelised apples into the tin. Pack tightly.

Cover the apples with the rolled up/flattened tart dough, with the edges tucked into.

Baked in preheated oven of 190 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown.

Invert and voilah! You have a nicely delicious apple upside down tart!

Our next plan is to replicate this success, and make a tarte tatin dish with blood! This is not a joke. Boudin noir aux pommes is another French classic dish of black pudding (blood sausage) with apples. And at a restaurant in Lyon during our trip, we had a wonderful boudin noir cooked in tarte tatin. What a delightful combination. Now we only have to find out how.

Mix and match quiche

I'm feeling bad about not updating my blog for a long while. Since finding a part time job, I'm finding less time to experiment new dishes in the kitchen. What I'm getting good at though is cooking very quickly, and for multiple meals, as I pack my lunchbox most days.

For instance, I like to cook extra for dinner, so that I have some leftover for next day's lunch. It could also mean preparing for next day's lunchbox (like a tabbouleh salad) while cooking tonight's dinner. Or even better, on days when I have French till late, I would pack my lunchbox while preparing dinner during breakfast time. This is usually a slowcook dish, like chopping up vegetables to make ratatouille or a Chinese pork ribs soup.

Lunchbox tomorrow: Zucchini and Prawns Quiche with onions.
Making quiche to me is becoming more like cooking Chinese fried rice or noodles, there's a lot of improvisation. I would throw in whatever ingredients I can find in the fridge into the egg mixture.

So using the Quiche Lorraine recipe's proportion of eggs to cream, I vary the ingredients that goes into it.

Here's some mix and match combination which is definitely not exhaustive. Feel free to be inspired at cafes and supermarkets too.

- zucchini and prawns
- tomatoes and black olives
- spinach and bacon
- bacon and feta cheese
- salmon and leek
- onions and chicken
- mushrooms and ham

Parisian designer style Quiche Lorraine

I didn't make this up. This recipe was inspired by a Parisian designer friend. Tall, slender, pretty and fashionable, she exudes the type of style that we imagine all fashionable Parisian ladies to be. And she proves that fashionable big city Frenchwomen are just as good cooks as moms and grannies. You can also rightly imagine her to cook in super sleek modern kitchen.

We had the pleasure to taste her Quiche Lorraine, to which she added a strong goat cheese. I normally find goat cheese too strong for my liking, but the quiche just brings out the taste of the cheese perfectly.

So I was determined to replicate her Quiche Lorraine. Using Camille's traditional Quiche Lorraine recipe (cheese is not an ingredient of original quiche Lorraine recipes), I experimented with goat feta and sheep feta on separate occasions and liked both very much.

Quiche Lorraine with goat cheese
Serves four

1 portion of pâte brisée tart dough
approx 200g bacon
3 eggs
200ml crème fraiche
goat feta (or be daring to experiment with different types of goat cheese)
salt and pepper

Prepare the tart dough and leave in fridge for half and hour.

Preheat oven at 180ºC. Roll out tart thinly and line on a prepared tin (either floured or greased). Using a fork, poke holes all over the base.

Cut the bacon into small slices and sprinkle all over the uncooked tart base. Put into oven and bake for 10 minutes. I like Camille's way of crisping the bacon without using an additional frying pan.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the cream together. Add salt and pepper. Pour into the precooked tart.

Here's why I left out specifying the quantity of the cheese earlier. Cut the feta into small cubes, just enough to spread all over the tart.

Bake the quiche in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Improved Blueberry Tart

Certain French food can be extraordinarily seasonal. Or it seems to be the case for Rémi's family. And blueberry tart is made mainly during the blueberry season. While you can probably get frozen blueberries from the supermarket out of season, the pleasure is partially derived from picking wild blueberries in the countryside. And since the season is particularly short, the window for enjoying blueberry tart is particularly short.

Anyway, this is his third attempt at making blueberry tart with frozen blueberries. And it just get nicer and nicer.

The recipe is still the same as the last one we did. The main difference this time:

1. The dough is not pre-cooked;
2. After flattening the dough on the tart mould, sprinkle ground almonds over the base of the tart, followed by sugar;
3. Then you spread generously the blueberries, filling up the tart, and sprinkle more sugar;
4. Bake for 30 minutes or more, until the blueberries just start to wrinkle.

Walnut Tart and thoughts about getting dessert proportion right

I'm thought of being a wee bit philosophical today and get back to the roots of dessert.

A quick check on google shows many dictionaries defining dessert as the last course of a meal, normally a sweet dish.

