Goat Cheese, Cherry Tomato & Herb Tarts

Operation Empty Freezer continues! These parmesan pastry crusts had lived there for so long I don't even remember anything about the recipe. Ooops. Since the goat cheese-disliking contingent of the household is away for the long weekend, I filled them with a mix of Dijon mustard, grated parmesan, soft goat cheese and fresh herbs (oregano and tarragon, and a few leaves of basil) and topped with cherry tomatoes brushed with a bit of olive oil.


Sprinkle with sea salt and bake at about 175°C/350°F for 20 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and crinkly and the cheese gets a bit of color. And don't try to eat them while hot. No-one likes boiling cherry tomato explosions in their mouth. Ahem.

Recipe after the jump!

Beet, Goat Cheese & Nettle Tart

This was going to be a glowing explosion of colors, with yellow beets nestling with their pink-and-white striped siblings, and nettle-speckled goat cheese peeking out from underneath. Alas, the candy-striped beets turned out to be... not. I rather want my money back on those.

So instead this is just a sunny repeat of the last post, in pie form: leftover wilted nettles mixed with soft goat cheese under a layer or two of beets, sprinkled with the last of the mint dressing. All contained in a shell of store-bought pastry dough (low fat & partly whole grained - don't do it! or at least, if you have a good recipe for a dough of this kind, let me know!) and baked at 200°C for about half an hour.


Goat cheese works really well with beets, so with a decent crust, this would have been a keeper. If you try this at home, I'd also consider reserving some of the mint vinaigrette to sprinkle on after it comes out of the oven, mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Recipe after the jump!

Goat Cheese, Asparagus & Mushroom Tart

On Why Easter Is Evil: I have eaten my weight in chocolate, and eggs, and chocolate eggs. In fact, I'm fairly sure I have chocolate trickling out of my ears, which is why I can't think of a thing to say about this pie. Tart. Whatever.

The recipe comes from Epicurious, I only decreased the cream a bit and added some asparagus. And used my own crust recipe. It was very pretty straight out of the oven, which I took as a sign that I could wait with the pictures until just before brunch. This was a mistake, as it turned a bit... wrinkly in the meantime. (I was really just holding out hope-against-all-hope that the gale-like winds would ease up so I could go outside and take pictures without my fingers freezing off. In vain, as it turned out, but luckily some superglue rendered me ten-fingered anew.)

Goat Cheese, Asparagus & Mushroom Tart
adapted from Bon Appétit Nov/97



100 g (3½ oz) of cold, lightly salted butter, cut into small cubes and then chilled
250 ml (generous 1 cup) all-purpose flour
3 tbsp ice-cold water

200 ml (6¾ fl oz) whipping cream
4 cloves garlic
½ tbsp dijon mustard
1 egg
200 g (7 oz) fresh asparagus
400 g (14 oz) shiitake mushrooms
salt & pepper
100 g (3½ oz) soft goat cheese

Put the flour in a bowl and top with the butter. With the tips of your fingers, work the butter into the flour until it's almost cohesive. Add the water and stir gently with a fork until the dough starts coming together (adding more water if needed). Dump the dough on a piece of clingfilm and bring it together with your hands to form a ball, then press down to a disc. Cover with the clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.

On a piece of lightly floured parchment paper, roll out the dough. Transfer to a 27-cm (10-inch) pie pan and chill while your oven heats to 175°C/350°F, then cover with tin foil and weigh down with beans. Bake for about 30 minutes, remove the tin foil and bake until the shell is pale golden.

Meanwhile, boil the cream and garlic until reduced to about ¾s; put through a blender to puree. Fry the shiitake in a dry pan until soft and the asparagus in some butter until al dente. Once the garlicky cream has cooled a bit, mix in the egg and dijon.

Once the shell is cooked and has cooled a bit, spread the goat cheese on the bottom. Sprinkle the shiitake on top of the cheese and arrange the asparagus on top of the shrooms. Spoon over the cream and bake until set, about 25 minutes.

Recipe after the jump!

Leftover Tuesday #3: Carroty Karelian Pasties

(Porkkanakarjalanpiirakat/karelska piroger med morot)

Leftover Tuesdays is one of my favorite food blog events, mostly because I get to see other bloggers being way more inventive than I am. You see, normally I have no problem with leftovers staying just the way they are - I can quite happily eat chicken korma three nights in a row without doing anything to spiff it up. So making something new from an already-prepared dish is something of a challenge - it's not how I'm used to thinking about things.


And this time, strictly speaking I'm probably cheating. I made carrot casserole last week, deliberately leaving part of the carrot puree-rice mix to make Karelian pasties from later. Karelian pasties are very ubiquitous Finnish mini-tarts, I guess - you can get decent ones in any grocery store, anywhere. They're eaten for breakfast or as a snack, either plain or topped with sandwich-fillings or, as tradition dictates, eggy butter. The crust is basically rye flour and water, the filling rice porridge or pureed root veggies (potato being the most common), or a mixture of the two.


