Category Archives: mushrooms

Beet and kidney (bean) pies

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Beet and kidney bean pie

Beet and kidney bean pie

It’s take your child to work day. The boys are at the shop with David, hopefully not routering their arms or circular sawing their fingers. Take your child to work day. It’s a little odd, when you stop to think about it, which for better or for worse I’ve just done. It seems to imply a certain neatness and regularity to the world that just doesn’t exist, as I see the world. Does every parent have a safe, child-friendly job? Does every parent have bosses and co-workers that will put up with an infestation of restless children? Does every parent have a job they can work at productively whilst entertaining a bored and or curious tyke? Does every parent have a job during school hours? Maybe they’re chefs or professors or rock stars or stage actors, and they work at night. Does every parent have a job at all? 399919_10200595609406883_2047603223_nI’ve just read that the day was invented by Gloria Steinem as Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and was intended to give girls a sense of possibility and purpose. This makes it seem even odder to me, almost as if it was subversively designed to illustrate the messiness of the world. How many children are bundled off to work with their fathers, because their mothers don’t work during the week because they’re home with children. Maybe they work at night or on the weekend so that they can be there to pick up their children after school. Maybe they have a job but its the kind of job many women have at some point in their lives–cooking or cleaning or caring for someone else’s children, and, strangely, this isn’t the kind of job you’d like to share with your own child. Maybe, like many women, you’re not treated with respect at your job, you’re not treated as an equal. A lot of things have changed, a lot of things have not. Of course, all of this stopping-to-think-about-it has included some thoughts on my own life, my own work, my own ideas of success or failure and how they don’t quite fit into those of the rest of the world. Any thing you do is considered work if somebody pays you to do it. And the more they pay you, the more successful you are at your job. I’ve been doing a bit of pastry cheffing, and yesterday I made a cake for a restaurant. If the boys had stayed home and helped me with that, they would have been at work with me (and we would have had fun!). Today, I don’t have any commissions for cake, so if the boys stayed home from school and baked a cake with me, we’d be goofing off (and we’d still have fun!). If I sit around writing or cooking or conspiring to make a movie, I’m a shiftless slacker who should go out and get a real job (I know, I know…). If somebody pays me to do those things, I’m a person who has followed my dreams to find success (although I probably still can’t afford health insurance.) Everything is a little different looked at through the prism of parenthood. What seems brave and valuable when you’re a single person with only yourself to care for, seems irresponsible once you have children. We have our own small business. We work seven days a week, one way or another, and the truth is that the boys spend all weekend every weekend at work with David, watching him watch the store while I wait tables. This is life as they know it. We don’t have days off or weekends or paid vacations, and we still can’t afford health insurance. And all summer when they knock about the house with me, cleaning and cooking and keeping themselves happy and creative, waiting impatiently while I finish writing some dumb thing so we can go to the creek, they’re at work with me, whether they know it or not. It’s messy, it doesn’t fit into any tidy pattern of employment, but I think they’re okay with it. I think they’re proud of us, and have a sense of possibility and purpose. I think they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Beet and kidney bean pie

Beet and kidney bean pie

Beet and kidney bean pie! It’s ruddy! This was inspired, of course, by beef and kidney pie, or steak and kidney pie. It does have a certain meaty quality to it. It’s roasted beets and mushrooms combined with kidney beans in a saucy sauce of tamari, sage, rosemary, thyme and allspice. If you use vegetable shortening instead of butter in the crust, this would be vegan.

Here’s King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band with Workingman’s Blues.

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Pizza with baby spinach, rosemary-roasted mushrooms and brie

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Roasted mushroom, spinach and brie pizza

Roasted mushroom, spinach and brie pizza

I find it very beautiful and moving that people make connections–not just that we’re able to, but that we need to. We connect little bits of fact to make stories, because it helps us to understand and to share those little bits of fact. When an event occurs that’s hard for us to understand or explain, we find ways to connect ourselves to it, to make sense of it through our experiences. We do this almost without thinking, it’s our first reaction. And our second is to share those connections, to tell others about them, to talk and talk and try to understand. We’ll say, “I’ve lived in that place,” “I knew that person,” “I knew someone that knew that person.” We’ll make connections to other similar events that we’ve lived through, that we’ve survived. It’s tempting, in a less generous or a myopically hypocritical moment, to say, “It’s not about you!” But, of course, it is about you, whoever you may be. It’s about all of us. It’s our way to lend our strength to strangers we may never meet, to suffer with the sufferers and explain the inexplicable. It’s our way to give hope for a better time after a strange, sad time. It’s our way to connect ourselves not just to events but to people, our way to extend our sense of family, to create new bonds of responsibility and affection through compassion and empathy. It’s probably facile and foolish to say it, but it seems that if we could expand these connections to reach beyond similarities of geography or experience, if we could make a larger more universal connection–if we could sympathize with somebody not because we lived in the same place but because she, too, has a daughter, or is a daughter, or is human, or, simply, is alive–if we could do this then we would have fewer of these incomprehensible events to explain, and fewer people to mourn.

