Vegan Butternut Squash Tartlettes

Hello everyone! I’m posting a bit more frequently for a couple of weeks in case some of my readers are looking for some creative Vegan recipes for the holiday season. I’ll go back to my regular schedule when I’ve exhausted these new recipes!

I adore the flavour and texture of butternut squash and I really wanted to incorporate something with this unique vegetable into our Christmas party but it had to be vegan. I came up with this simple yet very tasty little tart. To give the filling some body, I added a 1/2 cup of the lentil purée, it’s not enough to taste the lentil flavour but it does make the filling a bit thicker. Make sure you serve these tasty morsels warm for the squash to shine!

An original Kitcheninspirations recipe

Makes about 40 tarts (I netted about 650 mL of filling but it will depend on the size of your squash)

Ingredients for the Filling:

• 1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into smallish cubes
• 3 tbsp EVOO
• Sea salt to taste
• 1/2 cup red lentil purée (unseasoned)
• Pepper to taste
• Thyme for garnish

Directions for the Filling:

1. Pre heat the oven to 425° F (218° C).
2. Toss smallish cubes of the butternut squash in the olive oil and salt to taste. Bake for 40 minutes or so, or until fork tender.
3. Using a stick blender, purée the squash with the red lentil purée, add pepper.
4. Store filling separately from shells otherwise shells will soften. Just prior to serving, either spoon about 1 tablespoon of the filling into each shell and reheat in a 200° F (93° C) oven

Vegan Cracker Pastry

Ingredients for the Pastry:

Adapted from Elana’s Pantry recipe

• 1 cup almond flour,
• 1 1/2 cup white flour
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp thyme
• 4 tsp EVOO
• 1 cup water

Directions for the Pastry:

1. Combine all of the ingredients except the water. Drop small amounts of water into the pastry until it holds together. Roll out between two sheets of parchment paper. These are quite delicate but hold together well. The squash filling does indeed soften up the shell a bit so don’t be too concerned if it seems a little hard on its own.
2. Bake for 16-20 minutes or until golden. Freeze until required.

This tart has body. Vavavavoom!

 

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Shaker Lime Tarts with Blueberries and our 28th Wedding Anniversary!

The tart lime custard is a lovely contrast to the sweet blueberries.

It’s our 28th wedding anniversary. Yes, I was a child bride! We celebrated at the cottage, hence the slight delay in this post. We actually married on the Holiday Monday of the Victoria Day long weekend (today) because we didn’t want to wait a year for the reception hall. One place I called had a 3-year waiting list! Can you imagine waiting 3-years for a reception hall? How long did you have to wait? We also didn’t want to pay a king’s ransom for our wedding and the holiday Monday was less expensive than a Friday or Saturday; it meant that we had funds to put a down payment on our first home. What’s the most expensive wedding you attended? About 20 years ago we went to a wedding that was over $40,000!

We didn’t have a traditional wedding cake for our wedding either because neither JT nor I like fruitcake, so we had Black Forest cake but I definitely could have enjoyed these shaker lime tarts instead. The tarts are a cross between a curd and a custard and they are plenty tart, which both JT and I adore. I made these last week when a friend dropped by to deliver his FILs pickled herring so I naturally invited him for dinner. I was inspired by fellow Torontonian blogger Ilan’s Iron Whisk recipe here but I didn’t make his recipe because I thought the Sweetened Evaporated Milk would make it way too sweet for our taste, so I adapted my old favourite Martha Stewart recipe that I first posted here. Both the filling and pastry components come together very quickly and it sure was tasty with the fresh blueberries on top.

Shaker Lime Tarts with Blueberries

Makes 4 small tarts (about 10 cm or 4 inches in diametre)

Ingredients:

• 3 limes (I used ordinary limes but you can use Key Limes instead, you’ll need about 8)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 batch of Viennese Pastry (recipe below)

Directions:

1. Zest the limes entirely into a non reactive bowl (glass works) and reserve about 1 tsp for the pastry. Cut limes crosswise into paper-thin rounds using a mandoline or a very sharp knife; discard ends and seeds.
2. Place lime slices and any juice that you can collect into non reactive bowl with the zest and cover with sugar; toss to coat evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to stand at room temperature overnight.
3. Divide the pastry into four equal balls. With the heel of your hand, flatten out the balls into a small disk. Place the disks into the centre of a spring form tart pan and press out to the edges with your fingers. Roll the top to get a nice scalloped edge.
4. Place the tart pans on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment and refrigerate for 1 hour.
5. Preheat oven to 450° F (232° C) with rack in lower third.
6. Pour the sugar and lime mixture through a fine sieve, pressing the lime slices to get every drop.
7. Add the lightly beaten eggs to lime mixture and stir well to combine.
8. Divide the lime liquid among the refrigerated tart shells.
9. Bake tarts on parchment covered baking sheet for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350° F (177° C) and bake until filling is set and beginning to look golden, about 15 minutes.
10. Allow to cool on sheet on a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Remove tarts from pans, and allow to cool completely on wire racks.
11. Top in a even pattern of blueberries.

