Summer Fruit Tart*

We have been invited out to dinner tonight!  (Thanks, Mom!) I offered to bring dessert and since it’ll just be three of us, and I have some fruit in the fridge, a quick puff pastry tart seemed just the thing.

I discovered puff pastry in sheets a few years ago – yeah, maybe I’m slow – and for a while, I experimented with it so often that it seemed almost everything I made had puff pastry as a main ingredient. It is a miracle substance, as happy as a shell or companion for sweet as for savory.  Best of all, it lives in my freezer until I need it and thaws quickly and bakes to a beautiful golden crust just as fast.

Ingredients

Summer fruit – about 1¼ lbs – Pitted if necessary and cut into chunks if bigger than bite-sized. I used two nectarines and one 6 oz punnet of blackberries

1 package of puff pastry containing two sheets

1/4-1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/8 cup of butter (four good slices)

1 tsp of natural vanilla extract

1 1/2 teaspoons of cornstarch

Method

Preheat your oven to 425 °F.  After the pastry has thawed, lay the first piece on a piece of parchment paper in your baking tray. If you don’t have parchment, which, as you can see from the photos, I forgot today, it will cook just as nicely. It will just be harder to get out of the baking pan and into a pretty serving dish.

Pit your fruit and cut it into chunks, if necessary, and sprinkle it with the brown sugar and the cornstarch. If your chosen fruit is really tart, you might want to increase the amount of sugar, hence the variable amount in the ingredients.  Start with the 1/4 cup and taste to see if more is needed. Add the vanilla extract and stir until the sugar is mostly dissolved.  Set aside.

Cut the second piece of pastry up into eight equal strips.  Brush the edges of the bottom pastry with water and lay the strips along the edges. Brush that layer with water and add the last four strips.

 Dock the bottom pastry in the middle with a sharp knife or a fork. This will keep it from puffing up under your fruit.

Spoon the fruit into the middle of your pastry “walls” and drizzle the leftover juice over it, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Dot the fruit with the slices of the butter.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden and puffy. At our house, I usually serve this with double cream for pouring but unsweetened whipped cream or even vanilla ice cream would go quite nicely as well.

* I am calling this a summer fruit tart, but honestly, you can make this with thinly sliced apples or plums or pears or whatever fruit you have on hand all year round.   Or if you were looking for a savory treat – perhaps to serve with salad at a luncheon, caramelized onions with some feta cheese would also be a divine filling. Use your imagination.

Pesto Pizza

As I mentioned the other night when I made pesto from my overgrown basil plants, I had leftover pesto at the end of our pasta dish. Here’s a simple pizza dough recipe that goes great with leftover pesto and mozzarella to make delicious homemade pizza in just about the time it takes Domino’s to deliver.

Ingredients 
For dough enough for two regular crust (12 in or 30cm) or three thin crust pizzas

1 package (¼ oz.) active dry yeast (I use Fleishmann’s Rapid Rise.)

About 4½ cups or 560g all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups or 355ml warm water

1 tablespoon olive oil - coat the bowl during rising

For toppings:
Leftover pesto - homemade or otherwise
Mozzarella cheese - amounts will vary with taste and number of pizzas you make

Or make a more traditional traditional pizza with tomato sauce and toppings such as pepperoni, olives, etc.

Method

In a large bowl, combine yeast, 2 cups of flour and 1 teaspoon salt. In a microwaveable measuring pitcher or a saucepan, heat water until very warm (120 ºF - 130 ºF – it should be pretty hot but you should be able to hold your finger in it for a count of 10 without pain.)

With mixer at low speed, just blend water into dry ingredients. At medium speed, beat two minutes, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in ½ cup of flour to make a thick batter.

Beat two minutes more. Stir in about 1½ cups of flour to make a soft dough.

Knead dough by hand or with a bread hook for a few minutes. Pour a little olive oil in the bowl and put the dough in to rest for 15 minutes (if using Rapid Rise yeast) or to rise for 30-45 minutes (if using regular yeast – but then all promises of a 30-minute delivery are off.)

If using Rapid Rise, at this point preheat your oven to 450ºF or 230ºC.  (If you are using one, put your pizza stone in while the oven is still cold.)

Ready to rest for 15 minutes

Risen and ready to punch down and roll out

Your dough is now ready to punch down and roll out to top and make two 12-inch pizzas! (Or three, if you like the crust thin.) 

My usual instructions say to make sure to oil your pans first, to make the bottom bake up crunchy but I tried something new this time. Finally, I have a kitchen item that I have been wanting: a baker's peel. I bought it online at the Bakers’ Catalogue, which is connected to King Arthur flour and this was the first time I attempted to use it.

Add flour to the counter top and roll the pizza dough out, 

Transferred the dough by the rolling pin to the peel, which I sprinkled with cornmeal. (See note below if you don't have a pizza peel.) 

At this point add the pesto and spread it around. 

Then add the mozzarella liberally to the top.  

Very liberally

With a quick flick of your arm, quickly transfer the pizza to the baking stone that is in the preheated oven and bake for 10-15 minutes.

NOTE: If you don’t have a peel but would still like to use a baking stone, put your rolled dough on the greased underside of your baking tray so it is on a completely flat surface. Add your toppings and pop the whole thing in the oven on top of the stone.

After just a few minutes, perhaps as many as five, remove the tray from the oven and run a long knife around under the pizza to make sure it is loose, then slide the pizza off the tray straight onto the baking stone. Those few minutes of cooking harden the underside enough to unstick it from the pan. 

When your pizza crust is browned and the cheese is golden and melted, the pizza is done. Remove it from the oven and place on a cutting board. Divide into slices with a sharp knife or pizza cutter. 

We actually made three thin crust pizzas. Not all show here. 

Enjoy! 

When you know better, you do better

I am struggling and conflicted. Just thinking out loud here. On one hand, I have read Eating Animals (I finally finished it, Victoria, and have passed it on to Cecilie.) and I understand the suffering that goes on in factory farms where chickens are produced. This summer I have made every effort to buy humanely raised and killed animals – and in the process, have cooked a lot less beef, chicken and pork.  Here’s the dilemma. I have some Cornish game hens in my freezer. They are from Perdue who claim not to use antibiotics or cages. But a simple web search shows that humane treatment does not necessarily follow those claims. 

So, do I cook the game hens who have been in my freezer since before I was aware? On one hand, I am sorry that I bought them. On the other hand, just throwing them away seems like more of a negation of their right to a happy chicken-y life.  Not that they care now, but upon reflection, perhaps the proper thing to do is to cook something special with them. Something that takes time and care and possibly even expense. I am thinking an adaptation of Julia Child’s coq au vin. It won’t make the Cornish game hens feel better, but I will.