The Cooking Ninja

There are a few desserts on my blog that I completely conjured in my head like the Chocolate Pear Cake, Coconut-Choc Scrolls, Coconut Chocolate Nut Cookies or the Carrot-Zucchini Cake etc. This new recipe is no exception. It all started with an innocent picture in a magazine of a layered apple slices, and from there it slowly brewed and ballooned into an extremely sinful fantasy... the urges grew stronger and yearning for that biteful of aromatic apples basked in spices, craddled in drooling buttery biscuit pie crust with to-die-for caramel walnut toppings became so real that I could almost savour it.

My attempts to make this tart was thwarted a few times... Somehow the apples always ended up eaten as an every day fruit as we either had other desserts lined up or over indulged during lunch. Finally the occasion came not once but twice. I made my first trial tart with Pierre as my ardent & willing taster. I was a bit nervous as it was my first attempt at making a caramelized walnut topping and frankly, I had no idea how to make one and neither did my mom-in-law. She suggested that maybe I stir the walnuts into the caramel. Well, that didn't went down quite as I expected. In trying to get the walnuts coated with caramel like I had in my head, I ended up with a big lump of un-spreadable caramelized walnut. AAAAHHH!

Anyway, with Pierre's stamp of approval, I made a 2^nd one for my in-laws who were coming for lunch the following day. This time around, I got my caramelized walnut topping right. Bless my mother-in-law who, upon seeing me struggling with the apple slices, taught me the correct way of doing it like the professionals. I can't believe everything was going so beautifully well that day. I was so proud of myself. The oven beeped and my tart was all ready for its photo session before being devoured. Unfortunately for us, that day happened to be cloudy all day long. Pierre decided to place the tart on our kitchen window sill to have better lighting with Mom-in-law worrying that Pierre might accidentally drop the tart while taking the pictures. And me, menacing that I'll have his head if he dropped my gorgeous work of art. Phew! All went well and Pierre proudly told his mom that her worries were totally unfounded when suddenly, before our eyes, the tart slipped out of his hand ....SPLAT! 2 floors down, it became part of our garden's decoration and bird food. The horrified look on Pierre's face when the tart took a suicide plunge was PRICELESS! The scene was too hilarious to begin with... any upset thoughts flew out of the window. Pierre kept apologizing to me while Mom-in-law and I couldn't stop laughing. All was not totally lost, mom-in-law managed to salvage a bit of the tart from our garden floor. LOL! No, you can stop your wild imagination right there, there weren't any extra ingredient on our plate.

I'm sharing my beautiful broken tart with Meeta for her Monthly Mingle 'Brunch'.

Caramelized Walnut Apple Tart

Ingredients

Pie Crust

• 2 cups (200 grams) of graham biscuits/gingersnaps or milk biscuits
• 1/4 cup (40 grams) granulated white sugar
• 1/2 cup (114 grams) salted butter, melted

Pie Fillings

• 6 - 8 apples (peeled & cored)
• brown sugar
• ground cinnamon & nutmeg
• walnuts (roughly chopped)

Caramel

• sugar
• water
• about 2 tbsp salted butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4 ).
2. Break up the biscuits into pieces, process it together with sugar until it's crumbly. Add melted butter and pulse it a few times until all is well mixed.
3. Press a few tablespoonful of the crumbs evenly over the bottom of the springform pan. Turn pan on the side and press about 3 cm up the sides of the springform pan. Cover and refrigerate it while you prepare the filling.
4. Peel, cut into half and cored the apples. To keep the apples from turning brown, dip them in a bowl of lightly salted water.
5. Cut the sides off (set aside) and sliced the apples vertically. Hold it between your hands and gently spread it with your thumb.
6. Place it clockwise on the bottom of the pan. Continue spreading sliced apples from the outer circle to inner circle. Fill the center circle with cut off sides of the apples.
7. Sprinkle a dash of ground cinnamon, nutmeg and some brown sugar on top of the apple slices.
8. Place the next round of apple slices anti-clockwise. Repeat step 5 - 7 until all apples are done.
9. Sprinkle roughly chopped walnuts on top of apple slices (enough to cover the surface), pour caramel sauce over the walnuts.
10. Bake pie loosely covered with aluminum foil at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 30 minutes and uncovered for 10 - 15 minutes.