Cuisine Net further explains that it came from the French word "desservir", meaning "to clear the table": "At a Medieval banquet, a table was laid with fantastic dishes, all of which were removed before the arrival of the last course. Dessert was originally quite light, and it was intended to clear the palate -- and the state of mind."

And so the French in Rémi says, we must always have dessert after every meal. Even if it's just a little cup of yoghurt.

What about the Chinese desserts? They are not just served at the end of meals, but also as snacks or with tea during the day.

Wikipedia's entry on Chinese desserts quite aptly classify them into biscuits, candies, rice-based snacks, jellies and soups. So some Chinese desserts are more suited for consumption as tea time snacks than as the last course of a meal.

But French or Chinese desserts, the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility still applies. A light dessert gives a pleasurable conclusion to a hearty meal. Too much of it spoils the state of mind and stomach.

Take the picture of an apple tart on the right by Rémi. He had it on a trip to California a year ago and swore that it tasted horrible. Not a surprise, he didn't finish the overly humongous pastry. And you don't order an apple tart to eat mostly pastry crust.

Just like the Chinese mooncake, to those who complain that it taste horribly sweet, they must have tried to eat the whole biscuit when the right way to eating it is at most a quarter slice with a cup of Chinese tea.

And if you see a fruit tart with super thick crust or too much custard filling, beware. More likely, the chef is trying to get away with having less fruits with more crust.

The Walnut Tart below comes from Camille's classic French cookbook. I had wanted to make walnut tart for a long time since trying it at the Bordeaux Bakery in Wellington. I have adjusted the quantity slightly to make the tart more nutty. And as the tart is quite hearty, a small slice per serving gives a more satisfactory conclusion to a meal.

Walnut and Honey Tart (Tarte au Miel et aux Noix)


about 200g walnuts (more if necessary)
150ml liquid cream
50g butter
50g brown sugar
100g honey (try to use a strongly flavoured honey, such as bush honey, mountain honey or Corsican honey)

Sweet pastry dough (pâte sucrée or pâte sablée)
50g white sugar
1 egg
125g melted unsalted butter
270g flour

To make the dough, mix sugar, egg, butter together. Stir hard with a spoon and add flour. As the egg mixture thickens to a dough, use your hands to knead into a smooth dough. Chill for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Press the pastry with your fingers over the base and sides of the greased tin. Poke all over with a fork.

Mix the butter with the sugar. It may be easier to allow the butter to soften sufficiently before you blend them together. Add the walnuts pieces. Follow by the honey and cream. Mix well. You may like to add more walnuts if you find filling too creamy. The idea is to cover the whole tart base with the nuts.

Spread walnut and honey filling on the tart. Recipe says bake for 40 minutes, but my nuts were burning after 20 minutes. So do watch out.

Serve when the tart has cooled.

The tart keeps well for a few days.

Tarte Tatin and ways to break your ceramic tart tin

We love tarts. So you can imagine us having tart tins of varying sizes. And the white ceramic ones are our favourite. They look nicer and tolerate the blade of the knife better.

Well, we are also old enough to know that they are fragile and break into a thousand pieces if we smash them on the floor. Still, in the last 6 months, we managed to break 3 of them. That's at a rate of one every 2 months!

Here's our three suggested ways to break your ceramic tart tin, without smashing it into a thousand pieces. If you do it correctly, it will just crack and break into 2 or 3 parts:

1. After unmoulding your tart straight from the oven, run the still very hot tin under cold water.

2. Put empty tin in a hot oven until it cracks.

3. Use the tin as a cooking pan and put it in direct contact with heat on the stove.


Despite having just mourned for our last broken tin, we still enjoyed the Tarte Tatin done by Rémi today. It is an upside down apple tart, a truly classic French dessert. Surprisingly, Camille's classic French cookbook doesn't have the recipe, so Rémi got the recipe from this website.

According to him, it's easy. Just don't use the ceramic tart tin to cook the caramel on the fire. And be generous with the amount of apple.

To serve, sprinkle cinnamon powder around the plate and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. But the truly purist way of eating it is to add nothing to it.

My first tart - Tomato and Olive

It's not a joke. Despite having posted so many tart and quiche recipes, I've not made the tart dough myself thus far. What you've seen (I mean the shell) were all done by Rémi.

So, last Friday, I surprised Rémi with my first tart (or rather quiche). I had wanted to cook a simple dinner in advance, so tart/quiche is one of the best option. And preparing the tart dough turned out to be pretty easy. Requires two additional step than crumble, that is, to gather all the crumbs together to knead into a dough (very fast), and to roll out.

