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Chard & raisin tarts with almond topping

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chard, raisin and almond tarts

Last night was something of a momentous occasion here at the test kitchens of The Ordinary. If you’re following along at home, you may remember that I recently made some forays into the experimental realm of savory almond custard. I lay awake thinking “if it doesn’t have sugar in it, can you still call it frangipane?” (I wish this was a joke!) And my first effort, though tasty, didn’t really let the savory almond custard shine. Well…last night I made these little tartlets. They have chard and raisins (big eye-roll – again, Claire? Oh, yes.) they have rosemary, they have garlic. They have mozzarella (secret melty cheese!!). And they have this almond custard – ground almonds, butter, eggs, a smicker of balsamic, a smicker of white wine. It turned out so nice! Crispy on top, soft in the middle, and very delicious! I’m sorry to sound so pleased with myself, but I am quite proud, because I really didn’t know how it would turn out. It could have been a completely disaster. I hate when dinner is a complete disaster. You could bake this as one large tart, if you preferred. And you could really use any kind of cheese you like (or not cheese at all) I thought about using gruyere or goat or cheddar. But I wanted something mild and salty to balance the sweet strong flavors, and mozzarella filled the bill.

cross section of tart

Here’s Joe Strummer with Digging the New. The new culinary technique, that is! (Unless people have been making this for hundreds of years. Won’t I feel foolish!)

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Chocolate drambuie mousse

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When I was little, a friend of my parents came to the house with a walking stick. It was a very special walking stick! The brass knob on top unscrewed, and when you pulled it out, a long glass tube emerged. Like a slim, secret bottle. I thought it was the neatest thing I’d ever seen! (Yes, we used the word “neat” back then, children.) I was too young to drink, or even want to drink, but oh how I coveted that cane. Imagine my delight when a gift arrived in the mail – my very own secret bottled-cane, from the gentleman who had introduced me to the concept in the first place. I was so happy! At the time, I was also very taken with drambuie. Not to drink – just the idea of it. Flavored with herbs, spices, and heather honey. From the Isle of Skye. What magical potion is this! So I filled my secret tube with drambuie. And then pretty much left it there until the cork dried up and the glass tube got stuck in the cane. Sigh. Now that I’m 42 (how did that happen?) I’m taken with more than just the idea of drambuie. I’m also a big fan of the unusual, distinctive flavor, and the way it burns a little bit on a sore throat.

I wanted to make a special dessert for valentine’s day. Not just cookies or cake, that we’d all eat for days afterwards, but something just for that moment. So I made mousse. It’s ridiculously delicious – it’s like a distillation of good flavors and textures. But it’s not something you’d want to eat every day. It’s so rich, and seems so sweet! (Although it really doesn’t have any sugar other than that in the chocolate.)

It was actually fun to make, too. You start with a zabaglione, which is one of my current favorite words. That’s egg yolks, whipped and cooked with some sweetish liqueur or wine. This kind of thing makes me very nervous – cooking egg yolks till they thicken, but watching to make sure they don’t cook too fast and curdle. It’s a special feeling of victory when it works. Which it did! Then you add melted chocolate and whipped cream. And that’s about it. Very simple, very delicious.

Here’s Cab Calloway’s So Sweet.
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Butternut squash flatbread stuffed with greens & walnuts

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butternut squash flatbread

I seem to cook a lot with butternut squash in the winter time. I’ve made empanadas, enchiladas, big pies, little pies, soups, stews, dumplings, soufflés… on and on it goes. So when presented with half a roasted butternut squash (I’d used the other half in soup), I decided I wanted to do something different with it. I decided to bake with it. I’ve never done it before, but it makes perfect sense! I’ve baked with sweet potato puree, and pumpkin puree – people do that all the time. So why not butternut squash puree? Why not, indeed. I decided to make a yeasted dough, and to make it into a flat bread, because I feared it might be a bit dense, and in these situations it’s a good idea to keep it thin. I thought a lot about how to flavor it. Butternut squash goes well with so many herbs and spices. I decided on a mix of sage, nutmeg and allspice. A little bit savory, a little bit sweet, very nice together when all baked in a bread!