Making the caramel

1. Prepare this only after you have done up your pie as caramel sauce hardens up quickly when cooled.
2. Put some sugar and enough water to wet the sugar in a small pot and heat it up on medium heat.
3. Sugar will dissolves and when it turned into bubbling brown and golden, turn off the heat.
4. Quickly stir in the salted butter until combined.

The Verdict

It's so sinfully good and decadent. How can I described it? Every bite is filled with aromatic, spice basked apples with salty sweet crunchy caramelized walnuts together with the butter biscuit crust - awesome combination. Best of all, it's not overly sweet. Pierre said it's the best apple tart I ever made. LOL! This desert also proves that salted butter rules

Notes

You can replace the biscuit pie crust with pâte brisée (short pastry crust) instead. Either you blind bake the crust or bake it at 210°C for 10 minutes, then lower it to 180°C.

For the caramelized walnut toppings, don't make the same mistake as I did, went walnut crazy and totally filled up every space available on the pie. LOL! Just enough to cover the pie is fine, more than that will be overkill.

The number of layers of apple slices in the pie is up to your discretion. For us, 3 layers high is just the right combination. If you are doing a mix of apples and pears, make sure that the pears aren't too ripe as they have high water content and will turn your pie filling mushy.

Hope everyone had a good Valentine's day last Saturday.

This is the first year we were alone on Valentine's day. Woke up to no crying toddler, bliss! My honey got up early at 7 am, went out and bought some almonds croissants for breakfast and served me breakfast in bed. Never mind there weren't any flowers... I got breakfast in bed, that counts a lot as it is. There is always room for improvement, isn't it. For lunch, I made Moules marinère (Mussels cooked in white wine) for us. I wanted to make this chocolate cake for our dessert but he surprised me further with a strawberry cake bought from the local bakery. Now that got him another brownie point, don't you think so ? It was a nice and lazy day ... just waiting for Little One to come home from her week long vacation at her grandparents place. YES! you heard right! We had a toddler-free week on our own. I know it sounds horrible to say this but it was pure 'BLISS!' We had a wonderful couplehood time alone - goodness, we needed that so much. We had fun checking out the local restaurants like we used to and we can *censored* whenever we want to without interruptions (that's a big bonus) and wake up late in the morning as we wish. It took me a day or two to switch off my 'mommy mode'.

One thing I would like to remind my readers is to drink lots of water and well hydrate your body. Why do I bring up this subject suddenly? For the past few days I have been having headaches day and night. I took pain killers and try to sleep it off but nothing worked. At first, I thought I was having migraine since some of the symptoms were quite similar to that. After speaking to my sister and checked online for information, I found out that if one is dehydrated, one can get headaches. So since yesterday, I have been drinking lots of water and true enough, my headache did subside a little ... guess I was too dehydrated to even realize it and my body was trying to tell it to me in its own way. So please drink more water - that headache of yours might not be stress related.

Let's move on to something more appetizing ... today, I would like to introduce you to another traditional French dessert called Tarte Grandmère - a very simple and delicious tart. My mother-in-law told me that my hubby and his younger sister would always say this : 'Oh, we have guests tonight.' whenever they saw her making this tart. As it is very rich in calories, she only makes them whenever they have guests over for lunch or dinner.

Tarte Grand-Mère (Grandmother Tarte)

Ingredients

• 1 kg apples
• 80 g dried raisins
• 2 tbsp rhum
• 80 g butter
• 200 g fine sugar
• 1 packet vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 roll ready made pie crust (sweet version) or make your own (see below instructions)

Pie Crust - sweet version (La pâte sablée)

• 250 g Plain Flour
• 125 g Chilled Butter (cut into cubes)
• 80 g Sugar
• 1 egg
• A little water (ice cold)

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 210°C (410°F - gas mark 6/7 ).
2. Soak the dried raisins in the rhum for about 15 minutes.
3. Peel the apples and cut them into big slices.
4. Melt butter in a pan.
5. Once the butter turns a little brown, add in the apples, sugar and vanilla sugar.
6. Cook it under medium heat and stir it frequently, keeping an eye on it. Add in the raisins at the last minute. The apples should look a bit like a compote that is lightly caramelised. Let it cool.
7. Spread the caramelized apple compote on the prepared pie dish.
8. Decorate the tart with some left of strips of crusty pie pastry. Brush the strips with egg yolk lightly beaten with a bit of milk.
9. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Pie Crust

