High summer at the market, in the kitchen

In the days of high summer, there are few places in Chicago I'd rather be than Green City Market. It is the real deal--small-scale midwestern farmers committed to their land, astonishingly good produce in abundance. Even early on a Wednesday morning, the market hums with quiet excitement. Rounding the corner to the next stretch of stalls, I, anyway, am always buoyed by the prospect of discovering something beautiful and unusual, something I've never seen before.

And I'm glad that Sandra Holl seems to share my feelings about the place. A few weeks ago, I was invited to tag along with her on a market trip. Sandra is chef and owner of Floriole, and I've long been an admirer of hers. Her bakery is incomparable in this city. It turns out such gorgeous stuff--canelés with custard-like centres, mahogany sourdough boules, the flakiest croissants. When I'm in the neighbourhood, I always try and stop in.

We met that morning at Floriole's market stall--it's where the bakery got its start--and then made the rounds. Sandra had already put in orders with some of the farms (peaches and green beans from Mick Klug, arugula from Green Acres), so we visited the stalls to collect them. (If you take your eyes off all the produce for a moment and peer behind the stalls at Green City Market, you'll see tall stacks of cardboard boxes scrawled with some very familiar names--these are all the restaurant orders from around the city awaiting pick-up.) But in between pick-ups and afterwards, we also spent some time looking at what else there was available that day. If something catches her eye, Sandra explained, even if it doesn't fit in with anything she has planned, she'll take it back to the bakery for her chefs to do with it whatever happens to inspire them. On this day, it was the indigo-rose tomatoes at Growing Home that stood out--small and inky purple with just a bit of a blush to them. (Sandra tries to source as much as she can locally for Floriole. And in the days of high summer, between Green City Market, her mother's garden just outside the city, and the bakery's own rooftop setup, that isn't particularly hard. But even staples like flour, eggs, and butter at the bakery come from producers in the Midwest.)

On our way out, we picked up a flat of fat blackberries from Ellis Family Farms and chatted with the Ellises about their teenage daughter Mary, who's in charge of the farm's laying operation. They showed us a recent photo of Mary scrubbing a hen with a toothbrush in preparation for a show. It was pretty clear that over the years Sandra's developed some lasting ties to the people at this market.

Back at the bakery, I was also invited to try my hand at some pastry-making in the kitchen. It was a bit of a dream come true, being there in the midst of that bustle, even if only for half an hour. There was a lot going on around us--challah being tested, tart shells being unmoulded, gougères coming out of the oven, sourdough loaves being sliced by hand. Our plan was to make some galettes with the fruit we'd picked up. The kitchen made it simple for us. There were already rounds of house-made puff pastry  dough ready at hand. All we had to do was slice some peaches for the filling (tasting as we sliced, of course--Sandra emphasized the importance of this) and assemble the galettes. So we spread the pastry-dough rounds with a thin layer of brown-butter custard, mounded each with a big handful of sliced peaches and blackberries, crimped up the edges over the fruit, and then slid them into the oven to bake. And, of course, they were phenomenal. How couldn't they be? Impossibly flaky pastry. Caramel-edged fruit. Nothing better together.

Sandra was kind enough to allow me to share these galettes with you (thanks, Sandra!). How involved you want the process to be is kind of up to you. I took this as an opportunity to make puff pastry from scratch for the very first time. And though I found the work really rewarding and totally worth the effort, I suspect that most of you won't have the time and/or inclination. It can be a two- or three-day process, just because the butter needs to be cold when you're working with it and the gluten in the dough needs a couple of hours to relax after it gets rolled out each time. Instead, you could try making Gourmet's "rough" puff pastry, which is not as demanding and has been my go-to for a long time, or you could buy good-quality ready-made puff pastry (Sandra and lots of others recommend Dufour). The brown-butter custard, as Sandra says, is also optional. It adds extra sweetness and nuttiness to the galettes and prevents the pastry from sopping up too much of the fruit's juices during baking. What's important is that you use the best fruit available to you. It matters here--these galettes are really all about the fruit. Speaking of which--in the time that it's taken me to try out these galettes at home, high summer has come and gone, which means you won't be seeing peaches and blackberries at the market for much longer. But the galettes are very adaptable--you could probably work just about any fruit into them. I made two kinds this past weekend, some peach-blackberry, some plum-rosemary. You should be able to find plums at the market for a good long while still.

The homemade galettes turned out really well. In fact, they might be the best thing I've made all year. Seriously. They were so good. Octavian and I greedily demolished the two we kept for ourselves in seconds and then almost, almost, regretted having given the others away.