Viennese Pastry

Originally from the Five Roses Flour Cookbook

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/8 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 large egg yolk at room temperature
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp reserved lime zest

Directions:

1. In a food processor, add all of the ingredients except the egg yolk and vanilla, process until the butter is incorporated and it resembles coarse corn meal.
2. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and process until it becomes a ball. If it is very soft, you may want to refrigerate for 30 to 60 minutes.
3. Follow directions above for use in the lime tarts.

Notes:

• You may coat this with a neutral glaze but I didn’t.
• You may also garnish the plate with a simple blueberry coulis. Purée fresh or frozen blueberries and pressing through a fine sieve. Add a bit of water or your favourite booze to loosen to make a rich paste.

Very tasty.

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Butter Tartlets, another birthday dish

I seem to have come into quite a bit of free time of late; you may have noticed my sporadic commenting and I do apologize but we’ve been spending a lot of time at the cottage (cabin/lake house). We renovated or more accurately, gave it a face lift and that makes me want to spend more time there. Freshly painted white walls instead of the dowdy wood panelling from the 1960’s, replaced the linoleum and industrial carpeting with lovely wood laminate flooring added some kitchen cabinets in my efforts to annoy the mice and even gave the furniture a face lift too with new slip covers — and purchased new artwork! You can see my excitement. So we’ve been making the most of it. Come September I hope to be back in the normal swing of things.
In the meantime I wanted to share a recipe for Butter Tartlets that I made for my birthday bash from my very ancient Five Roses Flour cookbook and I’ve been making these tartlets since I began to bake in my early teens — they have been a family favourite. This time I used a flower cookie cutter to give them a lovely scalloped edge and I baked them in mini muffin tins so they are quite small, one or two bites.

Caramelized brown sugar coating the flaky pastry.

Prize Butter Tartlets

Original recipe from Five Roses Flour Cookbook (1983)

Makes about 18 mini two bite tartlets

Ingredients for the pastry:

• 1 1/2 cup of AP flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 5-6 tbsp ice cold water

Directions for the pastry:

We all have our favourite pastry recipes so if you prefer to use your own, by all means do so but I hope you make these tasty tarts!

1. Mix flour and salt together and cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or fork until the mixture is crumbly (like oatmeal).
2. Add water a little at a time until the mixture hold together, do not overwork.
3. Roll out to about an 1/8th of an inch or 1 mm thick and cut with an appropriate cookie cutter (I used a lovely scalloped edge to make my tartlets).
4. Press into a mini muffin tin and refrigerate until you have prepared the filling.

They are rather small, are you sure I can’t interest you in more than one?

Ingredients for the filling:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup or 36 small pieces of walnuts
• 1/4 cup melted butter (unsalted)
• 1 small egg, beaten
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp dark rum (secret ingredient)

Directions for the filling:

1. Melt brown sugar and butter together (I do this in a microwave, on low) allow to cool a bit.
2. Add the beaten egg, milk and flavourings. Mix well.
3. Spoon about 2 teaspoonful into each pastry tartlet and add 2 walnut pieces to each. Bake in a 375°F oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the pastry has browned a bit.

You know you want one!

These two are before photos, dark and dowdy:

We changed the colour scheme to blues and whites to reflect the boathouse theme a bit more. The refrigerator was a later gift from my Mom’s husband so it’s a bit of an after thought, we’ll incorporate it into the kitchen when we get rid of the propane burners, which protrude out from the wall.
Sigh, back to reality!

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Susur Lee Inspired Singapore Slaw, AKA 19 Ingredient Slaw

We first had this slaw in NYC about 5 years ago at Susur Lee’s now defunct Shang restaurant in NYC’s LES (Lower East Side). Fortunately, he still serves this incredible dish in Toronto and DC. This is not a new slaw in our household. In fact, a month doesn’t go by without a version of this slaw surfacing (here, here, here, here, here, here and here) offering up left-overs for the entire week. Yes, we love it THAT much! I decided it would make a lovely main course with BBQ’d rib eye slices (the way Lorraine makes the steak here) last weekend for our dinner party. It was a huge success and now I have slaw left overs for the week!

I’ve had a few people ask me for the recipe recently, you can see the original Susur Lee’s recipe on Food Network or in his gorgeous book A Culinary Life; my version below, is my version. Now the ingredient list is daunting, but I beg you not to be put off, it is a recipe worth making. Also, a lot of time can be cut down if you get everything organized “mise en place” before beginning. I will go through some of my time saving techniques in TIPS below and hopefully it will help encourage you to make it. It is one damn good slaw, if I do say so myself.