So this is what I’ve been thinking all morning, as I kneaded dough and rolled out dough and shaped quite a few tarts. Baking as comfort and therapy! Over the weekend we made some pizzas. I wanted to make something the boys liked to eat, that they’d actually look forward to, and pizza never fails. I made the dough before I went to work, and then when I came home we made all the toppings. The dough rose for quite a few hours, this way, but it turned out extra crispy! This makes two big cookie-tray-sized pizzas. I made one plain, with just sauce and cheese, and one fancy, with spinach and musrhooms and brie. I’ve given the toppings in amounts here to make two fancy pizzas, but do as you like! That’s the beauty of pizza!

Here’s Elmore James with It Hurts Me Too. One of the best songs ever ever ever.

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Double crusted pie with roasted mushrooms, french lentils and spinach: The ur Ordinary pie

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Ordinary pie

Ordinary pie

It’s national pie day! Who knew? Not me. And yet, strangely, I made a big delicious pie, only last night. And not just any pie, but the ur Ordinary pie, the pie that started it all. I feel like the kitchen gods have left me, lately. They’ve fled the city with their suitcases in hand, not stopping to say goodbye or leave a forwarding address. It’s not just that things haven’t been working out culinarily (they haven’t), it’s not just that things I’ve made before aren’t turning out the way they did last time (they aren’t), it’s that I’m not in the mood. I still want to cook and eat, but I feel sort of foolish and despondent about it. I’ve lost some part of my appetite that’s hard to define. I know it doesn’t really matter – it’s just a dinner or a batch of cookies, there will be plenty other meals, thousands of other cookies, but it doesn’t help that it doesn’t matter. That’s part of the problem! It’s so easy to forget about the importance of ordinary tasks, about the extraordinariness of doing them, not well, but with a full heart. It takes an effort to make these tasks, these inherently necessary and essential tasks, significant as well. I haven’t had the energy to do that, lately, so I thought I’d start at the beginning. Go back to the comfort of making the first thing that gave me deep pleasure to invent and to share. Malcolm and Isaac are crazy, creative artists, but they both have things they draw over and over, that they return to and reinvent from time to time. Little figures, eccentric characters, that show up frequently in their work. They feel good about having invented these characters, they know they can draw them, and it seems to give them confidence to go back and revisit – from that safe place, they can venture off into unknown realms. I would imagine for a musician trying to learn something new, it would be heartening to go back and play the first piece you knew well, the first piece that made you feel confident enough to share with an audience. And so it is with this pie. In making it I remembered the joy of playing with dough, of combining flavors and textures. In serving it to an appreciative audience, I remembered the pleasure of sharing something I’m happy to have made. It’s not much, it’s just a meal, I know it’s trivial in the broad scheme of things. We have to eat, we have to feed our children. I’m starting to remember again why that matters.

Mushroom and fench lentil pie

Mushroom and fench lentil pie

This pie has some of my favorite flavors! The crust is simple, but there’s lots of pepper in it. It has french lentils, which I love.
french lentils

french lentils

And roasted mushrooms, which I also love. I combine these flavors a lot, because they’re my favorites, but this is them in one big package.
roasted mushrooms

roasted mushrooms


Here’s Train to Chicago, by Drink Me, which happens to be the only song I can play on the guitar and sing all the way through.
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Hazelnut sage cracker fans stacked with roasted mushrooms, french lentils and chard