When people ask, I always tell them that the best thing about running this blog has been the people I've gotten to know through it. It's always gratifying to find people who think and care even more than I do about good food, people who are completely dedicated to what they do. I feel lucky to have met the people I have. It's affirming and inspiring. And there's always so much to learn from them. Sandra is definitely one of those people. She is serious about good pastry--I've seen it. So, walking around the market with her that morning, it was heartening to see that a good blackberry could still excite her as much as it does me.

Summer Fruit Galettes
An at-home take on Floriole's sweet galettes
NOTE: While in Floriole's kitchen, we didn't do a whole lot of measuring, and afterwards, Sandra only gave me exact quantities for the brown-butter custard, so the quantities below are based on my observations while baking with Sandra and what I did at home. Floriole's galettes, I think, are in fact a bit bigger than the ones I made, but mine still make for nice individual portions. About the fruit. The galettes that I made actually had less fruit than I've called for below (I used about 225 g all in all), but I think they really could have used more. The fruit does reduce a lot during baking. Feel free, of course, to use only peaches and blackberries or only plums. About the temperature. If you have a convection oven, by all means, use the convection option. Just bake the galettes at 350 degrees F instead and for about 30 minutes. About the brown-butter custard. At Floriole, the kitchen goes through a lot of brown-butter custard. This is reflected in the quantities that Sandra gave me. For my batch of custard at home, I converted most of the measurements to grams and divided by eight. And still, I had way more custard than needed for these galettes. I put my remaining custard in the freezer for the time being. Unless you have ideas for what you might do with more than a pound of remaining custard (you could just make a ton of galettes), you might want to try scaling down the recipe more or just skipping it all together. Almond cream would also be a good substitute, if you happen to have any of that lying around. About chilling. It's really important that you chill the pastries after assembling them. This will help them keep their shape as they bake. I rushed mine a little, and they don't quite have the nice star-like shape they're supposed to.

650 g puff pastry dough, chilled
All-purpose flour, for dusting
4 tablespoons brown butter custard (optional - recipe below)

FRUIT FILLING
150 g blackberries and sliced peaches
150 g sliced Italian prune plums
1/4 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary
2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided

EGGWASH
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons heavy cream

Coarse sugar, like turbinado sugar, for finishing

Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin. Place the block of dough on the work surface and dust lightly with flour. Gently but firmly roll it out into a 12-inch square, about 1/4 inch thick, using only as much flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking. Using a 6-inch cake ring or an equivalently sized plate as a guide and a sharp knife (you want the cuts to be as clean as possible, so as not to disturb the layers of butter in the dough), cut 4 6-inch circles from the dough. Place the circles on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap, and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
Put the peaches and blackberries in one small mixing bowl, the plums and rosemary in another. Add 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/2 tablespoon flour to each bowl and gently toss to combine.
Whisk together the egg yolk and heavy cream for the eggwash.
Spread 1 tablespoon brown butter custard, if using, in a thin layer over one of the 6-inch circles, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Mound a quarter of the fruit in its centre. Then crimp the pastry in the following way. Start by folding up part of the edge about 3/4 inch over the fruit, then while keeping the fold in place, take another part of the edge, an inch or so to the right, and fold it up over the fruit so that it overlaps the first folded part of the edge. Now, where the two folds overlap, press down firmly with one finger so that the folds hold--you should be able to an indent from your finger. Continue folding and pressing until the crimp goes around the entire pastry. It should take about seven folds. (You may have trouble crimping the pastry with all the fruit mounded in the centre. If that's the case, remove some to make the crimping easier and tuck it back in afterwards. It may seem like too much fruit right now, but it will reduce significantly during baking.) Repeat with the remaining pastries. Brush with eggwash and chill in the fridge for 30-60 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Sprinkle the pastries with coarse sugar and bake for 30-35 minutes, until puffed and deeply golden. The galettes are best eaten warm from the oven.
Makes 4 individual galettes.

Brown Butter Custard
From Floriole Cafe and Bakery

170 g unsalted butter, cut into chunks
Juice of a medium lemon
3 eggs
220 g sugar
1/2 tablespoon brandy
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Kosher salt, a big pinch
33 g all-purpose flour
45 g heavy cream

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, bring it to a boil, still over medium heat and whisking constantly to prevent it from separating. Continue cooking the butter, whisking occasionally to prevent milk solids from sticking to the bottom of the pan, about 5 minutes. The butter is ready when it is the colour of caramel. Check its colour by lifting some up in a spoon. Pour into a heatproof container, preferably something with a spout. Add the lemon juice and let cool.
Meanwhile, in a stand mixer fitted with the wire whip attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium, until pale and thick, about 3 minutes. Gradually incorporate the browned butter. Then add the brandy, salt, flour, cream, and vanilla and mix just until combined. If the custard starts to look grainy at any point, that's fine. Use immediately or store refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Makes about 585 g.

