B-day Tart

For my mother's birthday, I decided to make the Chez Panisse Almond Tart. Those fluted edges are thanks to my new tart pan.

If you like almonds and caramel, then you'll love this tart. It's a little on the sweet side, which makes it great paired with a cup of tea. I reduced the sugar by 1/4 which may have affected the end results. The filling was on the watery side and was sucked into the crust. Therefore, it didn't caramelize as much as it should have. Nevertheless, the sugars still hardened, making this an easily transported tart.

Quicheness

I used a frozen crust when I made my first quiche with Emeril's filling. I forgot to put in the cheese, and it was still good. Bacon makes everything better. Yes, I cheated, but someone needed to use it.
So I have one pie pan, and it's not even a legit pan. It's a tin from some Harry's dessert we bought way back in the day. It was bad because butter would drip from the holes in the bottom of the pan...maybe I should've chilled the crust for longer. Anyways, I got a tart pan for x-mas and can't wait to use it!

Once again I used a Dorie Greenspan recipe. I modified the filling by using what we had on hand (mushrooms, bacon, onions, spinach, and parmesean cheese). It definitely took longer than 25 minutes to set, more like 40 minutes. As you can see, I probably should have rolled the dough out better, but it was still delicious!

A Tale of Two Tarts

Asians are big on fruits (and red bean) in their desserts, which is why my family tends to request fruit tarts. I made the first one using random food blogs from foodgawker.


The second time around I used Dorie Greenspan's tart recipe and Julia Child's pastry cream recipe, and the results were better. For the tart, I used ground almonds for half the flour since I like the flavor more. The crust was more crisp and the custard was a little thicker. Next time around, maybe I'll see how Ina's recipe matches up.

Holiday foods

Since we had hot pot for Thanksgiving, we decided to go American for Christmas.


We glazed a ham, stir fried green beans, mashed potatoes, and baked stuffing, mac n cheese, and biscuits. As usual, I referenced Ina for the stuffing and mac n cheese. Oy so many carbs!

Also, I randomly bought a kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) at Super H and made it into a soup.

I steamed the kabocha and then blended it with chicken stock and sauteed onions. Finally, I added curry powder and whatever else we had on hand.