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Hazelnut cracker stacker

Hazelnut cracker stacker

Isaac gave me a card for valentine’s day. It’s got a three-dimensional heart made of red tissue paper flowers, and it says “my heart belongs to you.” Sweet. A fairly traditional valentine’s day sentiment. Nicely made card. It undid me! I get weepy when I think about it! The thought of my Isaac’s heart – so sweet and generous, odd and contrary, so singularly Isaac – the thought that it’s mine, at least in part, threw me for a loop. The gift and the responsibility of being loved by both my boys is almost overwhelming, if I stop to think about it, and my lovely card made me do just that. I like the word, “unmanned.” It’s an old-fashioned term, I know, but I like to think about men striving to be manly, working to be strong and just and mature. And I like the idea that, in an instant, some emotional force can dissolve all of that, and leave him feeling like a boy, raw and bewildered. Sometimes I feel “unwomanned.” I don’t walk through the world thinking about being a woman or a mother. Honestly, despite my advanced and advancing years, I don’t really feel old enough, most of the time. Being a mother is a fairly common pastime. Everyone in the world has one. But when you take a moment to consider motherhood, it’s awesome, it’s terrifying, it’s wonderful. Isaac’s heart belongs to me, and I made that heart! And I’m responsible for keeping him healthy, and feeding him good foods that will help that heart to grow. I work to be strong and just and mature – to be worthy of the boys’ love; to be a good example for them; to give them some core of conviction and kindness. But sometimes it feels as though all of that falls away in a moment – not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me feel more awake, more keenly aware of my power and privilege in being important to the boys. Last summer Isaac had an echocardiogram. I sat with him for an hour in a darkened room, while we watched the workings of each inch of his beautiful beating heart. It was almost too much information. I felt undone, but I had to be collected when the lights came on – I had to listen attentively, ask relevant questions, reassure Isaac, and answer his sweet anxious worries. It’s such a strange world! We all walk around each day with our hearts working so inexplicably and so persistently, and with those hearts we love people, so inexplicably and so fervently. And we can’t even think about it, or we’d be so overwhelmed we’d never get out of bed!

Hazelnut crackers stacked with chard and roasted mushrooms

Hazelnut crackers stacked with chard and roasted mushrooms

Last night, for valentine’s day, we took some time off. I made a special, strange meal. We ate together and talked together, and we let everything slide. We missed a basketball game and a meeting. We cuddled on the couch and watched a movie, and decided to skip the showers and the evening reading. It feels good to be irresponsible, some times! And, guess what? I’m a mother, so if I say it’s okay, it’s okay!! It was a really nice night. And the dinner was strange! I wanted to make something a little fancy, and less pedestrian than my usual fare. So I made some large fan-shaped crispy crackers, flavored with sage and smoked paprika, and crunchy with hazelnuts. I piled these with layers of sauteed chard, roasted mushroom & french lentil puree, cheese, and whole, small roasted mushrooms. It was very fun to make, and very fun to eat, too! I thought all of the flavors and textures were nice, altogether. I used my 8-ish inch tart pan ring to cut the dough into fluted circles, and then I cut those into quarters. You could use a medium-sized bowl with a thin edge. Or just cut it freehand with a knife. Or make circles instead of fans, by cutting with a large glass. Whatever, man!

Here’s My Heart, by Louis Armstrong. It’s bright and cheerful and serious and thoughtful at the same time, like my Isaac.
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Roasted mushroom “steaks” with walnut black truffle sauce

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Mushroom steaks

Mushroom steaks

I’ve been thinking a lot about competition, lately. Mostly from watching my boys play basketball, I guess. I want them to do well, I want them to want to do well, I want them to care, but I don’t want them to be overly aggressive or mean about it. I don’t want them to think only about winning, at the expense of Love of the Game and all of that. I don’t want them, like MacBeth to be ambitious just because they’re ambitious, “I have no spur/ To prick the sides of my intent, but only/ Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/ And falls on the other.” We all know that doesn’t end well! But I don’t want them to be afraid try! I don’t want them to feel discouraged because they’re scared they might not do well, or because they’re my sons and it’s contagious. When I see Malcolm get the ball on the court, I have a little panicky voice in my head saying “get rid of it! get rid of it!” because that’s how I would feel. But I don’t want him to feel that way! I want him to make a brilliant team player-y pass or run gracefully and confidently to the basket and make a beautiful lay-up. I’m conflicted about competition! I’m ambivalent about ambition! And I actually find it a little frightening to think about how everything seems to be a competition. School, work, games, everything. You can only do well at the expense of others. You can only succeed if others fail. That doesn’t feel good. When you submit a film to a festival it’s not about sharing a lovingly created work of art and watching other people’s lovingly created works of art. You’re judged when you submit it, and once you get in, you’re judged again! I think it’s no secret that anything created just for the sake of winning a competition (any competition – the race for money, the race for popularity, the race for fame) is not going to be as soulful, substantial or honest as it could be. I’ve never responded well to this kind of pressure, because I’m a contrary curmudgeon. I went to an extremely competitive high school, and it didn’t make me want to do better than everybody else, it made me want to be a rebel and stop trying. But I don’t wish that for my boys. I hope they’ll be able to do well at everything – do their absolute best – and I hope they’ll be able to achieve everything they want. And I hope that they’ll be able to do all this without wishing that others do badly. I hope they’ll love what they do with a passion, and pursue it with the purity of kindness and generosity.