Pie season

I'm kind of crazy about fruit pies. They are pretty much everything I want in something sweet--just rich, flaky pastry spilling over with bright, luscious fruit. But I hardly ever make pies. I know, I know. A terrible shame. But you know how it is. Fruit pies are a finicky thing. Between pulling together the pastry, piling in the fruit, and letting it all bubble and bake, there can be a lot of heartbreak. So as much as I love them, I don't bake pies nearly enough.

But I'm hoping that will change, starting with this pie--peach-raspberry with pecan crumble. It is so, so good. It starts out with peaches--blanched and peeled, then roasted until silken and slumped. Then, come the raspberries, stirred into the still-hot peaches. These, once piled into a buttery shell, get mounded with pecan crumble, which bakes up golden and craggy. It's a bit involved, I know. A pie that will likely keep you in the kitchen all afternoon and leave you with a sink full of dishes. There's no hiding that. But this pie is also spectacular, quite possibly the best I've had. The peaches are intense, concentrated, deeply floral from their roasting. And the raspberries scattered throughout are so perfect with them, little pockets of jammy, puckery brightness. The pecan crumble too is spot on--it delivers needed crunch, with all that slumped, soft fruit. All in all, swoon-worthy.

The pie comes from the new Hoosier Mama Book of Pie. Hoosier Mama is local pie shop here in Chicago--an impressive sliver of a storefront and bakery that turns out wonderful pies all year long. They are very serious about their pie there. They are all about buttery, flaky pastry, all about intense, swoon-worthy fillings. It is my kind of shop. So I'm really glad that they've decided to share some of their pie wisdom in this book. Paula Haney and Allison Scott offer encouraging instruction. They recognise that pie-making is something that has mostly fallen out of favour at home and that the wisdom that went with it is largely lost to us. So they explain their process in detail and illustrate with lots of step-by-step photos. These definitely help with potential heartbreak. I am particularly thrilled to have picked up their crimping technique. The crusts at Hoosier Mama always have the most gorgeous, defined crimp. And now mine aren't so bad looking either.

I really would like to make more than one or two pies every year. Pie is just too good to not have around more often. And from here on out, I don't think it's going to be too much of a problem. The peach-raspberry pie is a bit demanding--one to keep in mind for when you want to make someone feel really special--but there are plenty of easier pies in the book. I'm already thinking about my next pie,  likely Lemon Chess with Sticky Blueberries. The gooey filling comes together in five minutes, and the blueberries should be a snap too. And then there's the pie after that. The first apples have already started showing up at the markets, and this book gives apples a lot of love. Classic apple, caramel-apple cider, apple and quince, dutch apple with sour cream custard, etc., etc. I can't wait! This, friends, is the start of pie season.

One final note. As you can probably see, my pie filling is a little runnier than it should be. I wasn't very diligent in following the roasting directions for the peaches. I didn't have an appropriate-sized baking pan and thought my peaches were cooking too quickly, so I pulled them out at the 25-minute mark. It didn't occur to me at the time just how important the long roast was. But this pie's crumble topping mounds over the entire surface. That means none of the water remaining in the peaches evaporates in the final bake. Those peaches need to roast for at least 40 minutes. My mistake.

Peach-Raspberry Pie with Pecan Crumble

From Paula Haney and Allison Scott's Hoosier Mama Book of Pie

NOTE: To peel peaches, bring a wide pot of water to a boil. Using a paring knife, make an X in the bottom of each peach. Blanch the peaches for 45 second or so, in batches if need be. Remove the peaches with a slotted spoon and immediately transfer them to a bowl of ice-water. Peel the peaches, starting from the X. If a peach is being stubborn, try repeating the blanching process. If this doesn't work, take your vegetable peeler to it.

1 single-crust, blind-baked All-Butter Pie Dough shell (available as a PDF here)

125 g / 1 cup raspberries

1230 g / 8 cups peeled peach slices (see note above)

15 g / 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

.5 g / 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

200 g / 1 cup granulated sugar

31 g / 3 tablespoons potato starch

Pinch of kosher salt

1 recipe Pecan Crumble (see below)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Pick through the raspberries, discarding any stems, leaves, or shrivelled berries. Set aside. (There's no need to wash them--the berries grow way off the ground.)

Place the peeled peach slices in a large bowl. Add the lemon juice and almond extract and toss until the peaches are well coated.

Place the sugar, potato starch, and salt in a small bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. Pour the dry ingredients over the peaches and gently toss until most of the dry ingredients cling to the peaches.

Spray a 9 x 13-inch non-reactive baking pan with cooking spray. (I used butter without much issue.) Transfer the peaches to the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. 