Despite the overwhelming number of ingredients, it is WORTH making this slaw

It’s not all that time consuming if you have everything ‘mise en place’

It’s such a colourful slaw, that your eyes sing with glee when you first see it. Please click here to see the slaw Chef Lee and his famous slaw.

You can chop your herbs by hand, but I needed a time saver on this day, so I chopped them in my Cuisinart mini processor

It’s all about balance in this slaw, so tasting throughout is very important

The colourful dry ingredients above.

By keeping the ‘wet’ ingredients separate to the ‘dry’ you will preserve the freshness of this slaw and be able to stretch it out over a week

It’s all about balance of flavours.

The dressing is sweet, tart, tangy and a bit spicy

I had a luncheon of grilled shrimp and the slaw. YUM YUM YUM!

The assembly with the pickled onions, watercress and grilled shrimp

Susur Lee’s Singapore Slaw, AKA 19 Ingredient Slaw

Serve 8-10 (please click here to see the original unadulterated recipe)

Ingredients:

Pickled Red Onion (make 2 days ahead):

• 1 red onion, sliced thinly on a mandoline
• 1 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig thyme

Salted Apricot Dressing (make 2 days ahead):

• 1 cup dried apricot
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon mirin
• 1 1/2 tablespoons onion, finely chopped
  
• 1/2 tablespoon peeled and chopped fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar (taste and adjust)
• lime juice (to taste) I find the dressing a little sweet and the lime juice helps cut it, but you must taste it to be sure there is balance.

For the Singapore Slaw Salad:

• 1 pickled red onion
• 1 1/2 cups Apricot Dressing
• 1 large English cucumber, julienned
• 1 medium sized mango, firm but not soft, peeled and julienned
• 1 large carrot, peeled and julienned
• 1 small jicama, peeled and julienned
• 1 medium sized fennel bulb, julienned (this is my addition)
• 1/2 head of purple cabbage, julienned (this is my addition)
• 4 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds (to dress)
• handful of watercress (to dress)

For the herb mix:

• 1/2 cup of Thai basil leaves, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of mint, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of cilantro, leaves only, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, green and white parts, finely chopped

Directions:

1. Make the pickled onion and dressing 2 days ahead, so it has time to develop the flavours, plus it will take the pressure off having to do everything in one day. Store both in the refrigerator.

For the Pickled Red Onion:

1. Peel and julienne red onion and set aside in a medium bowl. In small saucepan, bring vinegar and water to a boil. Season with salt, peppercorns, fennel seeds, bay leaf, and thyme; continue boiling for another 5 minutes. Pour mixture into a heat proof jar while hot and let sit for at least 1 hour or two days in the fridge.

For the Salted Apricot Dressing:

1. In an immersion blender container, combine the dried apricot, vinegar, mirin, onion, sugar, ginger, and salt. Purée until smooth. Taste and add lime juice and additional sugar if necessary.

TIPS:

• A mandolin with a fine julienne attachment is a MUST. I use my Borner Roko Vegetable Shredder. Part of the beauty of this slaw is that all the ingredients are julienned uniformly, plus you’ll be standing for a very long time if you have to do this by hand! You need not clean it out between shredding as it all goes into the same pot.
• Get yourself two large bowls and one medium sized bowl. One large bowl is for your ‘dry’ ingredients and one is for the peelings; the medium sized bowl is for your wet ingredients.

For the Singapore Slaw Salad:

1. Julienne the wet ingredients first mango and cucumber, as there are only two, combine well and cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator.
2. Julienne the ‘dry’ ingredients: carrot, jicama, fennel and purple cabbage, combine well and set aside.
3. Wash and dry all the herbs for the herb mix, including the green onion. Add to a little food processor (I find the fuller it is the better) and processes until all the herbs are finely chopped. Add to the “dry” ingredients and mix well. Cover and refrigerate until serving.

Serving:

1. In a new bowl, take 2/3 of the “dry” ingredients and 1/3 of the “wet” and combine thoroughly. Dress with about 1/4 of the dressing (start small and increase as required) and combine well. Serve on a platter, piled high in the centre. Sprinkle sesame seeds overall and dress with the watercress leaves. Add the pickled onion over the summit to curl here and there (you don’t need a lot, just a few strands). Serve immediately with grilled chicken, grilled steak (please see Lorraine’s amazing technique for a full flavoured steak here), tofu or shrimp.

Thai Marinated Steak:

Prepare your steak just as Lorraine shows you in her blog here (don’t worry, it works like a charm!). Once it has aged for a couple of days, marinate it in the marinade below for a few hours.