So this week’s Sunday collaborative playlist is about competition, ambition, or the lack thereof. We’ve got songs like Toots and the Maytals’ journalistic Desmond Dekker came First, which tells how everybody placed in the intensified festival. Songs like Perhaps Vampire’s is a bit Strong by the Arctic Monkeys bemoaning the fact that everybody wants them to fail, and songs like Ken Parker’s Grooving Out on Life, about sitting aside from it all…

    I get my kicks from watching people
    Running too and fro
    And if you ask them where they’re going
    Half of they don’t know
    They`re the ones who think I’m crazy
    ‘Cause they don’t realize
    That I’m just groovin’, oh, groovin’
    Grooving out on life

And, finally, to the food! Why it’s the best meal anybody has made every and way better than everybody else’s!! I’m joking, of course, but it was very good! I wanted to make something special with my black truffle butter, so I decided to make these mushroom and walnut “steaks.” They might actually be closer to a sort of vegetarian meatloaf, or an old-fashioned nut roast. But I sliced them thick and lightly fried them in olive oil, and they’re substantial and satisfying, crispy out, tender in. The sauce is mostly walnuts, white wine and truffle butter. If you don’t have truffle butter, you could make the same sauce with some garlic and shallots. Or just serve these with a simple tomato sauce, or any sauce you like, and it would be just as good.

mushroom steaks with walnut sauce

mushroom steaks with walnut sauce

Here’s your collaborative playlist. It’s a pretty broad topic, so have fun! And feel free to add anything you like!
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Collards, roasted mushroom and pecan pie with a spicy smoky crust

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Collard pecan pie

Collard pecan pie

Malcolm came home from school yesterday and lay on the couch and wept. I asked him if something upsetting had happened, and he said, no, he was just tired, and he really wanted some pineapple. We’d bought a pineapple on Monday, and I kept telling him it wasn’t ripe, because, honestly, I can never tell! The last time we bought one I prudently waited until it was moldy and disintegrating, just to be sure. So I gave him a dish of pineapple, and I got myself a glass of wine, and he got a blanket, and we cuddled on the couch and watched a dumb show about Merlin. And then snow began to fall, thick and fast – the prettiest snow I’ve ever seen. It sparkled! It looked like crystals falling from the sky and forming an improbably light, even blanket on the ground. And when David came home we went out to dinner. We almost never go out to dinner, just the four of us, maybe twice a year. It’s so nice when we do! I felt so happy being with my family, in our little booth, eating delicious and unexpected food. We always bring a blank book when we go out – the same book each time, and we all take turns drawing in it. We have quite a collection of crazy pictures, and each small sketch transports us back to the good meal we had and the good talks we had. Last night we talked about the things that might have been worrying Malcolm. We talked about a game his whole class plays, and he said that by the end everybody is mad at each other because they’re competing, and that doesn’t feel good. He leaned up against me. Both boys ate with good appetites, with glee, and Malcolm said, “I love food!” And, of course, I love that he loves food. We talked about all the places we’ll travel, when we’ve got the time and money. We talked about taking a plane somewhere with no plans, and just making it up as we go along. Finding a place to stay, finding a lovely restaurant, with little booths, where we can eat strange and wonderful food, and draw in our book, and talk. And then we drove home through a glittering white world to our old warm house. A good night!
Isaac's beautiful landscape from our restaurant book

Isaac’s beautiful landscape from our restaurant book

I love collard greens. I love their substantial texture, and their mildly assertive taste. I like to pair them with smoky crispy things. I thought of the crust in this as being almost like bacon – crunchy and smoky with smoked paprika. The pecans added a nice crunch, and the roasted mushrooms brought their lovely savory, meaty flavor.