The tomato and olive quiche (the recipe calls it a tart) comes from a newly acquired cookbook "Appetizers, Finger Food, Buffets and Parties", but the same publisher as my ultimate fish cookbook. Also same as my chocolate and coffee cookbook (I seem to be collecting the whole series, having another soup cookbook as well). It's recommended for picnics and buffets, and you can also make a rectangular one to make it easier to divide into portions.

And not surprisingly, tomatoes and black olives go well together.

Tomato and Black Olive Quiche
serves two

half pâte brisée tart dough (I froze the other half and uses a small tart tin)
1 egg, beaten
100ml milk
1 tbsp fresh basil (or parsley)
2 plum tomatoes
2 tbsp cheese, into small cubes (I used feta, but would have loved to try with blue cheese or camembert)
olives, pitted
salt and ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

Prepare tart dough. Roll onto prepared tin and poke with fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked.

To make the filling, beat eggs with milk, seasoning and herbs. Slice tomatoes and olives. Add to the cooked tart and pour over the egg mixture.

Bake in oven for about 40 minutes, until the filling is golden and just firm.

Strawberry Tart with Crème Pâtissière

Strawberry season certainly rocks. With this deliciously seductive fruit in season in New Zealand now, we can't resist buying one pack after another, especially when they look so lusciously sweet and affordable. And of course, we have no more excuse not to make some strawberry dessert.

In Singapore, strawberries are not only pricey, they are also seldom sweet, being all imported and probably harvested before they are ready to be eaten to endure the long journey.

Originally torn between making a Strawberry Tart or a Strawberry Charlotte, Rémi couldn't wait to sink his mouth into his dessert and opted to make a tart (you need to chill a charlotte for at least a few hours).

French Pastry Cream (Crème Pâtissière) is used to line the sweet tart. To Rémi, the difference between a good pastry and a lousy pastry can be judged by the amount of cream used in the tart. Stingy pastry makers who are out to cut cost tend to use more cream than fruits.

Our cream recipe comes from Camille's classic French cookbook again. In her dessert section, she carries several types of dessert cream and sauces, including Crème Chantilly, Crème Anglaise, Coulis de Fruits Rouges, Sauce au Chocolat and Sauce au Caramel au Beurre Salé. Well, we shall see if we will try each and everyone of them.

French Pastry Cream (Crème Pâtissière)
makes slightly more than one tart

1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
15g flour
15g corn flour
65g sugar
25ml milk
vanilla essence

Bring milk with vanilla essence to boil, and let it stand for 10 minutes.

Whip the egg and yolk with the sugar until it has double in size and paled in colour. Then add the flour and corn flour, and add the warm milk gradually while continuing to whisk.

Put back onto fire and let the mixture thickened while beating continuously and strongly so that the cream does not stick to the bottom of the pot. Remove from heat and continue to whisk for 1 minute.


Strawberry Tart
Serves 4

1 sweet pastry dough (pâte sucrée)
enough strawberries to pack the size of your tart
strawberry jam

Make the sweet tart dough. Bake at preheated oven at 200C for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Make one portion of crème pâtissière. Spread on the cooked tart. Halved the strawberries and line them on top of the cream.

Dilute the jam lightly with some water and use it as a glaze over the strawberries. Chill before serving.

Getting Apple Tart right

For the past few years, finding the key steps to making the simple Apple Tart seems as elusive as understanding a woman having PMS. We tried so many times with different types of apples, we tried pre-cooking the tart dough. We also consulted at least two French mothers who are good at it (this being a very traditional, typically French dessert), and who in turn told us to simply put sliced apples on top of the raw dough and bake it. To them, it's as straightforward as frying an omelette, there's just no science behind it to help you get it right.

Well, out of the say 6-10 times we made the apple tart, we probably only got it right 1-2 times. Either the tart base wasn't cooked well enough, or the apples too dried out, or both. And we couldn't understand why it was successful on those rare occasions. Luck? Maybe.

Last night, we may have found the answer. That is to squeeze as much apples as you could into the tart, so that they will ooze out just enough juices for the perfect apple tart. We had been too stingy with apples before, perhaps.

Apple Tart
1 tart dough (Pâte brisée)
at least 4 apples
sugar
cinnamon powder

Preheat oven at 180C.

Roll out tart dough. Line on a prepared tart tin. Spread apple slices onto the tart, packing as tightly as possible, and into nice patterns if you like.

Drizzle sugar (amount according to how much of a sweet tooth you are) and sprinkle cinnamon powder over.

Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Sweet and Sour Rhubarb Tart

Interestingly, I started reading up about this Chinese medicinal plant because of this French dessert. First tasted Rhubarb tart in France, would only say that it left an impression on me due to its sour taste.

