Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'tarts'
Nectarine Tart
I am a nectarine tart and I am easy to make. I am adapted from Amanda Hesser's "Cooking For Mr. Latte" (her recipe is for a peach tart) but, if you ask me, I'm much prettier than a peach tart. A peach tart would be a homogeneous glop of orangey yellow fruit; I, on the other hand, am a homogeneous glop of orangey yellow fruit with hints of red. Those hints of red make me magnificent. The most shocking thing about me (besides my time served at Sing Sing) is how easy I am to make. Most tarts intimidate with the dough assembly, the refrigeration, the rolling it out, the getting it into the pan. Not so with me: to make a tart like me, all you do is dump a bunch of stuff into a tart pan (or, if you don't have a tart pan, an 8 X 8 square pan will work too), stir it together, press it into the corners and cut off the excess. To be more specific: in the pan, stir together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon sugar. In a separate bowl, mix together 1/2 cup olive oil or vegetable oil (I'm made from olive oil and it makes my taste elusive!), 2 Tbs milk, and 1/2 teaspoon almond extract. Pour the wet stuff over the dry stuff, mix gently with a fork, and when it comes together push it out so it comes to a height of about 3/4 inch (or, if using a tart pan, til it comes up the sides of the tart.)...
Tuesday Techniques: French Apple Tart
I would like to begin this week's "Tuesday Techniques" column--a column which appears regularly on Wednesdays--with a discussion of the word "technique." I think people are intimidated by the word. It implies a "right-wrong" dynamic, something hammered home by Tom Colicchio on "Top Chef" when he criticizes improper technique. "You don't know how to cut an onion?" "You don't know that proper paella has a crust?" "You kissed Padma on the left cheek and not the right?" This bullying has its merits. In a cooking school environment, in a restaurant kitchen, forceful drilling of proper technique produces top-quality chefs. At home, however, does it matter if you have a perfectly clear consomme? Not unless a perfectly clear consomme is something to which you aspire. Most people, I'd conjecture, just want to make dinner. And that's why TV hosts like Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentis are so popular. They make cooking look easy and fun. In fact, those words "easy" and "fun" are often in their show titles. But why can't using proper technique, cooking on the level of a Tom Colicchio, be easy and fun? Why does Jacques Pepin's "Technique" book feel so much like a text book? Why does writing this column sometimes feel like homework? Why does this paragraph have so many questions?...