Here’s Fox in the Snow by Belle and Sebastian.

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Warm salad with roasted mushrooms and tiny roasted potatoes and tarragon-white wine dressing

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salad-isaacIsn’t it funny how big events seem to go so quickly in other people’s lives? They fly by in bright fleeting flashes of significant moments. You hear somebody is pregnant, and next you know they have a baby. None of the seemingly endless slow growth and change, the day-in-and-day-out joy and discomfort and bewilderment. To hear about somebody else’s trip abroad is planning, postcards, and stories when they get home; they’re back before you knew they were gone. They talk of going to college, you blink, and they have a degree and a job. I suppose our memories of our own lives are like this as well. You never remember the hard work and the tedium, the work to raise each day above the tedious. You don’t remember the hours of sitting and waiting, between events, soaked in anticipation or recollection. When my boys were little I was sure I would remember every single moment, every gurgle and wave of the chubby little fist. Of course I don’t! They’re all mixed together in a sleep-deprived slurry of good intentions. I mostly remember the moments we photographed, which is why we take photographs, after all. I love this quote about Rupert Brooke, “He was magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life.” Not me! I’m ready! This is one test I’m completely prepared for! I love the littleness of each day, the petty pace of each tomorrow! Because, honestly, that pace is picking up, it’s not creeping any more, it’s flying, and I’m limping after it, trying to catch up. I want something big to work towards, of course, but thank god for the small things to look forward to each day. The cup of coffee, the making of a meal, the eating of a meal, reading with the boys, Malcolm’s happy walk, Clio’s sweet grabby paws, David putting his arm around me in the middle of the night, Isaac’s lovely silly songs, walks to school and home again, Clio leaping at us with frantic kisses every single time we walk in the door, inevitable spring, day after day, season after season, year after year. I used to wish time away a lot when I was younger. I was so eager to get on to the next thing, and I’d wish away large chunks of days and weeks. I was thinking the other day that I don’t do that any more; there aren’t enough hours in the day for all of the foolish little things I want to get done. Where am I going with this? I don’t know!! Another incoherent ramble brought to your by your friends at The Ordinary. It’s a drizzly day, is all, and it’s January, and that’s the kind of mood I’m in!

mushroom-potato-saladWe’ve decided to eat mostly vegetables for a few weeks. I mean, we always eat mostly vegetables, because we’re vegetarians, but we’ve decided not to combine them with pastry and, you know, all that stuff, but to make them the stars of the show. So… soups and stews and warm salads like this one. This was delicious! So tasty that I couldn’t save any to photograph prettily the next day. It involves a bed of baby spinach and arugula topped with tiny roasted potatoes, crispy roasted mushrooms, crunchy walnuts, smoky smoked gouda, and a dressing of tarragon, shallots, garlic and white wine. Crunchy, soft, warm, cool, Yum!

Here’s Everyday by Yo La Tengo.
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Mushroom, cabbage, black beans and tamari

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Cabbage, mushrooms, and black beans

Cabbages always make me think of the Vittorio DeSica film Miracolo a Milano. De Sica is better known for his very realistic films – Bicycle Thief and Sciuscia, which show ordinary people in day-to-day situations which become beautiful and incredibly important when De Sica films them. Miracolo a Milano is literally a departure. It’s about ordinary people, about poor people, but it’s a fable, it’s unabashedly magical and fantastical. Toto is found in a cabbage patch, he’s taken in by a kind older woman, when she dies he’s sent to an orphanage, but she’s given him a magical dove. He winds up in a shantytown, and when oil is discovered in the shantytown, greedy capitalists try to send the squatters to prison. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I won’t tell you how they rise above all that! The film is full of kindness, grace, and sweetness, but it’s also sharp, clever, funny and bitingly satirical.

Here’s one of my favorite scenes…

We’ve gotten a lot of cabbage from our CSA lately. Here’s one of the ways I prepared it. It’s loosely modeled on MooShoo vegetable, but made a bit more substantial by the addition of black beans. Very simple and quick to make, very tasty. We ate it with rice and tortillas.

