Apple Crisp and Cooking Therapy

It's been a rough couple of weeks. I've taken some pictures off and on for the last two weeks, but haven't had the time (or energy) to post anything. Today you get a recipe (Apple Crisp) and then some pictures of things I made but didn't write about. Just because I don't want to waste the pictures. But cooking is good therapy when I'm under too much stress, so I have actually been doing some cooking--which in my case seems to usually mean baking!

About two weeks ago, the first of the new apples started to show up in the grocery store. For the last two weeks it was Galas, which are nice eating apples but not ones I normally cook with. Today, to my surprise, the first Honeycrisp apples showed up! Usually we don't see those for another couple of weeks. Honeycrisp apples are absolutely delicious, but only make a relatively brief appearance in the fall. They are so good eaten fresh that I don't know why anyone would bother to cook them! I plan on reheating some caramel I made a while ago, slicing some up, and dipping away. But today I made a standard in honor of the new apples and the first few really cool days we've had since last, um, let me see, March? So far back I can't remember exactly. The temperature will be headed back up to 90 this coming week, but I'm enjoying the cooler air while I can!

I basically improvised the following recipe--but once you've made apple crisp a few times, so could you. The principle is simple--slice up some apples and combine them with sugar and spices (and maybe some flour or cornstarch to thicken the juices), then top with something crispy crumbly and bake until the apples are soft and the top is browned. There you have it--apple crisp. There are a million recipes out there. I happen to like my crisp with oats in the topping.

Apple Crisp
Filling
3ish pounds of good baking apples, peeled and sliced (I use Granny Smith because I like things a little tart)
2 heaping tablespoons of flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated if possible
juice of 1 small lemon
1/2 cup sugar
1 pinch salt

Topping
1/2 cup almond meal (or toasted almonds ground quite fine)
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated if possible
1/8 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

   Preheat oven to 425 F. Peel and slice the apples into slices about 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick, although it's really up to you and how big you like your apple pieces. Combine with the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, sugar and salt. Mix well and set aside.
   For topping, measure almond meal, oats, granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt; stir until well combined. Add melted butter and mix thoroughly.
   Grease a 9" x 13" baking pan and spread the apple filling. Dot with cold butter, then scatter the topping over the apples. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until apples reach desired doneness and topping has browned. You could also bake for longer at a lower temperature if you prefer--I just happened to have the oven at 425 because I was also baking a loaf of bread.
  Cool slightly, then serve in bowls with vanilla ice cream.

Slicing the apples

Combining apples with sugar, flour and spices

Topping ingredients, ready to mix

In the pan with the butter...

...and the topping.

Out of the oven and ready to eat!

Now, as promised, are some pictures of some other things I've cooked over the last two week. If you want the recipes, let me know and I'll pass them along!

Crepes with Nutella

Banana Chocolate Chip Bread

White Sandwich Bread (America's Test Kitchen recipe)

No knead multigrain bread--posted in May

Challah--although Rosh Hashanah starts tonight, and I'm given
to understand that the new year's loaf should be round, not braided.

A Lemon Tart that Kicks Butt

Ok, I know that's an unusual title for a blog post, but this is really good lemon tart. It's one I've made many times over the last 20 years or so. It is one of the few things I make which I think is better than what I might get in a restaurant or a bakery. The lemon tart is fairly... tart. I don't like super-sweet lemon desserts, so this really appeals to my palate.

It's really a fairly simple dessert. It's a sweetened crust filled with lemon curd. The lemon curd is made from scratch and seems tricky at first, but really the only tricky part is determining when the curd has thickened sufficiently to start adding the butter. You just have to keep a close eye on it while you're stirring.

I got the recipe out of a cookbook that I bought when I was an undergraduate students. It's from sort of a strange series from the "California Culinary Academy" and was published by, of all things, Ortho Books, a division of Chevron Chemical Company. Really? A series of cookbooks from the folks that brought you gasoline, Round-Up weed killer and Miracle Gro? I also can't remember where I got the book. Bookstore? Hardware store? Gas station? The California Culinary Academy is apparently a real place--a for-profit cooking school in San Francisco--one which recently lost a multimillion dollar lawsuit brought by students by allegedly charging huge amounts of tuition and lying about job placement success rate afterward. Oops.

