Everyone loves a tart

Listening to Melody Gardot over on YouTube. What a voice! She reminds me of Cat Power, but there’s more oomph to Ms. Gardot. Yes, more oomph. Now you know why I don’t write more posts about music.

Check out the Wikipedia piece if you get a chance — she has quite a back story.

Here’s Worrisome Heart.

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For our twentieth wedding anniversary, Karen and I went to the French Laundry, the idea being we would hemorrhage $$$ and in return get stuffed with food we would likely never be able to taste elsewhere. It was an unforgettable experience, if for no other reason than the Terminal Truffle made us both flash on the same thing. Anyway, we bought Thomas Keller’s cookbook, too, took it home, and promptly forgot about it.

That was back in 2004. It has taken me this long to make anything from The French Laundry Cookbook; hey, it’s not every day you get a yen for braised stuffed pig’s head in cheesecloth, or pan-roasted breast of squab with swiss chard, sauteed duck foie gras, and oven-dried black figs.

Today, I made two of the desserts. Here’s one of them, and guess what: this recipe is easy.

When it comes to food, I’m an arrogant shit, so I took some liberties with the great Thomas Keller’s recipe.

First, the crust. This recipe will make three crusts:

10 ounces pine nuts
1/3 cup sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
8 ounces of unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

I see no reason why you couldn’t substitute other nuts, but I followed the recipe on this score.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Pulse the pine nuts in a food processor, add the sugar and flour, and process until everything is uniform. At this point, Keller puts the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and incorporates room temperature butter. I poured out half of the ingredients, processed the mixture with half the butter, then repeated with the other half of the dry ingredients and the other half of the butter. (There was too much here to comfortably fit into my food processor bowl.)

I transferred all of the nuts/flour/butter to a big mixing bowl. In a small bowl, I beat the egg with the vanilla, drizzled it over the nuts/flour/butter, and worked the egg/vanilla in using a fork. When it looked reasonably uniform, I set out three large rectangles of plastic wrap, and tried my best to divide the granular mixture into three equal piles. I then gathered up the plastic wrap one at a time and twisted to seal. This forces everything together. You don’t exactly get a dough ball, but you really don’t need one. You’ll see. Put two of the “dough packages” into the freezer for use some other day, and put the other one into the fridge for ten minutes or longer.

You’ll need one of those tart pans with the removable bottom. They’re 9 inches in diameter with fluted edges. Butter and flour the pan (you can do that ahead of time — keep it in the fridge). Pour the crust mixture into the pan, then use your fingers to work it into a crust. Bake at 350, turning every 10-15 minutes if it cooks unevenly. Bake until golden brown — mine took about 30 minutes. Let it cool a bit while you make the filling.

Time for the lemon sabayon:

2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into six pieces
optional (i.e., I put it in, Keller didn’t) scrapings from a vanilla bean, a bit of freshly grated lemon rind

Make yourself a double boiler. (Do I need to explain that? Stock pot. Bowl bigger than stock pot. Boil an inch or two of water in the stock pot. Bowl goes over but does not touch the boiling water.)

BEFORE putting the bowl over the boiling water, beat together the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, lemon rind, and vanilla. I used an electric mixer; Keller, who no doubt hates his pastry chef, recommends a whisk.

Beat, whisk, whatever, until smooth. It may even thicken up a little and turn pale. Put the bowl over the boiling water and continue beating. When it begins to thicken, add 1/3 of the lemon juice. Keep beating. When it thickens again, add another third of the lemon juice. Keep doing this until you have incorporated all of the lemon juice and the sabayon has thickened.

Turn off the heat but keep beating. Add the butter one tablespoon at a time. Keep beating until all of the butter has been incorporated.

Fill the tart crust with sabayon and place the whole thing on a cookie sheet. Stick it under a hot broiler to brown the top. Keller: “do not leave the oven—this will happen in a few seconds.” He is not fucking kidding. Think marshmallows over campfires.

One nice thing: if you burn the top, you can use a fork to lift off the burnt crap and start over again. Yup, just like a toasted marshmallow.

Mine browned a little unevenly, so I dressed it up with some powdered sugar.

Keller says you can serve it at room temp or chilled. I’m chilling mine. He says to serve it with a honeyed mascarpone cream, and this sounds so good, I think I’ll be taking his advice:

Whip 1/2 cup of chilled cream until frothy. Add 3 tablespoons mascarpone cream and 1 tablespoon honey. Beat until thick and creamy, about two minutes.

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Anyone up for live blogging tonight? It’s been pretty scarce lately! Where are y’all? You have LIVES or something?

D.