Filling for Double Chocolate Tart

Just to make things more confusing I am posting this filling separate from the dough recipe. And to boot, my tasters didn't like the short dough I made and previously posted. "It tasted like cardboard," they complained. And I have to agree. So here is the filling and I am researching some sweet chocolate doughs to go along with it. If you have one, that's what I recommend using. And save the short dough for some sort of pie. The recipe is from Tamasin Day-Lewis' Art of the Tart by way of Simon Hopkinson. The resulting filling is much like a dark chocolate mousse. YUM!

2 eggs
3 yolks
1 1/2 oz. sugar
3 oz. unsalted butter
7 oz. of bittersweet chocolate (this should be really dark and really good. I used 65%, but I think 70 or 75% would be better).

Melt butter in a small saucepan on the stove. Begin to melt chocolate over a double boiler on the stove. When it is almost ready add the melted butter to the double boiler. Whip the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with a whisk until light and fluffy (at least five minutes). When the butter and chocolate mixture is fully melted it is okay to take it off the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Reducing its temperature will prevent it from knocking too much air from the eggs when it is mixed in. With the mixer on low pour on the chocolate in a steady stream. Take the bowl off the mixer and give a few good folds by hand with a spatula. Pour this mix into the tart shell and bake it for five minutes at 325 F. Cool and serve.

Chocolate Short Dough

I have a goal of posting one recipe per month. It's not a lot, but I rarely visit this site. So here goes working towards a goal. I am teaching pastry courses right now and I thought I'd upload some of the recipes we are working with in class. The following is a double chocolate tart I am tinkering with at the moment. It is a combination of a few recipes from Tamasin Day-Lewis' Art of the Tart. Yesterday I prepared the chocolate short dough and today I will roll it out and make the filling. Here is the short dough recipe.

4 oz. or 1 cup All purpose flour

2 tsp. good dark cocoa powder

1 heaping tsp icing sugar

2 oz or 4 Tbs. cold butter cut into small cubes

1 egg yolk

1 to 2 Tbs. cold water

Sift the dry ingredients together into the bowl of a food processor. Add the cubes of butter and pulse the machine briefly until the butter becomes incorporated and broken into smaller than pea sized chunks. Add the egg yolk and 1 Tbs. cold water (add ice cubes to the water if necessary). Run the processor briefly. If needed add another Tbs. of water. The dough will darken although it may not seem to come together. Simply open the food processor and press the dough with your hands. If it comes together, it is ready. Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for at least 1/2 hour. I will post the finishing steps and some photos later!

Soup a L'oignon

It is cold again up here. I suppose that is when I like to cook most. And when we found Gruyere cheese for sale at Whole Foods we had to make French onion soup. The recipe is from Julia Child and it is very easy aside from the time it takes to actually cook. I encourage you to try it. It was the best French onion soup I've ever had.

1 1/2 pounds yellow onions (or 4 large)

3 tbs. butter

1 tbs. oil

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp sugar

3 tbs. flour

1 qt. stock (beef or chicken)

1 qt. water

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 oz. cognac or brandy

old bread (I recommend a nice crusty sourdough loaf)

1 cup grated Gruyere cheese

*please, go out and find Gruyere. It must say "Gruyere" - don't use anything else.

Chop the onions in thin strips. I halve and peel them, then simply slice them so they make little half moons. Melt the butter and oil in a heavy bottomed stock pot, add the onions and cook on low for 15 minutes with the cover on.

Uncover, raise the heat to medium, add salt and sugar, and cook the onions for 30-40 minutes. You will need to stir them every so often. And I encourage you not to have the heat too high. You are slowly developing color at this point not sprinting for the caramelized finish.

While the onions brown heat up your water and stock. You want to add it to the stock pot when it is boiling so as not to arrest the cooking process. If you have any beef stock to hand, I recommend it rather than chicken as it adds more color and flavour to the soup.

When the onions are a nice golden color, and the stock is hot (but not yet added); sprinkle the 3 tbs. flour over the onions and stir frequently for 3 minutes. Now it is time to add the stock - boiling hot mind you to prevent flour clumps from forming. And I recommend initially adding a cupful at a time and stirring it well. Once you think the flour has been incorporated - pour in the remaining stock. Add the white wine and bring the soup to a low simmer and cook partially covered for another 30-40 minutes.

Grate your cheese and cut a 1/4 inch slice of sourdough for each soup bowl. Find oven safe bowls and turn on your broiler. Taste your soup first, and add any extra salt if necessary. Ladle it into the bowls. You can under fill it so that you don't have the hazard of burning yourself with boiling hot soup. I left a good three quarters of an inch. Plonk your bread slice on top and smother the soup with gruyere.

Place the bowls on a tray under the broiler and crack the oven door so that you can watch them. The cheese will first melt, the it will begin to bubble. You may wish to gingerly slide out the tray and check for browning; but it could take a good five or ten minutes. If the soup is browning unevenly, rotate the bowls on the tray.

We served the bowls on plates so that we didn't have to worry about scorching ourselves.

Enjoy!

BTW...

Check it out. Hint - you're looking for my name.