And then I decided to stuff it, because I love how butternut squash tastes with greens and nuts and cheese. I think arugula, goat cheese, and hazelnuts is my favorite combination with it, but this time I decided to go with chard, walnuts and mozzarella, because it’s February, I guess! I made two fat rolls out of extra dough, because I was curious about how they would come out. They were nice! The flavor really shines through, and the texture was dense, but not unpleasantly so. Extra good toasted the next day. And my Isaac gobbled one down, which means he’s getting some vitamins, right?

Here’s a nice little ditty from the Arctic Monkeys called The Bakery Song. Do you think they sell roasted squash bread in this bakery?
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Apple & carrot mulligatawny soup

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mulligatawny

If you’re like me, and you’re a highly esteemed scholar of food history as it relates to Europeans aggressively roaming the earth and changing their cooking styles and the food-preparing habits of the people they met as they traveled… Okay, obviously I’m not an esteemed scholar of anything. But I am a bit of a buff, when it comes to the role of food in the history of colonialism. As I’ve mentioned before, in relation to savory pastries. Anyway! If this kind of thing interests you at all, than you’ll have some thoughts about Mulligatawny. I think the name means “pepper water,” and as I understand it, the soup came about because somebody was trying to make Indian flavors palatable to Englishmen. But it became hugely popular! And the whole notion of the soup is completely open to interpretation. You could put anything in there and call it mulligatawny! I made this soup thinking about a mulligatawny I ate at an Indian restaurant somewhere just outside of London, when I was about 7 years old. I remember apples. I remember pleasant spices. I remember a tawny color. And that’s about it! But something must have worked on some strange level, because my Isaac, who is 6, and who generally won’t eat much of anything unless it’s pale and has lots of butter on it…asked for 3 helpings of this soup!!

Here’s Dead Milkman Punk Rock Girl, which really has nothing to do with mulligatawny, but it’s so stuck in my head! And it’s a good song for valentine’s day tommorrow!
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Chili with cauliflower & 2 beans

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Chili!!

I realized that I’ve been saying some mean things about winter lately. And we’ve had such a pleasant winter, so far! The truth is, I kinda like winter (in the way that a person who was probably a hibernating animal in another life likes winter!) I’d like to stay home all day, cuddled up, reading books, the boys in their pjs, me making complicated baked goods and slow-cooked I-don’t-know-whats! But I work on the weekends, so we never have a day of everyone in their pjs. Here’s something you can make that’s warm and rich and has complex flavors, so it feels like that kind of day, but in a fraction of the time. Oh, yes, and I almost forgot! We ate it with home-made tortilla chips and some grated cheese. Nice.

Here’s Bryon Lee and the Dragonaire’s with Hot Hot Hot.
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Salad with warm roasted mushrooms and smoked gouda

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Looking at this picture (which breaks all the food picture rules, apparently, because they don’t like sunlight and they don’t like shadows!) reminds me of these forts my boys make in the summertime. They’ll crawl under the branches of some large bush and they’ll bring a few toys in. And that’s pretty much it! That’s the fort. I remember doing that when I was little. Hiding under green branches, with the warm sun shining through and setting all the leaves aglow like they were stained glass. So this is another wintery salad, but it makes me think about summertime, with its greenness. It has some red romaine leaves; topped with warm chard, kale and spinach; topped again with roasted mushrooms; on top of that you throw some fresh tarragon leaves; and then you put thin curly slivers of smoked gouda on top of it all. Summery cause it’s so green/wintery cause it’s so roast-y smokey.

