The Cooking Ninja

This is a week of strikes - tonight the train is on strike and tomorrow it's the EDF (Electricity) and Paris public transport. Talking about strike, some students of Nantes University are on their 2^nd week of strike as well to protest against an education reform. How can students be on strike? That's something that puzzles most foreigners who arrive here, me included. You don't need to go as far as Japan to get "Lost In Translation".

All these strikes bring me to another topic: coconut is my least favourite fruit! (OK, so there's actually no connection whatsoever, but bear with me). I don't like coconut cookies, ice cream or cakes but I love coconut gravies, like curry. Strange isn't it? So why did I make a coconut tart then? Well, one day the cafeteria ran out of sandwiches and all they had were tarts: lemon, chocolate and coconut. I don't like anything that is sourish nor too chocolaty so that left me the coconut tart - no other choice - needed to feed my growling stomach. I was very surprised at how delicious it was. Since then I have been itching to make a coconut tart like the one I have tasted.

Coconut Tart

Ingredients

Pie Crust

• 250 g plain flour (shifted)
• 50 g fine sugar
• 150 g salted butter (cubed)
• 3 tbsp ice cold water

Tart

• 1 egg
• 80 g sugar
• 200 ml coconut milk
• 100 ml liquid cream
• 80 g grated coconut

Directions

Prepare Pie Crust

1. In a big bowl, mix the shifted flour and sugar, then add in the butter. Rub the butter and flour mixture with your finger tips until you get a sand like texture. Make a small well, add in 3 tbsp iced cold water. Mix it together to get a dough. Put the dough in a plastic film and let it sit in the refrigerator for an hour.
2. Roll out the dough on a baking paper or cloth (flour the cloth first), this will make it easier to flip the rolled out dough onto the pie dish.
3. Fork the base and bake it at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for about 15 minutes.

Prepare the coconut fillings

1. Beat the egg and sugar in a big bowl.
2. Mix the liquid cream and coconut milk in a pan and bring it to a boil.
3. Mix this mixture with the beaten egg/sugar.
4. Add in the grated coconut.
5. Pour the mixture onto the baked pie crust.
6. Bake it at 170°C (325°C - gas mark 3) for about 25 minutes.
7. Cool it before refrigerating it for a few hours. Serve cold.

The Verdict

I was actually expecting a semi-dry filling, but got surprised to get it moist and creamy, almost like a custard. It's delicious though - I ended up covering the tart with a layer of melted chocolate (one side with black chocolate, the other side with milk-chocolate). The combination of coconut and chocolate was really nice - and reminescent of the Bounty chocolate bar.

La pissaladière (pissaladiera in Provencal dialect) is a culinary specialty of the region of Nice. As it is some sort of onion pie, it is often considered as a type of pizza, and in fact the traditional Pissaladière is made with bread dough, along with pissalat, a sort of a paste or salted cream made from sardines or salted anchovies which gives this dish its name. As time passed, the pissalat has been replaced by the anchovies cream or filets.

The Pissaladière that I'm going to introduce is a modified version of Michèle's. I haven't forgotten my mushrooms - the recipe will be coming next

La Pissaladière

(Michèle's recipe)

• 1 shortcrust pastry or pizza dough
• 4 big onions (sliced)
• 4 tomatos (thick slices)
• 1 can of anchovies
• some olives (sliced, optional)
• some herbs of Provence (or a mix of savory, marjoram, rosmary, thyme and sage - optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 210°C (410°F - gas mark 6).
2. Heat up some olive oil in the pan or wok and saute the onions till they are a bit golden brown. Sprinkle some salt on it.
3. Lay the onions onto the pie dough, spread sliced tomatos on top of the onions. Sprinkle some dried herbs on it, and then some anchovies and sliced olives.
4. Bake it for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Conclusions

Not only it's delicious and flavourful, it's also a simple, easy to fix and healthy meal (unlike your regular pizza, no cheese or sausage in there ). It's an effective solution to get kids to eat veggies.

Notes

It tastes great even without the herbs sprinkled on top of it. The sauté onions just bring out all the delicious flavour.