It's curious who would first think of cooking this sour vegetable as a sweet dessert, especially as it has been used as laxative for over 2,000 years and has poisonous leaves.

Known as 大黄, large doses of the Chinese rhubarb is used to treat constipation, while small does amazingly have the opposite effect of treating diarrhea. I can imagine the word 大黄 being inscribed on every traditional Chinese medicine cupboard but I'm not sure if it is ever used in Chinese cooking.

The garden version used here is supposedly much less potent in terms of causing toilet visits, but I wouldn't imagine binging on rhubarb tart now that I know its medicinal wonders. Only the stems are used, and it looks somewhat like celery stem dyed red to me.

Rhubarb Tart
serves 6

1 tart dough (pâte brisée)
1 kg of rhubarb
50g sliced almonds
2 tablespoons of semolina flour
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
6 tablespoons of sugar

Flatten the dough and line onto a prepared tart tin. Keep in freezer for 30 minutes.

Pre-heat oven at 180C. Peel the rhubarbs and rinse them. Dice.

Pour half the quantity of sugar onto the tart base, then sprinkle with almonds and top with flour. Lay rhubarb all over.

Top with remaining sugar and bake for 45 minutes.

Serve warm or cold.

Tricks from Rémi (well, as with most tarts, I didn't cook this, especially since rhubarbs are foreign to me until now):
-------
- As rhubarb is sour, be more generous with sugar if you have less tolerance for sour taste.
- Be generous with the quantity of rhubarb, it must be tightly packed on the tart to prevent the rhubarb from drying out. Rhubarbs are supposed to release juice when cooked, giving rise to a juicy tart. Quantity of rhubarb could have increased for the picture shown above (our rhubarb in stock didn't add up to 1kg, as indicated in recipe). Also, our rhubarb was one week old, so a bit dried out too.

Recipe comes from Les Classiques de Camille. Watch out for more French classics from her.

The moon-shaped Blueberry Tart

One advantage of working in a big media company (a.k.a. SPH) is you get to try all the best mooncakes in town everyday during the season.

In the newsroom, all the restaurants/hotels/PRs will send you the best to either get you to write about it or get in your good books. So, even if you're a nobody journalist covering crime and passion, you'll still get to taste the mooncakes given to that star columnist or ever so important editor, as most are graciously donated to the snacking corner for all to enjoy. Then, as I moved to the next department doing events and branding, mooncakes came from suppliers and contractors, though you also became the "givers".

So, 2008 marks my first mooncake deprived Mid-Autumn Festival.

And since my taste for mooncake has become atas, I am not very adventurous when it comes to buying mooncakes here in Welly.

Now, what has mooncakes got to do with Blueberry Tart?

Well, being moon-shaped, as most tarts are, it became our substitute for mooncake on that moon-lit evening.

We had a very yummy local dinner of bak kut teh, ginger chicken and stir fried veg with a group of Singaporean friends. Rémi's responsibility was the dessert, while mine was simply to eat.

Side-track a bit here, you have to be very atas to make blueberry tart in Singapore, because they are so expensive. Maybe $20 for a very small pack? We paid $15 for a 1kg frozen pack here.

Blueberry Tart
serves 6

Sweet dough (pâte sucrée) - it's even easier than the salty tart dough
50g white sugar
1 egg
125g melted unsalted butter
270g flour

500g blueberry
50g sugar
icing sugar (optional)

To make the dough, mix sugar, egg, butter together. Add flour and chill for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C.

Press the pastry with your fingers over the base and sides of the prepared tin. Prick all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes.

For the filling, mix blueberries with sugar. Pour over the cooked pastry and sprinkle icing sugar over it for a glossy look (we didn't have icing sugar to do this).

Bake at reduced temperature of 180C for about 10-15 minutes.

*sweet pastry recipe from Christelle Le Ru's Simply Irresistible French Desserts.

It's Lemon tart now

After the orgy of olive oil, let's move on to butter!

This was freshly done last night, and we made 4 doughs at one go, plus the butter necessary for the lemon filling, we used up 350g of butter. Good that the kiwis sell their butter in 500g block here.

There are 2 different types of tart base in Remi's world of French cooking -- Pâte brisée for savoury dishes, which is also used in the classic French Apple Tart; and Pâte sucrée, which is sweet and has a more buttery/crumbly texture and is used in Strawberry Tart and the like.

We can't agree which tart base we should use for our lemon tart this time (as we have made this many times, and our notes didn't precisely specify and we may have tried both). So we agree to disagree by concluding that both work well, and we used Pâte brisée for yesterday's Lemon Tart, so that we can keep the remaining doughs for our next quiche.