No matter, it's a really tasty tart. The recipe I use here is adapted from Easy and Elegant Meals: Cakes and Pastries, 1985 from Ortho Books.

Sweet Tart Pastry-- Pate sucrée
For a 10 inch scalloped tart band
or a 10- by 2-inch tart tin
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
3 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup cold butter

Mix together flour, salt and sugar. Cut in the 1/2 cup butter with a pastry cutter until it is well distributed through the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, mix egg yolks and vanilla extract together until just combined. Mix the egg yolk mixture into the butter and dry ingredients and toss until well combined. Bring the dough together and form into a flat disk. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Remove dough from refrigerator, pound it out then roll out into a large disk--rolling it out between two large sheets of plastic wrap will make it easier to transfer to the tart pan. Take off top layer of plastic wrap and gently transfer dough disk into the tart pan. This type of dough tears easily, but is also very easy to patch. Your first go at getting it in the pan will be something of a mess. Just take the extra dough and press it down to patch tears or fill in holes. In fact, if you really wanted to, you could skip the rolling and just press the dough into the pan. Once the dough is in the pan with the excess trimmed, put the tart pan into the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to let the dough firm back up before blind baking the crust.

To blind bake the crust, preheat the oven to 400 F. Prick a fork all around the dough to keep the crust from bubbling. Line the tart with aluminum foil or parchment paper, and fill with dried beans, aluminum weights, or a cake pan slightly smaller than the tart pan. Bake about 15 minutes until crust is mostly set. Remove the aluminum foil and beans (or whatever you used). Bake the pastry shell another 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven an let cool completely before filling with the lemon curd.

Butter cut into flour/sugar mixture, tossed with the egg yolks.
You can see how it will need to be coaxed into a ball.

It took a little pressing and persuading, but here's the dough disk.

After you take it out of the refrigerator, give it some good whacks
with the rolling pin to flatten before rolling.

Rolled out pastry dough

First attempt at getting it into the tart pan.

But see? It's fixable! 

Blind baking, part I.

The finished tart shell! See, that wasn't so bad. A bit
finicky, but doable.

Lemon Curd
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (lemon rind, just the yellow part)
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces and softened (left to come to room temperature)

In a stainless steel bowl, combine eggs, yolks, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest. Place the bowl over a pot of boiling water and whisk over medium heat (stirring constantly) until the mixture thickens to about the consistency of mayonnaise--about 5 to 10 minutes. Don't let it go much beyond that point, especially not to boiling, or you'll end up with curdled (i.e. scrambled) eggs. The mixture will start to foam as it warms, and will be quite foamy and slightly lighter in color around the time it thickens. Thickening seems to take forever, but once you notice it beginning to thicken things will move along quickly. Remove from heat and quickly whisk in the butter a piece at a time. Once all the butter is incorporated, pour the still-warm curd into the pastry shell and let it come to room temperature. The curd, fully thickened when you pour it,  will quickly set as it cools. If it remains liquid-y after 5 minutes, you didn't cook it enough.

Strain the lemon juice before using. No one likes lemon
pips in their tart. Well, I don't, anyway.

Everything but the butter!

Over the boiling water and beginning to foam.

Thickened and ready to mix in the butter. The foam has been
incorporated into the curd and the whole think has lightened.

After the butter and into the tart shell. Not fancy, but
oh so good. Have fun licking the bowl that the
lemon curd was in. This is one time I save the bowl for
myself rather than letting the kids have it.

And you're done! I suppose you could gussy it up with some cooked meringue, some fruit, or whipped cream, but I usually serve it plain. I own a 10-inch tart pan, but you could probably use a large pie plate if that were all you had. Don't be scared of making the lemon curd--if the mixture does curdle on you, it doesn't take long to whip up another batch and try again. Try not to eat so much of the warm curd that you don't have enough for the tart!