The pleated construction of these looks very fussy, I know, but I've never found it the least bit difficult (and I only made Karelian pasties for the first time last summer). The trick is to keep both the pasty dough and the filling fairly dry - I cook the hell out of my rice porridge for this, until it's mostly solid. I usually make a whole bunch of them all at once and freeze most of them raw, to be popped into the oven when needed, but that's not to say they make a convenient fast snack - once the pasties come out of the oven, they need to be brushed with milky butter and then kept in a cloth-covered bowl for a while to soften the crust.

Karelian Pasties

Rice filling
250 ml (1 cup) water
250 ml (1 cup)rice (the kind you'd use for rice pudding)
1000 ml (4 cups) milk
1 tsp salt

Bring the water to a boil, add the (rinsed) rice, let simmer until the water's absorbed. Add the milk, crank up the heat until it's back to simmering, then lower the heat to an absolute minimum and let simmer, mostly covered, until the milk's absorbed and you have a thick goopy porridge. Season with the salt and let cool.

Optionally, boil some root veg, puree it, and mix with the rice. Or use up leftover mashed potatoes. (Do people ever actually have leftover mashed potatoes? I find it to be one of those dishes where I could mash four pounds of potatoes for four people and still have an empty bowl at the end of the meal. Maybe we just like our mash...)

The filling-to-dough ratio seems to depend more on the phases of the moon, stars, and Finnish cross-country world cup placements than any actual grams and milliliters. Since the dough is just flour and water, I usually make another batch of it if I run out before all the filling's gone and then just throw away the leftovers.

Pasty dough
250 ml (1 cup) rye flour
100 ml (3 fl oz) water
1 tsp salt
butter and milk, a few tbsp each

Mix the flour, salt and water. It should become a pretty dry dough - the amount you'll need depends a lot on how coarse your flour is. I had some very fine rye flour (ruissihti/rågsikt) this time, but I actually prefer the normal coarseness, even though you can't roll it out as thinly. (In fact, I rolled mine so thin this time that the pleated edges kind of scorched before the filling had set. Don't do that. The pictures I'm linking to instead of showing here are from last summer; those pasties were perfect.) Either way, it shouldn't feel moist when you squeeze it between your fingers. Once you've worked it into a cohesive, dry dough, roll it out as a log and cut into twelve pieces.

Roll out the pieces, one by one, to thin ovals. (I'm told a pasta maker comes in handy, but haven't tried it myself.) You'll want to make sure the pasty doesn't stick to your work surface, or to the rolling pin, so make sure both of those are floured, and keep moving the dough around while you're rolling it. It's a bit annoying to have spent time rolling out the perfect crust only to realize it's stuck to the table. Not that I'd know about such things, obviously.

Once you have your thin oval pastry shell, fill it with a good dollop of filling, spread it out to about an inch (probably a bit less) of the edges, and fold up the edges in soft pleats like so. Personally I like filling mine one by one before rolling out the next piece, but you could stack the rolled-out shells under a towel or something so they don't dry out.

Anyway, once you have all your pasties filled and pleated, heat your oven to as hot as it will go and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the filling looks dry and has taken on some color.

Brush the shells with a mixture of milk and melted butter (about half-and-half) and stack the pasties in a bowl (with kitchen towels or something between layers) and cover with a tea towel. This is so the shells will soften.

Eat as is, or as an open-faced sandwich, or with egg butter, which is about equal amounts softened butter (or margarine, even reduced-fat) and chopped hard-boiled eggs with (optionally) some chives mixed in.

Recipe after the jump!

Tomato Tart with Bacon and Red Onion

It's probably only fair to warn you that the tart I'm going to describe possesses some strange powers. Namely, it robs people (read: me) of all self-control. The night we had this, it was too dark to take pictures. The only thing that kept me from downing the whole thing, in spite of not being the least bit hungry, was knowing how much butter went in the crust.

The following day I cut out a slice to take out and photograph (trimming a bit off the edges because it didn't quite look right), snapped a few pictures that turned out to be all out of focus and weirdly lighted, and promptly wolfed down the subject. The day after that, I was at home with my trusty lampshade-cum-lightbox and interfering felines, snapped a few shots of the last slice and... suddenly... through no conscious decision... ate it up.


Possibly I'm just telling you that, like grocery shopping, food photography is best left to when you're not hungry.

This tart owes a lot to Molly's Roasted Tomato Tart with Crème Fraîche and Thyme, in the way that that was what I was going to make, to the letter, until I discovered my tomatoes were a bit sad and felt the need to add something to the mix. Namely bacon, onions and balsamic vinegar.

I was also making it in the wilds of, er, the place where we have our vacation home and no internet, and had a crust recipe calling for sticks of butter which is just one of those things I haven't yet learned conversions for, so the shell is improvised. I would also like bonus points for making said shell without the benefit of a mixer and freezer, which is how I usually survive the trauma of crust-making. Incidentally, it was also the flakiest crust I have ever managed to produce. Maybe I'll have to eschew the mixer in the future. (EXTRA bonus points for doing the cleanup without running water.)