Remove the pan from the oven and stir the peaches, making sure to scrape out any ingredients that stick to the sides of the baking dish. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20 more minutes. 

Repeat this step until the peach juices are thickened and translucent. The peach slices should be tender but still hold their shape. Stir the raspberries directly into the hot peaches and cool to room temperature.

Once cooled, spoon the fruit into the pie shell and top with 1/2 of the Pecan Crumble. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the crumble is lightly toasted. (I'd recommend setting your pie plate on a baking sheet--you might get a few drips over the side.) Top the pie with remaining crumble and bake 20-25 minutes more, until the top is crispy.

Cool for at least 1 hour before slicing. The pie can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 days and in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Pecan Crumble

From Paula Haney and Allison Scott's Hoosier Mama Book of Pie

NOTE: To toast the pecans, spread them out on a baking sheet and bake at 300 degrees F for 10 minutes.

148 g / 1 cup all-purpose flour

100 g / 1/2 cup granulated sugar

30 g / 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

50 g / 1/2 cup toasted pecans

84 g / 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes

Pinch of kosher salt

Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Mix on low until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Increase the speed to medium and mix until gravel-sized pieces form.

Chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before using to top a pie. The crumble can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week.

We did it!

Good cookbooks are like good friends. You want to surround yourself with them. They're the ones who will see you through, the ones who inspire you, the ones with whom you can spend long hours musing, late into the night. And, most importantly, they're the ones you can always count on--to pull you out of a slump or be a voice of assurance or, in my case most recently, help you make a few dozen pastries worthy of the fine and discerning folks that would be at No Dessert Left Behind.

So you can count Bouchon Bakery a good friend cookbook of mine...because we did it! ((I think.) If you snagged a piece of this tart at the bake sale, I would love to know what you thought of it.) See, it was less than two weeks ago that I received an email asking me to contribute to this bake sale for No Kid Hungry, and already I knew, it was not going to be just any bake sale. Most of the participants would be pastry chefs from around the city--talented people who make wonderful pastry everyday for a living. Big things were expected. But I didn't have the time to do any recipe testing (I had a big pile of final papers to grade), and nothing that I'd made in recent memory fit my requirements. Whatever I was going to make needed to be (a) something that I could easily portion and box to go, (b) eye-catching, preferably, and (c) would hold up for at least a good 24 hours (mostly so that I wouldn't have to start my baking at 2 am--I'm no professional). So I put my trust in Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel and decided to make a half-sheet-sized tarte à la rhubarbe et au beurre noisette.

Even by my standards, making this tart was a monster of a project. In part, this was because I was doubling the recipe as written (at Bouchon, they do bake it in half-sheet pans, since, you know, it's a bakery, but the recipe for home bakers is scaled back to a quarter-sheet pan). I had twice as much rhubarb to trim and de-string. And rolling out enough pâte sucrée to fit an 18-x-13-inch pan and then getting it into that pan were not the easiest of feats. But these considerations aside, there was still a lot to do. Keller and Rouxel get you to cure your lengths of rhubarb--once trimmed and stripped of their tough outer layer--in sugar and grenadine for 24 hours. This process draws water from the rhubarb (the stalks are mostly just water) that would otherwise be released during baking, and the grenadine lends some extra colour to the stalks. There is also the pâte sucrée to pull together, a buttery, vanilla-specked dough that lines the bottom of the tart. Then there's the almond-brown-butter filling to make, some of which gets piped over the blind-baked pâte sucrée, the rest between and over the stalks of cured rhubarb. The assembled tart then gets baked to a deep, burnished gold. And finally, once cooled, it's cut up and mounded with crunchy almond streusel.

Like I said, it was a lot to do. And a lot to trust in too. I'd never made this tart before. And I didn't really have a back-up plan. There were definitely a couple of moments--like when my stand mixer was throwing up handfuls of flour onto the counter (the pâte sucrée doubled, quite frankly, is a bit too much for a standard stand mixer to handle) and when brown-butter filling (just a few drips, luckily) was baking over the edge of my half-sheet and onto oven floor--where I thought to myself, "This is going to be a disaster."

But it wasn't. The tart baked up beautifully. And with Octavian's help and that of a couple of other good-willed friends, I even got it portioned and packed up in time to make the Saturday evening drop-off at Little Goat. (See, good cookbooks and good friends!) 

I wish I could tell you more about how it tasted. But I didn't get a chance to buy back a piece (for most of the bake sale I was down on the first floor of the restaurant, directing people upstairs), and of the test square that I held back, well, Octavian did most of the testing. (He approved.) What I ate I did early Sunday morning still half-asleep. I remember it being deeply nutty and just sweet enough--the rhubarb was still emphatically tart. But maybe some of you out there are in a better position to say than me. (Speak up, please.)