I've been wanting to bake an apple pie with almond fillings for some time, but I couldn't find an apple pie recipe that would fit the bill in any of my books. So I decided to be a bit creative and modify an existing almond pie recipe. I started from a Bakewell tart, which combines an almond filling over a layer of jam. I replaced the jam with slices of apples instead and prayed for the thing to turn right.

What got me motivated to make the pie today was this month's Weekend Cookbook Challenge 19 - Dinner and a DVD. You have to cook something to match one of your favourite movies. In this case guess which one goes with the apple pie... ? Yup, the famous teen comedy American Pie, where the poor and innocent pie suffered a humiliating fate. While my recipe is far from the classical apple pie, I hope it'll satisfy all the apple-pie lovers out there... but it's probably better enjoyed eaten

Almond Apple Pie

(adapted from Bakewell tart recipe)

Pie crust

• 125 g plain flour (shifted)
• 90 g cold butter (cut into cubes)
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp ice water

Fillings

• 90 g butter (soften)
• 90 g sugar
• 2 eggs (lightly beaten)
• 3 drops Almond essence
• 70 g ground almonds
• 40 g self raising flour
• 3 to 4 golden apples (sliced)

Directions

Pie crust

1. Preheat the oven at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4). Lightly grease the bottom of the 20 cm diameter pie dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix the flour and sugar together and put in the diced up butter.
3. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it form chunky crumbs or lumpy.
4. Make a small well in the middle, add in almost all the ice water. Mix the dough delicately with your hands until it forms a ball of dough. Add more water if the dough is too dry.
5. Roll out the dough in between 2 pieces of parchment paper. Gently place onto the pie dish and trim off the excess. Refrigerate it for 20 minutes.
6. Line the pie crust with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Fill it with dry beans or rice. Bake it for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, cool a few minutes and carefully remove pie weights. Put it back in oven (without the weights) and bake it for an additional 7 minutes. The crust should be lightly golden. Cool completely before filling.

Fillings

1. Peel, cored and cut the apples in slices.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until it is smooth and creamy.
3. Add in slowly the beaten eggs while continually whisking it and mix in the almond essence.
4. Using a metal spoon, mix in the ground almonds and the shifted flour.
5. Spread a layer of apple slices on the bottom of the baked pie shell.
6. Pour in the batter and smoothen the surface.
7. Spread another layer of apple slices on top of the batter.
8. Bake it at 180°C (350°F - gas mark 4) for 35 minutes. The pie should rise and golden brown.

The Verdict

It turned out surprisingly good. While it's a bit short of sugar for Pierre, it was most appreciated by the rest of the family. The texture is moist and soft, and has a nice almond flavor which fits very well with the apples.

Notes

In my hurry to get the pie ready for dinner, I forgot to sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on top of the apples as I had originally planned. And I would put more layer of apple slices (if thinly sliced) on the bottom and thicker slices on top.

Today I would like to introduce to you a very simple and delicious traditional dish of Alsace (eastern of France): the tarte flambée (in Alsatian Flammekueche or in German Flammkuchen). It's a sort of «Alsacian pizza», although its history is absolutely not related in any way with the famous Italian treat (except maybe as the inspiration for what is known today as «white pizzas»).

My first meeting with Miss Tarte Flambée was for a dinner at Michèle's place (my mom-in-law) in 2002. I was surprised by the simplicity and easily available materials for dressing up Ms Flambée and my, she is delicious too. Since then, I have met Ms Flambée several times, and I'm sure your friends and family would love her as much as we do.

Here's Michèle's recipe:

Tarte Flambée

Baking: about 20 minutes
Makes: 4 person

Ingredients

• 500 g bread dough
• 250 g fromage blanc (cottage cheese or quark)
• 20 cl crème fraîche (sour cream)
• 2 big onions (chopped)
• 220 g thinly sliced bacon (cut in match sticks)
• 2 egg yolks
• Salt, pepper and nutmeg powder

Directions

1. Heat oven to about 220°C (425°F - gas mark 7).
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a pan and cook the onions, stirring over low heat for about 5 minutes. They must be soft and golden but not brown.
3. In a big bowl, mix fromage blanc, crème fraîche, egg yolks, salt, pepper and nutmeg powder all together. Then mix in the onions and bacon.
4. Roll out the bread dough until it is slightly smaller than the baking sheet and place it on the sheet.
5. Spread the onion-bacon mixture over the dough.
6. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the tart is lightly brown.
7. Serve it with salad.