Here’s Jeffrey Lewis’ Springtime. It’s a remarkable piece of music. I know spring is a long way off, but time has been flying lately.
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Spicy chocolate cake with chocolate covered cherries

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chocolate cherry cake

When I was 23 years old, I (still) worked in an ice cream parlor. Every ambitious college graduate’s dream job! I’ve always been driven and career-minded like that. Well, that spring, there was a cute boy who worked a few blocks away. I developed a fierce crush on him, and stalked him for a while. Then we started to become friends, and he’d visit me from time to time in the ice cream parlor. He’d order a cone with one scoop of chocolate chocolate chip and one scoop of cherry vanilla. I developed a method of wrapping the chocolate chocolate chip around the cherry vanilla! Like a chocolate covered cherry! (No wonder I stayed at the ice cream parlor, right? A person can’t just throw away a prodigious talent like this one). He must have been very impressed, because we eventually got married with each other, as the children say. I’m not still working at the ice cream parlor (it’s not there any more!) but I am still working in the medium of chocolate covered cherries. This cake is dense and rich. It’s got black pepper and ginger in it, for a bit of bite, cassis, because I love cassis, and chocolate covered cherries! The kind of dry tart cherry they sell in the bulk food section of my grocery store. And then it’s got melted chocolate on top so that it doesn’t just look like any old plate of brownies, for heaven’s sake!

Here’s Bob Marley’s Mellow Mood. Love SWEET love, darling. Sweet as chocolate covered cherries.
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Tapioca-choux dumplings with turnips and cheddar

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Turnip & cheddar choux dumplings

As I was making these, I thought to myself, “I really can’t imagine anyone else in the world cooking these.” Not that they were hard to make, or that they didn’t taste good (they did!). It was just such a strange and winding path that led me to them. First of all, I bought some tapioca flour at the Super Tropical Food Mart. This reminded me of an intriguing recipe I’d seen in the New York Times for Brazilian cheese puffs. And my tapioca flour is called “Yuca flour.” For some reason this made me think of Japanese Takoyaki. I thought maybe they add yucca root to that. Which is an entirely different thing, of course, but the connection had been made! I like watching how-to videos about takoyaki on youTube. (In fact I like watching any short cooking videos with non-English narration. I really do.) Anyway – takoyaki always seemed like a messy-fun thing to make and eat (and say!), and I had dreamed of trying a version of my own, with a muffin tin instead of a real takoyaki pan. And I’ve always wanted to try making something with a choux batter … but with something tasty stuffed inside!! Why roasted turnips, sharp cheddar and thyme? Why? Why not, I say! I wasn’t sure what to expect when I pulled these out of the oven, but I liked them a lot. They were soft and dense and cheesy on the inside, and nicely crispy on the outside. We ate them with leftover vegetarian haggis, cause everyone knows you’re supposed to eat turnips with haggis!

I should mention that if you don’t have tapioca flour on hand, these will work fine with regular flour – just use 1 1/2 cups. And if you’re not a turnip fan, you could substitute roasted parsnips or butternut squash, or just use cheese – any cheese you like!

Here’s Duke Ellington with Tapioca
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Almond cake with cherries, white chocolate and chambord

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Almond cake with cherries and white chocolate

I have a cupboard in which I keep all the cakes or cookies that I bake. I had a dream last night that the cupboard was overflowing. I opened the door, and mounds of cookies and pieces of cake came spilling out. In my dream I had a genius idea of what to bake with all of the excess baked goods! And then my elderly dog did this thing she does, where she click clacks frantically around on our wooden floors, and it sounds like she’s desperate to go outside, so you heave yourself out of bed and down the stairs, only to find her back on her bed, staring at you with a “What are you doing up at this hour” expression on her face. So we’ll never know what I would have done with the dream cakes in the dream cupboard. Perhaps the dream was a sign that I should slow down on the baking. Honestly, though, it’s February. If you don’t have the promise of some small sweet thing to have with your coffee, why the hell would you get out of bed at all?

I made this cake for my father’s birthday. He doesn’t really like chocolate, but I snuck a small amount of white chocolate in. He does like almonds and cherries, though. (At least I hope he does!) So this is the cake I made. It’s a dense cake with ground almonds, made slightly lighter by the inclusion of 3 extra whipped egg whites. (I used the yolks in the ice cream!) In the middle of the layers, we find some cherry preserves thinned with chambord. (I love chambord, but any fruity liqueur would do. Or amaretto. Or anything you like!) And then I topped it with a thin white chocolate/chambord ganache.

Here’s Bob Marley doing Sugar Sugar. Today is his birthday!! I wonder what kind of cake he would have liked.

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