To all of you in Chicago who came out on Sunday, thank you so much for your support! I hope you had a good time. And to Vanessa and Mike, who organized the bake sale, thank you so much for all of your hard work and for inviting me to bake. (And Tim, thanks for thinking of me and passing my name along!) It got a little crazy, but I had a blast.
AN UPDATE - 2013-06-12: Oh, and I got word today--we made $6,252 at the bake sale! Way to go, guys! (And here are some photos from the event.)

Tarte à la rhubarbe et au beurre noisette (Rhubarb Brown-Butter Tart)

From Thomas Keller and Sebastien Rouxel's Bouchon Bakery

NOTE: Timing. There are lots of steps to making this tart. You'll need to give yourself at least two days--the first to at least trim, de-string, and start curing the rhubarb, the second to bake and assemble the tart. I also pulled together the pâte sucrée on the first day. You could also make the streusel then too. I just didn't have the time. Eggs. To measure out eggs for this recipe, first crack them open into a bowl and whisk them together. One large egg weighs about 50 grams or comes to about 1/3 cup in volume, so that should give you an idea of how many you need. Keller and Rouxel also have you push the whisked eggs through a fine-mesh strainer to remove any small bits of shell and the chalazae attaching the yolk to the white. (I find this step a little annoying to do for more than a couple of eggs. My feeling is that you could probably skip it.) Grenadine. The book doesn't really say anything about how to shop for grenadine. The most commonly available brand in the US is mostly just high-fructose corn syrup and food colouring and also tastes like cough syrup, which is kind of annoying. Traditionally, grenadine was made with pomegranate juice, and fancier brands, like this one, are returning to that practice. (It's also not difficult, I'm told, to make your own.) I debated a little bit about what to do here. Eventually, I found a grenadine at the grocery store that was at least made with sugar (though it also tasted like cough syrup), and given that the purpose of the grenadine here seems to be to colour the rhubarb, I'd say that you should keep the fancy stuff for imbibing. It doesn't noticeably affect the rhubarb's flavour, anyway. Fraisage. Below, pulling together the tart dough requires a French technique called "fraisage." Here's a video that might give you a better sense of what to do. The actual fraisage starts around 2:05. Scale. The measurements below correspond to those printed in the book. Like I said above, I scaled up to a half-sheet pan for the bake sale, but I assume that very few of you will need to feed 24-32 on any given occasion. But if for whatever reason you do find yourself in that situation, consider getting your hands on a good kitchen scale (I'm not sure that doubling the measurements here by volume will prove as reliable) and then follow the recipe as printed. It works! Just keep in mind that you will probably have to bake the tart shell, the assembled tart, and the streusel for a few extra minutes in each case, given that you've got more surface area and more volume to deal with. Use your judgement.

CURED RHUBARB
15 young stalks of rhubarb (about 2 pounds), preferably at least 13 inches long and about 1/2 inch wide

100 g / 1/2 cup granulated sugar

120 g / 1/4 + 2 tablespoons grenadine

PÂTE SUCRÉE

375 g / 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

46 g / 1/4 cup + 2 1/2 tablespoons + 94 g / 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon powdered sugar

47 g / 1/4 cup + 3 tablespoons finely ground almonds

225 g / 8 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

56 g / 3 1/2 tablespoons eggs (see note above)

BROWN-BUTTER FILLING

235 g / 8.25 oz unsalted butter

75 g / 1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons finely ground almonds

75 g / 1/2 cup + 1 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

150 g / 1/2 cup + 1 1/2 tablespoons eggs (see note above)

210 g / 1 cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar

75 g / 1/4 cup + 2 teaspoons whole milk

75 g / 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon heavy cream

TOASTED ALMOND STREUSEL

40 g / 1/4 + 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

40 g / 1/3 cup + 1 teaspoon finely ground almonds

40 g / 3 tablespoons granulated sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

40 g / 1.4 oz cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces

Powdered sugar for dusting

FOR THE CURED RHUBARB: Trim the rhubarb to fit the length of the quarter-sheet pan you'll be using for the assembled tart. Using a sharp paring knife (a vegetable peeler would remove too much), remove any tough strings and peel from the stalks. Do this by making just a few short cuts at one end to separate the peel from the stalk and then pulling it off the rest of the way with your fingers, following the length of the stalk. If any of the stalks are very young and green and don't peel easily, leave them unpeeled.

Arrange the rhubarb in a 9-x-13-inch baking dish. Sprinkle with it with the sugar and drizzle the grenadine over top. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours, turning the rhubarb every 8 hours to coat it evenly.

Drain the rhubarb on paper towels, and discard the liquid remaining in the dish.