Anyway, it was yummy, as things containing stuff like bacon, onions, tomato and cheese tend to be, especially when encased in a ton of buttery crust, and I'm sure it would be very acceptable even without the bacon if you want to go the vegetarian route.

Tomato Tart with Bacon and Red Onion
for the crust:
100 g (3½ oz) of cold, lightly salted butter, cut into small cubes and then chilled
250 ml (8½ fl oz) all-purpose flour
3 tbsp ice-cold water

for the filling:
about 700 g (1½ lb) tomatoes
1 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
50 ml (1.6 fl oz, or 3 tbsp + 1 tsp) olive oil
3 cloves garlic
3 slices bacon, finely chopped
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 medium red onion, sliced
2 tbsp crème fraîche
2 tsp dijon mustard
150 ml (5 fl oz) grated gruyère

Put the flour in a bowl and top with the butter. With the tips of your fingers (it helps if your hands are cold from, um, the cold), work the butter into the flour until it's all almost cohesive. Part crumble, part paste. Add the water and stir gently with a fork until the dough starts coming together (this is like three or four swirls). Dump the dough on a piece of clingfilm and bring it together with your hands to form a ball, then press down to a disc. Cover with the clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.

Halve and deseed the tomatoes. Toss with the thyme, olive oil and some salt, then arrange on a baking tray, cut side down. Bake for half an hour at 175°C (350°F), remove from the oven and let cool until you can handle them, then remove the skins. (Note: this was a pain, and I wonder if blanching and peeling before the baking wouldn't be easier.) Turn the tomatoes cut-side up and sprinkle with garlic, bacon, balsamic vinegar and the onion. Bake for 40 minutes.

On a piece of lightly floured parchment paper, roll out the dough. Transfer to a 27-cm (10-inch) pie pan (I do this by taking parchment and dough to the pan, inverting the whole thing and letting the dough rest on the edges of the pie pan, and peeling off the parchment paper) and chill until the tomatoes are done in the oven, then cover with tin foil and weigh down with beans. Bake, still at 175°C/350°F, for about 30 minutes, remove the tin foil and bake until the shell is pale golden. Mix together crème fraîche, mustard and cheese and spread over the bottom of the shell. Arrange the tomatoes in the pan (in flat layers, not just tossed around) and bake for half an hour.

Recipe after the jump!

Waiter, There's Something in My... Pie

Pumpkin in a pie? How novel! But wait, this isn't a sweet pie with pumpkin puree (which is fairly impossible to find here anyway), but a savory one with parmesan, onions and cheddar. And the pumpkin is coarsely grated and steamed. In fact, my pumpkin was grated, steamed and frozen several months ago (you seasonal produce people can just bite me), making today's cooking operation a breeze.

This has been one of my favorite uses for pumpkin (closely followed by a bean-ham-pumpkin soup I haven't made in far too long - now I'm wondering if I still have pumpkin puree in the freezer) ever since I found the recipe a few years ago. I waffled a bit between this and the Tamale Pie for my Waiter, there's something in my...-entry (check out the roundup here), but seriously, parmesan + cheddar + whole wheat pastry beats cheddar + cornbread any day in this household.


If you can't find fresh pumpkin this time of year, I'm sure this would be wonderful with any kind of winter squash. Or even with just extra onions - I dare anyone to find fault with the cheese-onion-cheese combination. Especially in a shell made wonderfully nutty by whole wheat flour. (You can feel all virtuous about the pumpkin and the whole wheat. And gluttonous about the cheese. And the butter. Best of both worlds!)



Two-Cheese Pumpkin Pie

from Glorian ruoka & viini 6/2005

for the pastry:
450 ml (scant 2 cups) whole wheat flour
½ tsp salt
70 g (2½ oz) butter
150 ml (5 oz) cold water

for the filling:
500 g (1 generous pound) fresh pumpkin, coarsely grated
2 large onions
½-1 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper to taste
100 g (3½ oz) parmesan, grated
100 g (3½ oz) cheddar, grated

a bit more butter
one egg, lightly beaten

Mix the salt in the flour. Work the (cubed) butter into the flour with a fork, then the cold water. Divide the dough in two and form flat disks. Wrap in clingfilm and let rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Steam the pumpkin until softened, about 3 minutes. Soften the onions in the oil. Mix with the pumpkin, season with salt and pepper, and leave to cool a bit.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out each disk of dough to about 30 cm (12") in diameter. Transfer one of them to a (greased, floured) springform pan, about 23 cm (9") in diameter. (Or, you know, adjust sizes to fit your pan.)

Brush with some melted butter, sprinkle the grated parmesan, then the onion-pumpkin mixture, and finally the grated cheddar. Top with the other pastry disk and crimp the edges together. Brush with the egg.

Bake at 180-200°C (375° F) for about 40-50 minutes, until the crust is a deep golden color. Once you take it out of the oven, brush with some more butter (OMG yes I know. Feel free to skip.)


Served with a simple green salad on the side, this is fabulous both warm and cold.

Recipe after the jump!