Rhubarb and Ice cream

We have rhubarb! Honest to goodness rhubarb, in the grocery store! And it doesn't look like the rhubarb they tried to sell me in Arizona, brown, limp, weeping. It is robust, rosy, and cheap! So I had to bring some home to surprise my husband. He has been whining for dessert after dinner these last few nights and I think he will be excited by cooked rhubarb and ice cream.

1 pound rhubarb

2/3 cup sugar

1 tsp. lavender

Slice the tops and tails off the rhubarb. Next divide any wide pieces in half down the middle. Chop the rhubarb into 2 inch long lengths. Find a skillet wide enough to accommodate the rhubarb in one layer. When it cooks down it will release a lot of moisture and the large surface area of the skillet will aid in evaporation. Combine your herb, sugar, and veg. Cook on medium heat stirring occasionally until the rhubarb releases moisture and the sugar dissolves. Then turn down heat to medium low and stir every ten minutes or so. Cook until tender 30-40 minutes. Cool and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Atomic coffee

We are in the middle of a heat wave, and the only way to fight it is with a batch of Merissa Mendoza's Atomic Coffee. I got this recipe from Merissa when I worked with her in the pastry kitchen at the Sheraton. It must sit overnight, but it has the added bonus of not requiring the application of any heat. Keep that house cool!

1 cup coffee grounds

3 cups cold water

3 cups heavy cream or half and half

6 cups milk

1 cup sugar

a generous pinch of cinnamon

a generous pinch of kosher salt

Combine the coffee grounds and cold water in a container and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. Strain the mixture and measure your amount of coffee. The list of the remaining 3 ingredients require the addition of 3 cups of coffee. So if you haven't quite made that much, adjust the recipe accordingly. Combine coffee and milk, cream, sugar, and spice; sit and sip.

The coffee will taste even better again if you let the cinnamon mellow with the other ingredients for a time, but I bet you can't control yourself.

Fool

We made this dessert for dinner guests this weekend. I was in the mood for ginger, and thought I would make a cake; but lost my motivation. Fool is an English dessert, something I learned to make when working in London. It is layered much like a parfait, but it doesn't require the arduous fiddling with eggs.

16 oz. greek yogurt

1 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peak

6 peaches, pitted and large dice

1/4 cup sugar

a generous grating of fresh ginger

1/4 cup chopped crystallized ginger (optional)

There a lots of little tips I can give you with this recipe. The first, don't substitute anything for the greek yogurt. It has a natural tartness to it that is a beautiful foil for the fat and sweetness of this dessert. But if you must, if you cry, "Claudine, I cannot find greek yogurt for sale at my local grocery store", then try plain FULL FAT yogurt.

Secondly, I like to have fresh ginger to hand, but found myself constantly buying it, using a miniscule amount and then laying it in my crisper drawer to be forgotten and to become moldy. Then some clever cookbook recommended I keep it in the freezer and simply grate the frozen chunk into whatever recipe calls for it. Pure genius. The ginger will change in consistancy and become quite sodden with water if it is defrosted, but that should never be neccessary. Remember, freeze and grate.

Enough tips - let me outline the simple recipe for you.

The first step is one we used in England, and I skimped on it quite a bit when making the fool this weekend. I will let you decide whether you want to do it or not. I was taught to turn the yogurt onto a double or triple layer of cheesecloth. Gather the ends of the cloth and secure them. Then hang the whole contraption suspended over a large bowl and leave it to sit in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning you will find a thin yellowish liquid in the bowl, dispose of this. You have effectively leeched some of the liquid out of the yogurt making it thicker and creamier in consistency. If you would like to cheat, I will tell you that this weekend I only drained the yogurt for 2 hours, and had good results.

Combine the chopped peaches, 1/4 cup sugar, and grating of ginger in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat. Stir the mixture occassionally to prevent the sugar from catching and burning. You need only cook the peaches for a short time, perhaps ten minutes, only long enough for the fruit to soften and the flavours to combine.

Remove the pan from the heat and cool off the mixture. I placed the whole thing in the freezer and stirred it every ten minutes. You won't want to add it to your cream/yogurt mix until it has cooled. Lukewarm would be permissable.

Lastly whip your cream to soft peak. For those of you who aren't familiar with this term, soft peak refers to the type of mound you should see in the cream when you touch and pull your finger, a fork, a beater away from the surface. It happens shortly after you notice the cream thicken. And it should create a little mountain which falls over on itself at the tip.

Okay, I said this way easy...so here goes.

In a bowl large enough for the cream and yogurt stir your yogurt with a utensil to break it up and soften it. Add your cream and gently combine the mixture. Now you are ready with all your layers. Simply combine them yogurt, fruit, yogurt, fruit in a container for serving - or in individual containers - think glasses....

If you are using the crystallized ginger, it is typically very spicy, so be spare with it.

AND if you are like us and overfeed your guests you will find yourself with leftover fool. No matter. This recipe is fabulous on top of waffles in the morning, especially if you have candied nuts around. Or you can pop it all in the freezer for an impromptu semifreddo, simply be sure to stir the mixture every 1/2 hour to prevent untasty ice crystals from forming.