FOR THE TART SHELL: Place the all-purpose flour in a medium bowl. Sift the 46 g / 1/4 cup + 2 1/2 tablespoons powdered sugar and the almond flour into the bowl. Break up any lumps remaining in the sieve and add them to the bowl. Whisk to combine.

Place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and cream on medium-low until the butter is the consistency of mayonnaise and holds a peak when the paddle is lifted. Sift in the remaining powdered sugar and pulse to begin incorporating it. Then increase the speed to medium-low and mix for about 1 minute, until the mixture is fluffy. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean into the butter mixture, and mix on low for about 30 seconds, just to disperse the seeds evenly.

Add the dry ingredients in two additions, mixing for just 15-30 seconds after each to combine. Scrape the bottom of the bowl. Add the eggs and mix on low until just combined, another 15-30 seconds.

Transfer the dough to a clean work surface, gathered in a mound close to you. Using the heel of your hand, smear the dough, a bit at a time, across the work surface. Gather the dough up again with a bench scraper and repeat until the dough is smooth and uniform. This technique, called fraisage, ensures a delicate and uniform crust. Pat the dough into a rectangle, about 3/4 inch thick. Wrap the dough in a double layer of plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours, but preferably overnight. The dough can be refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen for up to 1 month.

Butter the quarter-sheet pan or spray with non-stick spray. Line the bottom with parchment paper. Unwrap the dough and place between two sheets of parchment paper. With a rolling pin, pound the top of the dough, working from one side to the other, and then rotate 90 degrees and repeat. Roll out the dough in the parchment, from the center outward, rotating and flipping the dough as needed. Form a 12-by-16-inch rectangle, just less than 1/8 inch thick. Remove the top layer of parchment and carefully invert the dough onto the quarter-sheet pan, letting any excess hang over the edges. Run your hands over the parchment and smooth the dough and force out any air bubbles. Make sure that the dough at the corners of the pan is no thicker than elsewhere. Remove the parchment and run the rolling pin over the edges of the pan to remove any excess dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes in the freezer or 1 hour in the fridge. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line the dough with parchment paper and fill the pan with raw rice or beans. Bake for 15 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes, until the dough is set and no longer sticks to the parchment. Take the pan from the oven and remove the parchment and rice. Return the pan to the oven and bake for another 15 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown. (Don't worry if the edges of the tart have darkened further. They're unlikely to burn, and you can trim them away later anyway.) Set the pan on a cooling rack and cool completely.

FOR THE ALMOND STREUSEL: Whisk together the all-purpose flour, ground almonds, sugar, and salt in a bowl, breaking up any lumps. Add the butter pieces and toss to coat. Work the butter in with your fingertips, breaking the butter into pieces no larger than 1/8 inch. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours, or up to 2 days, or freeze for up to 1 month.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spread the streusel in an even layer on a parchment-lined sheet pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes, turning the streusel every few minutes, until it's golden brown and dry. Place the pan on a cooling rack and let cool completely.

Transfer the streusel to the bowl of a food processor and blitz to the consistency of brown sugar. The streusel can be stored in a covered container for up to 2 days.

FOR THE FILLING: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a fine-mesh strainer with a double layer of cheesecloth and set over a small bowl. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. As soon as it has melted, whisk continuously to prevent the butter from separating. Once it boils, stop whisking and increase the heat to medium-high. Continue cooking the butter for a few minutes, whisking occasionally to keep the solids that settle at the bottom of the pan from burning. Check the color of the butter by lifting some out of the pan with a spoon. The butter is ready when it is the color of caramel. Remove the pan from heat and pour the butter into the strainer set over the bowl.  Discard the cheesecloth and pour the browned butter into a heat-proof bowl, measuring out 165 g / 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon. Set aside for a few minutes to cool. The butter should not have cooled completely when it is added to the almond filling--otherwise it will not incorporate--but it should not be hot off the stove either. 

Whisk together the almond flour and all-purpose flour in a medium bowl, breaking up any lumps. 

Add the eggs and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and mix on medium speed for about 2 minutes, until increased in volume and thickened. With the mixer running on medium-low, slowly add the milk and cream. Add in the dry ingredients and mix on medium-low speed for just a few seconds to combine. With the mixer running on medium, add the browned butter in a slow, thin stream and mix until combined. Transfer the filling to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch tip.

Pipe enough filling into the crust to cover the bottom with a 1/4-inch-thick layer and spread it evenly with an offset spatula. Arrange the rhubarb rounded-side-up on top of the filling, running lengthwise with the pan. If there are any pieces shorter than the pan, patch them up with a piece cut from another stalk. Pipe more filling around the rhubarb pieces, filling in any gaps. Then spread any remaining filling over the top of the rhubarb. There may not be quite enough filling to completely cover the stalks. That's okay.