And a word on the lemons we used: it came from our friends B&Z's garden. According to B, a lemon tree bears more than 2000 fruits a year. I want my own lemon tree!


Lemon Tart
1 dough
2 lemons (use 3 if your lemons are small or if you prefer a more tangy flavour) - for both its zest and juice
3 eggs
100g sugar
100g butter

Pre-cook dough in a preheated oven at 200C.

Melt down butter.

Mix melted butter, sugar and lemon juice and zest. Stir strongly together.

Pour on the cooked crust and bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

More tarts

Onion lovers: here's a wonderful main course of onions!

I know friends who do not like onions, garlic, parsley, olive, anchovy...the list goes on. But we love almost all kinds of food that comes with a strong taste, so if you have a chance to try out our cooking, it pays to let us know your dislikes. Otherwise, if you hate onions, there's no way you can remove the onions to the side of your plate in this dish

We found this Onion and Olive Tart on an Olive cookbook by Tess Mallos. Extremely oily, as you basically simmer the onions in extra virgin olive oil. hmmmm....makes it so soft and juicy (and of course fat). And the leftover tart keeps well overnight and taste just as good (or even better) for our lunch the next day. I've halved the original quantity so that it feeds about 2-3 persons.

Onion and Olive Tart
Anchovy (optional, enough to spread around your tart - thankfully for us, anchovy is surprisingly more affordable in NZ)
4-5 pitted black olives, halved
1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Topping
3-4 onions, thinly sliced
30ml olive oil (it's very sinful, so adjust according to your conscience)
1/2 bay leaf (we didn't have bay leaf first time we cook this, works well)
2 cloves garlic
chopped thyme
chopped rosemary
salt and black pepper to taste

1 tart base as in previous post


Make the pastry base first.

To make the topping, combine the onion slices, oil and bay leaf in a wide saucepan. Cover and cook over low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft but not browned. Add all other ingredients and cook uncovered over slightly increased heat for about 10 minutes until moisture has evaporated. Remove from heat and discard bay leave and cool.

Preheat oven at 200C. Cook tart base for about 15 minutes. Reduced heat to 180C.

Spread the cooled topping over cooked tart base. Top with anchovy and olive halves in a fancy pattern if you like. Brush with (more) oil and return to bake for 25 minutes until cooked.

Picture above shows the tart in pre-cooked state, so don't be afraid to brown the onions a bit.

Of tarts and quiches

These are typically French quick and easy dishes. Not the type of Haute elaborate fine cuisine you find in those super expensive restaurant, where the plates are much larger than the food within. But rather, what you would typically find in a French mom's oven.

To speed up our infamously slow cooking process, we are now used to making 2-4 tart bases at one go, and freeze the remaining ones. So anytime we feel like having a tart or quiche, the base is already done. Just need to defreeze for 1 hour and roll it out. Voilah!

Basic Dough (Pâte brisée)
250g plain flour
125g unsalted butter
pinch of salt
80ml water

Preheat oven at 180C.

Mix flour and butter using your fingertips. Add water slowly.

Knead gently into a dough, do not over knead.

Keep in fridge for 30 minutes.

Roll out thinly on a floured board (thin crust is nicer) and line on a prepared tart tin. Using a fork, poke holes around the base and cook the base for 15-20 minutes (or until cooked and lightly brown).

The above quantity is generally enough for two 20cm tarts. So we like to keep half of the dough for our next cooking.

What goes into the tart?

To get inspiration, check out supermarkets/cafes on what they have. That's what we did while grocery shopping. And you get your key ingredients ready at the same time.

Or, if you're a tomato lover like us, who always have a ready supply of tomatoes in your fridge, try the super easy and yummy Tomato Tart. Spread Dijon Mustard (not the English types, but those with a lot of visible seeds gives extra good taste). Cover with tomato slices. Spread more mustard over the tomatoes, sprinkle with cheese (optional) or basil leaves (optional) and bake for 20 minutes at 200C.


Quiche of Spinach + Onions + Feta

1/2 pack of fresh spinach
1 onion, diced
bacon (optional, quantity as much as you like)
Feta cheese (also according to taste)
1 tsp chopped parsley

2 eggs
80ml cream
150ml milk
salt and pepper

Fry onions with some olive oil. Add spinach and bacon and cook until spinach is wilted.

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs, milk and cream together. Add seasoning and cheese and the rest of ingredients.

Pour into the pre-cook tart base and bake at 200C for about 20 minutes or until the quiche is golden brown.