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour and sugar together and put in the diced up butter.
2. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it is crumbly (like sand). To make sure that all butter are rubbed in and there is no big lumps left, scoop some mixture into your hands and rub it in a rubbing motion.
3. Make a small well in the middle, crack in the egg and just a little bit of ice cold water. Mix the dough mixture with your hands until it forms a ball of dough. It will be a little bit sticky but the dough should hold together and comes off the bowl easily. Do not work the dough too much.
4. Wrap the ball of dough with a plastic wrapper and refrigerated it for 1 hour.
5. After 1 hour: Roll out a clean piece of cloth on the table; sprinkle generously some flour on it.
6. Flatten the dough slightly with your hands and dust the dough lightly with flour before rolling the dough out with a rolling pin. Start rolling at the centre of the dough and work outwards. Roll the dough into a circle and larger than the size of your pie dish. Roll the pie pastry as thin as possible. We want it to be crispy when baked.
7. Put your pie dish face down to the centre of dough. Put your hand underneath the cloth (centre of the dough) and gently flip the dough over.
8. Without stretching the dough, press the pastry firmly into the pan and trim any excess dough from the edge.

The Verdict

It is super delicious... so different than a normal apple pie. Whereas plain apple pies can be somewhat acid (depending on your choice of apples), the addition of caramel and butter makes it a lot easier in the mouth. Using salted butter adds an extra oomph, so if you have some around this is the way to go!

Notes

According to my mother-in-law, the pie pastry dough would taste even better if leave in the fridge overnight. The flavour of the dough is heighten and it is tastier.

I have been sadly neglecting this blog for a month - besides being so caught up with so many things on the domestic front, my passion for cooking and baking suddenly left me - how did that happened ??? Could it be the summer heat that zapped it out of me? I just know that lately I just don't feel inspired to cook or bake anything. Sad isn't it, considering the fact that it is this passion that inspired me to start 'The Cooking Ninja'.

This blog was created right after I finished my exams of my last year at the university to be exact - about a year ago. Finally I had time to write about my passion for cooking. Back then, Little One had just turned 1 and was taking her first wobbly steps - so no worries, I still had plenty of time to cook, clean the house and blog. Boy, did I blog a lot more back then.

I think there must be something magical about the age 1 because a week or so after she turned 1, her wobbly steps became firmed and she walked her first steady '5 steps' without any aid at all on the sandy playground. What a sight and joy for both of us... we felt like some proud peacocks at that moment. Soon those 5 steps became 10 and more, then she was all over the place: climbing here and there, opening this and that. The whole house became a treasure island for her especially my nightstand drawers - she loved raiding it. Then the walking gave way to running ... it was so cute to watch her run - see her diaper backside swaying left and right like a little duckling.

These days, she is a real demanding little person. She does not like it whenever she sees me on the computer. She would either climb all over me like on my shoulder, or sit on my lap right in front of my laptop (like what she is doing right now ) or pull my hand away so that I'm left only with 1 hand to type or surf. She demands a lot of my time and attention as she grows older which leaves me so little time to do any surfing or posting - my last post took me more than 10 days to publish. *sigh* With just 1 kid, I find it hard to keep my house clean and in order. I do not know how some mothers with more than 1 kid manage to find time to blog everyday and sometimes have a full time work on top of it. I truly admire their ability to do that. Maybe I'm just lousy in my time management or maybe it is just the big 'P' word. Do you know what does this big 'P' stands for?

Enough of my rumblings. Today I'm going to share with you another very simple yet delicious recipe that I have came up with after eating a similar one at a French restaurant. This will also be my entry for the Pie in My Eye Adventure hosted by Joelen's Culinary Adventures.

Crispy Apple Pie

Ingredients

• 1 flaky or puff pastry
• 3 apples (cored and thinly sliced)
• sugar syrup
• sugar
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 220°C (425°F - gas mark 7).
2. Lay out the flaky pastry on the baking sheet on a flat baking tray. Fork all over the pastry surface.
3. Boil a bit of water in a pot and stir in some sugar to make a syrup.
4. Using a your finger or a brush, spread the syrup all over the surface of the pastry.
5. Line the thinly sliced apples starting on the outside towards the inside center of the pie.
6. Sprinkle some sugar, cinnamon and a bit of nutmeg on top of the apple slices
7. Spread small slices or bits of butter all over the pie.
8. Bake it for about 20 to 25 minutes.
9. Serve it warm, maybe with a bit of vanilla ice cream.