Bake the assembled tart for 40 minutes. (Place another sheet pan on a lower rack in the oven to catch any drips. My filling overflowed just a little in the first few minutes of baking.) Rotate the pan, reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees F, and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes, until the filling is set and deeply golden. Set the pan on a cooling rack and cool completely.

TO SERVE: Cut the tart into 12 pieces, dividing the tart in half along its width and then into six along its length. This way, each piece shows the long rhubarb stalks in profile. Trim the crust on the pieces, if desired. Mound some almond streusel onto each of the pieces and dust with powdered sugar.

SERVES 12.

No Dessert Left Behind

Hey Chicagoans! Come out this Sunday to No Dessert Left Behind and support Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry campaign. It's going be a bake sale like you've never seen. Dozens of pastry chefs and home bakers from around the city are contributing to the spread. Many of my favourite spots in the city–The Publican, Longman & Eagle, Floriole, The Butcher and Larder, and Little Goat–will be bringing something from their kitchens to the event. It's going to be amazing! And, most importantly, all of the proceeds will go to Share Our Strength, whose initiatives in Illinois include connecting families with already existing food programs like SNAP and increasing participation in school breakfasts and summer-meal programs. You can read more about the NKH campaign here.

But I'm especially excited because I'm baking too. You'll have to wait to see what it is, but it might just have something to do with the four pounds of rhubarb I lugged home from Green City Market this morning...

I'll also be out front Sunday morning greeting people and directing them inside. Hope to see you there! 

No Dessert Left Behind

Sunday, June 9 from 10 am - 3 pm

At Little Goat, on the second floor

820 W. Randolph Street, Chicago IL

Click here for more details, including a full list of participants. 

Fish at the bridge

Okay, I know I've been promising a report on some of David Chang's perverse ramen-based concoctions from the first issue of Lucky Peach for a while now, but the truth is, I haven't been spending much time in the kitchen lately. My parents are visiting from Toronto, and we've been running all around town on home-improvement-related errands all week. I've spent more time at Ikea than anyone really ever should, and, consequently, my living room is now a fortress of neatly stacked cardboard boxes. Hopefully, there will be time for ramen hijinks this weekend.

I'm glad to say that my boyfriend and I at least had the time to sit my parents down in front of the TV and not-so-subtly present them with the Chicago episode of Tony Bourdain's No Reservations, hoping to entice them into driving us to some of the more out-of-the-way destinations it featured. That's how we ended up on a desolate stretch of 95th Street on Wednesday, way farther south than we've ever ventured, taking our pick of some luscious smoked fish.

Now, I wouldn't have expected to find good smoked fish in the Midwest, much less at such an unremarkable-looking roadside joint, but I trusted in Bourdain as I tend to, and it definitely paid off. Calumet Fisheries is of a dying breed of smokehouse in America--since 1948, they've been smoking fish on premises the good old-fashioned way, smouldering wood and all. And they're really all about the fish--they do retail out front, take-out only, and smoke the fish out back. We took our fish home to eat, but there was definitely a line of parked cars when we got there, people inside happily eating away, picnicking on the roadside.

The fish was fantastic, the salmon especially. When we got home, we unwrapped our precious parcels at the table and just dug in. There was no conversation, only the occasional exclamation about how good everything was. It was a splendid meal after a long day of errands. I hadn't had take-out with my parents in years, and this was certainly the best we've eaten together.

Update 07-13-2011: The folks at Calumet are great. My parents were so thrilled with the fish that they insisted we go back for more this week. The guys behind the counter were encouraged by our enthusiasm for their fish--so much so that they pulled out a salmon head, just smoked an hour and a half before, broke it down for us on the counter, and let us have at it. My grandmother has been a big fish-head enthusiast for as long as I can remember, and I guess I am now too. I still have mixed feelings when it comes to fish eyes--a little too mushy, if you ask me--but the rest of the head is awesome--wonderfully fatty and flavourful.

Never missing a beat

I'm terrible when it comes to keeping in touch with people, even people whom I've known for years and are dear to me. I move to a new city. I promise to call. I get caught up in my work and my new life. You know the story. That's why I'm always overjoyed when I get to spend time with friends I haven't seen for ages and we can just pick up where we left off, never missing a beat.

Like last weekend. I know a bunch of guys in the philosophy department at Toronto through my boyfriend. We met at a conference (here in Chicago, actually) when I was pretty much new to serious philosophy. I was struck by them then and still am now--they're just such fun-loving, hard-working guys who are so excited about philosophy. But since we're in different cities, I almost never see them--unless there's a big philosophy event going on somewhere, like the workshop that my department organised last weekend.