Here’s The Jackson Sisters with I Believe in Miracles.
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Walnut, roasted mushroom and french lentil soup

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Walnut, roasted mushroom, french lentil soup

We’re going to try something new, here at The Ordinary. In my imagination, actual ordinaries, in which people ate meals hundreds of years ago, had newspapers lying around the tables for patrons to read as they ate. People frequented the ordinaries as they travelled, and they shared tables with strangers. I imagine that they caught up on the news of the day as they paused in their travels, and they engaged in heated discussions about the news with their tablemates. Maybe they enjoyed a serial story in one of the newspapers and looked forward to reading the next installment at their next port of call – combining the pleasures of a warm fire, nourishing food, and a good read. At least that’s how I imagine it! So I’m going to try posting a serial story, right here in the virtual pages of The Ordinary. It’s actually a story I started some time ago, and that I got stalled on. So part of the motivation is that week-to-week, I’ll keep writing. It was inspired by the story of Florence Nightingale and her pet owl Athena, but it’s not really about them. It’s a story I would have liked when I was little, but I think I’d still like to read it now. It’s about every kind of Claire-y thing…secret pockets, boxes with little bottles in them, ship journeys, warm comforting food on cold days. My plan is to post a few pages every week, after the jump. Feel free to skip to the recipe, if you like!

The recipe for today’s installment is one of the better soups I’ve ever made! I love roasted mushrooms, I love french lentils, I love them together, but I’ve never combined them quite like this. I pureed the mushrooms with walnuts to make a lovely savory, meaty sort of bisque, with sage and rosemary, and I added the lentils and their broth just before serving.

Here’s A Wee Bird Cam’ Tae My Apron by Jean Redpath.

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French lentil, roasted mushroom tart with savory almond topping

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French lentil mushroom tart

I feel strangely excited, and of course I’m going to tell you why. It has to do with the election. Wait! Wait! Don’t tune out! I’m not going to tell you about my humble beginnings and how I love America more than anybody else does, and I’m not going to ask for a small donation. It’s a little hard to articulate, but I feel genuinely hopeful about this. It seems to me that, in some way, the needs of the people – the very human needs of all the people – is shaping the rhetoric of the election in a way that I don’t remember happening before on this level. (Of course that might be because my memory is full of holes and I’m politically dumb as a bag of flour.) Feminists have talked for decades about the personal being political, which is an idea that I embrace. This election cycle, (as they call it, which also makes it seem human and part of nature, somehow) it seems as though all of the politicians are struggling to connect with us by making the political personal. Maybe it’s the healthcare debate. Whatever your feelings on the subject, I think everybody agrees that healthcare is about us at our most human and most vulnerable. Of course it’s also about insurance companies and corporations, but at its most crucial, it’s about our life and our death, our bodies and our well-being. I think it’s hard not to become emotional when we consider this issue, which makes it difficult to discuss rationally, perhaps, but it’s important for us to learn this form of discourse – to learn to talk about personal emotional subjects. Maybe it’s because times have been so hard for all of us. We’re all hurting, and it makes us more insular, for better or for worse. We’re anxious about our homes, and our ability to keep them. We’re thinking about the food we put on our table. And this election is about women. We’re told over and over that the women are going to decide this election, and that’s forced a (sometimes uncomfortable) discussion about women’s bodies, and women’s work, and the value of that work. Of course, everything’s intimately connected. The “serious” issues of war, taxes, foreign policy – they’re all ultimately personal, they’re about our daily lives, our loves, our families, the chance to follow the path to old age that we all travel together. I always have this feeling, when I listen to politicians talk, that there’s a truth and sense that they can’t tell us with their words, that we hear anyway. Sometimes they try to hide it – when they tell us we need to go to war, with a barrage of words and falsified facts, I feel like most people understand the truth anyway – we know their motives. This year I feel the sense is closer to the surface under the muddle of words – the sense that we’re all in it together, and we’ll learn a way to talk about that.

Since the food we put on our table is an important issue, i’m going to tell you about this handsome tart! It’s actually quite simple. It’s a standard flaky pate brisee crust, with rosemary and black pepper added for deliciousness. On top of that we have a layer of french lentils sauteed in port wine and balsamic vinegar. Lentils might seem like an odd ingredient in a tart, but they add real substance and texture, and their lovely meaty flavor. And the mushrooms are chopped chunkily and roasted, so that when the savory almond custard is baked all around them, it’s almost like a savory clafouti or toad-in-the-hole. If I do say so myself, and I do, the whole thing turned out super-tasty. David liked it a lot, and said it’s a “birthday meal.”

Here’s Women’s Realm by Belle and Sebastian

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