Ingredients:

• 50 mL lime juice
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4 cup cilantro stems and roots
• 1/2 tsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 2 cloves garlic finely chopped

Directions:

1. Combine the ingredients in the bowl of an immersion blender and blitz until smooth.
2. Pour over the aged steak and refrigerate. Turn the steak throughout the day occassionally.
3. Remove steak from fridge for about 1 hour to bring to room temperature before grilling.
4. Follow Lorraine’s instructions on grilling.

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Classic Shaker Lemon Tarts, a Martha Stewart Recipe

My friend Charles of Five Euro Food posted a lovely recipe for lemon curd and it got me thinking about lemons. Once I get lemons on my mind, I usually have to do something about it. Our good friends Paul and T were visiting for the weekend and I knew I had to make a lemony dessert for one of the nights we were eating in. Plus it was Earth Day and we would be dining by candle light during Lights Out (so exciting) so I wanted a dessert that would be easy and not too heavy as I was making Paella for dinner! Thanks Charles for the lovely lemony inspiration.

Classic Shaker Lemon Tarts

A dollop of whipping cream would have made this dessert so tasty.

Makes four small 3 inch tarts (a Martha Stewart Recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1 large lemon, sliced very thinly
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• Viennese Pastry (see below)

Directions:

1. Cut lemons crosswise into paper-thin rounds using a mandoline or a very sharp knife; discard ends and seeds.
2. Place lemon slices in a medium nonreactive bowl, and add sugar; toss to coat. Cover with plastic wrap, and let stand at room temperature overnight.
3. Divide the dough into four equal balls. With the heel of your hand, flatten out the balls into a small disk. Place in the centre of each spring form tart pan and press out to the edges with your fingers. Roll the top to get a nice scalloped edge.
4. Place on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment and refrigerate for 1 hour.
5. Preheat oven to 450°F, with rack in lower third. Add lightly beaten eggs to lemon mixture, and stir to combine.
6. Pour through a fine sieve into a medium bowl. Divide liquid among tart shells, then top with the lemon slices, arranging decoratively.
7. Bake tarts on baking sheet 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350°F, bake until filling is set and beginning to brown, about 15 minutes. Let cool on sheet on a wire rack 10 minutes. Remove tarts from pans, and allow to cool completely on wire racks.
8. Serve with a dollop of whipping cream.

Viennese Pastry

Originally from the Five Roses Flour Cookbook

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/8 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 small egg yolk at room temperature
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind

Directions:

1. In a food processor, add all of the ingredients except the egg yolk and vanilla, process until the butter is incorporated and it resembles corn meal. Add the egg yolk and vanilla and process until it becomes a ball. If it is very soft, you may want to refrigerate for 30 to 60 minutes.
2. Follow directions above.

So tell me, did you honour Lights Out for Earth Hour? We had our dinner party by candle light and cooked everything on gas or the BBQ by candle light. It was a chilly night so we even had a wood fire in the fire place.

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Gluten Free Raspberry Tart

We had a very good friend and her hubby over for brunch during the holidays; she is gluten intolerant so I like to make things she can easily enjoy, AND I don’t like to make two of everything so whatever I cook/bake has to be delicious enough that her husband can’t tell the difference ;-)! My good blogger friends Kristy and Mike at Our Family Food Adventures made a raspberry tart the other day, and it looked absolutely wonderful, so I went about the internet to find a gluten free pie pastry. I made a few alterations in the filling recipe to make it gluten free and a smaller tart size. Sadly the GF crust recipe I used was not the best so I won’t list the recipe, but I used this one, cutting it in half for the smaller tart pan!

The pastry in our little tester up front turned out a very hard and leathery, I would probably suggest a bit more butter in the pastry or a different recipe!

Do you like my tart server? Why yes, it is a shoe, thank you for noticing!

The raspberries were a little tart, so adjust your sugar accordingly

Raspberry Filling Ingredients:

• 3 c raspberries (I used frozen)
• 1/3 c sugar
• 1/3 c tapioca starch
• 2 tbsp non-fat Greek Yogurt
• 1 tsp butter
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Raspberry Filling Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 375°F.
2. Defrost the raspberries.
3. Sprinkle with the 1/3 cup sugar and 1/3 cup tapioca starch, mix well.
4. Add the Greek yogurt and mix. Set aside.
5. Combine the 1 tbsp sugar with the cinnamon.
6. Rub the butter on the bottom of the tart pastry until it is completely used up. Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
7. Pour the raspberry filling into the tart pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the crust is lightly golden and the filling has set.
8. Allow to cool. Serve cold or at room temperature.

I added a heap of fresh raspberries on the day I served it

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