It was great having them around. The night that they arrived, we piled into the car (one of us in the trunk) and hit Belly Shack for a late dinner. If you haven't been, it's this small joint located right beneath Western station on the blue line. I'm usually not excited by the idea of fusion--it can be done so badly--but Korean-Latin-American fusion where fast food meets gourmet eats? Yes. The togarashi-spiced fries are amazing, and I love their brown-rice bowl. I'm not entirely sure about what goes into it all, but there are a lot of wild, wonderful flavours in the mix. Everyone that night found something that hit the spot. I'll definitely be heading back for some huckleberry-lime soft-serve soon.

To my dear Toronto friends: thanks for all of the conversations and company--it's been inspiring--hopefully we'll see you back home soon.

There are parrots here

No, not at the zoo--just around, in the neighbourhood, perched amid the jays, crows, sparrows, etc. My boyfriend and I were out enjoying the mild weather last weekend when we happened to glance up at a tree : dozens of squawking green birds adorned its branches. Parrots...on the South Side? Yes, and apparently they've been around since at least 1973. They even weather out the winters here.

Monk parakeet, what a strange and noble creature you are.

A Belated Birthday

Last week, one of my friends neglected to tell anyone that it was his birthday until it had all but passed and so spent it at home alone. We remedied this later in the week by taking him out to Karyn's on Green, where he could eat his vegan heart out. And though I will never be so virtuous a person as to be able to give up such things as sauteing my mushrooms in butter or topping my greens with a poached egg, I ate with relish that night. The "chicken legs," especially, were a work of genius. Most vegetarian meat substitutes lack something texturally--they're...spongy at best. But these legs were something to really sink one's teeth into and, even two days later as leftovers, were great--they even had the sort of satisfying fattiness to them that you'd expect from a good chicken leg. All of us left the restaurant overstuffed and content.

And if that were not enough, having just fantasized about baking towering birthday cakes draped in snowy frosting earlier that week--and because, of course, I hold my friends dear--I baked a (belated) birthday cake the next day to coincide with our weekly listening party. And so we spent Saturday evening digging into (not quite vegan) maple birthday cake with the strange and lovely croonings of Joanna Newsom's Ys flooding the room.

This cake, kind of like Joanna Newsom, is not for the faint of heart. It's not the buttercream-frosted vanilla cake from your childhood birthday parties, anyway. It has such grown-up things in it as maple syrup (a cup's worth!) and whole-wheat pastry flour, which make the cake's sweetness warm, dark, and deep. And to offset the maple intensity is a crown of meyer-lemon frosting, adding just enough brightness to make it all come together. This is exactly the sort of cake you want on a cold, dark January night, whether or not it's your birthday. (Apologies for the absence of shots of the cake's insides--we polished it off too quickly.)

(Vegan) Maple Birthday Cake with Meyer-Lemon Frosting
Cake base adapted (barely) from Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen

Note: This cake can be made vegan, just follow the substitutions below. For some reason or another, this cake tends to fall a little in the centre--I will have to do so more testing in the kitchen to get this worked out. However, this is an easy fix: just level off the top of the cake with a serrated knife (it doesn't have to be perfect) and cover it all up with the frosting. One last thing--the recipe for frosting below doesn't quite make enough to fully cover the cake (as you can see), so you'll have to scale up, probably by 1.5, if you don't want a bit of cake peeking out from underneath. Personally, I think it looks just fine this way.

For the cake:
1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup pure maple syrup
2/3 cup water or 2 eggs + 3 tablespoons water
1/3 cup pure olive oil or melted butter
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a nine-inch springform pan and dust with all-purpose flour.
In a mixing bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, eggs (if using), water, olive oil/butter, vinegar, and vanilla. Add the wet mixture to the dry and stir until just combined, taking care not to overmix.
Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Set the cake pan on a rack to cool.

For the frosting:
1 stick of butter or 8 tablespoons of a vegan substitute like Earth Balance (4 oz), cut into one-inch pieces if using butter
1 1/2 cups of confectioners' sugar (4.5 oz)
1/2 teaspoon Meyer lemon juice
zest of one Meyer lemon

Cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Add zest and juice to combine.

Assembly:

Heap frosting on top of the cooled cake and spread into an even layer with an off-set spatula. Add candles, light them, and get ready to bellow out 'Happy Birthday'.

All in a Day's Work

Yesterday, I spent the better part of the day debating over, getting to, or returning from brunch. I am not entirely sure if eating stuffed brioche french toast with roasted pumpkin and dulce de leche makes for an accomplished day, but it was a damned good one nonetheless--crisp fall air, afternoon sun, and four friends with whom to switch plates when the sugar became too much. Lula: so good and so far away.