Conclusion

It's in no way an high-end super-complicated dish to make, but it's certainly delicious and satisfying. I bought the bread dough directly from my favorite local bakery, and the delicious crust that it became made the experience even more enjoyable

Note

You might want to let the dough rise before flattening it, then let it rise some more. Another version is using only crème fraîche without the eggs. Some people also add cheese or, mushrooms on top, but this is a departure from the original recipe.

What made me bake apricots ? The craving came about a week or two ago when I ate some very delicious ones at my mother-in-law's house (it's now apricot's season). Try as I might, I couldn't get them out of my head. When I read about Domestic Goddess' sugar-high fridays, the idea of cooking them Tatin's style came to me - it's one of the richest kind of fruit pie, right ?

A little historical background

The story of the Tarte Tatin invention is a bit fuzzy, but is known to originate from the Hotel Tatin (run by the two Tatin sisters) in Lamotte-Beuvron, France in 1889. The legend of this upside-down pie claims that it was first made by accident, although reasons for such accident are not very clear. Although the original recipe use apples, variants are now made with other sweet fruits like peaches and pineapples.

Apricot Tatin - Abricot à la Tatin

Ingredients

Fillings

• Apricots (cut into halves)
• 110 g butter
• 110 g sugar

Shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)

• 250 g plain Flour
• 125 g chilled Butter (cut into cubes)
• 1 egg
• 5 g salt
• a bit of water (approx 5 ml or less)

Directions

Pie Crust

Using food processor

1. Place flour, salt and butter in food processor bowl. Using the pulse action, press button for 30 seconds or until mixture is fine and crumbly.
2. Add egg and water; process a further 20 seconds until mixture forms a dough.
3. Wrap the dough in a plastic wrapper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
4. Roll out a clean piece of cloth on the table; sprinkle some flour on it.
5. 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 slightly larger than the size of your pie dish.

Using hands

1. Put in the flour, salt and diced up butter together in a large bowl.
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 pour in the water. Mix the dough mixture with your hands until it forms a ball of dough. 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 30 minutes.
5. Follow last steps 4 & 5 of above instructions.

Fillings

1. Preheat oven at 200°C (400°F - gas mark 6).
2. Put butter and sugar in a small pan/pot and heat it up till it is caramelized. Remove from heat and pour it into a round baking dish.
3. Arrange the apricots with the half side facing down on the caramelized liquid, make sure they are fit tightly next to each other.
4. Bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes.
5. Take it out of oven and put the crust on top of the apricot and tuck the corners in.
6. Bake it for approximately another 30 minutes or less. Let the tart cool for a few minutes before turning over on a pie plate. Do not let it cool totally in the baking dish or else it will get stuck to it.
7. Serve it warm with a scoop of ice-cream or crème fraîche.

The Verdict

Without too much surprise, the apricots make the tart a bit acid, but I kinda like it. The taste grows on you - the full apricot flavour in each bite with a mixture of sweet and acid taste at the same time. To me the pie was as good with ice-cream as on its own. Pierre (who has a sweet tooth) feels that it was nice but it was a bit too acid to his taste, and the ice cream brought a welcome balance. We both felt that another 30 g sugar to the caramel would have made this tart even better, and I could bake it again with pâte sablée instead and maybe try some cinnamon on top (or is that the bottom ?).

I have never made this tart before so I had my doubts on how it would turn out. When I took it out of the oven, the apricots had lost a lot of juice and I thought all this water would ruin the crust and create a disaster. Surprisingly when flipped the baked tart over, it turned out beautifully.

Note

Please add another 30 g of sugar to the caramel base. You can also make the caramel with water instead of butter. The pie would look prettier if you put the bottom side of the apricot on the caramel. There are 2 methods for baking it, one in two steps as I mentioned above and the other method is to simply put the pie crust on top of the apricot immediately and bake them at the same time for about 30 minutes at 200°C.