The Verdict

I love it - almost like the one we had in the restaurant. Crispy or flaky, buttery, delicious taste of the apples (not overwhelming) and not too sweet. It's nice to get a successful experiment sometimes, given all the ones that fail

The next time I'll do it, I'm going to sprinkle some dry rasins and almonds flakes before putting the butter bits all over the pie. Should be interesting.

Notes

Some put a layer of home-made apple sauce (cooking diced apples with sugar and cinnamon until it is all melted) on top of the pastry before laying the apple slices while others brush a light coat of apricot jam (stir some jam with a bit of water over low heat till it becomes a syrup) on top of the pie just before serving.

I was at Michèle's place recently and was browsing through her small but valuable library of cook books when one titled Tourtes, feuilletés et autres pies caught my eye. On the front cover was this delicious looking meat pie that had me drooling over it. There are a lot of interesting recipes in this book and I couldn't decide which to try it out ... so here comes Pierre, my knight in shinning armour (or more exactly a Mystic Blue coupé - times change) to the rescue. After browsing the book for a long while and salivate at a few pages, he picked on this interesting recipe and this is what we had for dinner that day.

Tourte à la dinde et granny smith

(taken from Tourtes, feuilletés et autres pies by Anny Mayer-Armbruster)

Preparation: 30 minutes
Baking: 40 minutes
Makes: 6

Ingredients

• 2 granny smith apples
• 700 g turkey (2/3 minced & 1/3 cubed 1x1 cm)
• ½ savoy cabbage (chou vert frisé)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 15 cl white wine - dry
• 10 cl fluid crème fraîche
• 2 shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)
• 1 egg yolk (slightly beaten with a bit of milk)
• salt & pepper

Directions

1. Peel the apples and cut them into quarters.
2. Mince 2/3 of the turkey meat together with the apples.
3. Separate the leaves from the cabbage and remove the middle hard stem.
4. Boil the cabbage in a pot of boiling salted water for about 3 minutes. Drain and plunge them in cold water to cool them. Well drain them and cut them in thin slices.
5. Heat the pan with 1 tbsp oil, stir in the minced turkey and cabbage. Add in the white wine, the crème fraîche and season it with salt and pepper. Let it simmer uncovered, stirring it often until the liquid is absorbed. Then keep it cool.
6. Cook and season the rest of the turkey (cubed) in a pan with the rest of the oil. Mix with the stuffing. Keep it cool.
7. Lay the pastry on a deep pie dish or baking pan lined with the baking paper. Spread the stuffing in the pie.
8. Fold in the side border of the dough (towards the stuffing) and brush it with water (this helps to seal the two pastry). Then cover it with the other pastry, pressing on the border a little to make sure it is sealed to the bottom pastry. Fold in whatever is left on the side.
9. Cut a tiny hole in the middle of the pie a make a chimney using a small rolled piece of cardboard.
10. Brush the surface of the pie with the beaten yolk-milk mixture.
11. Bake it at 200°C (400°F - gas mark 6) for about 30 minutes.

The Verdict

This is the first time I'm baking this dish so I wasn't sure what to expect. For me, the pie itself taste fine: it has the nice flavour of the meat and cabbage, but it's overall kinda flat (a feeling that my in-laws also share). Perhaps I'm used to eating my food with lots of spices and not used to something that is relying more on just its flavour without any spices enhancing it. Pierre on his side somewhat likes it (funnily for someone who doesn't really like cabbage) and had a second helping too, but felt that there was way too much stuffing.

In preparation of this pie, I forgot to mince the apples together with the turkey meat so I did them both separately. We replaced the dry white wine with apple cider (we ran out of white wine in our cave and since we have apples in the recipe, we thought «why not?») and thick crème fraîche instead of the liquid version. We were somewhat taken aback by the large quantity of water that our stuffing produced during cooking and baking. In the end we had to scoop out the water. We don't know if this is due to the fact that we used apple cider instead of wine (we don't believe it should make much of a difference) or maybe I didn't drained the cabbage well.

We both felt that there was way too much meat in this pie compared to the quantity of crust, and would recommend cutting the quantity by 1/3 if you attempt the recipe. Also the book called for 1/3 of the turkey to be cubed. To us, it doesn't really make a big difference in taste and the chunks of meat aren't very nice to munch.

Note

When choosing savoy cabbage, choose a head that's heavy for its size. The leaves should be crisp, not limp, and there should be no sign of browning. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped, in a plastic bag for up to 1 week.