Salted Butter Break-Ups

What are salted butter break-ups? Easy, fabulously delicious butter cookies. They're also addictive. Make them and you will find it impossible to pass up breaking off a piece every time you pass through the kitchen. The recipe, which is from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan, couldn't be easier. The dry ingredients get pulsed in the food processor, then you add the butter pieces and pulse, then a little cold water to bring it all together. Pat the dough into a disk, refrigerate, then bash it into a roundish, thinish giant cookie.  Brush with egg wash and score with the back of your longest knife (I used my slicer). The scoring is optional if you're in a rush.

I've made these twice and have a few of tips to share:

• If you like the sweet/salty flavor profile, you could up the salt or even use fleur de sel. I love how these taste with fleur de sel.
• I roll mine out on a sheet of parchment on the BACK of a sheet pan. I use the plastic wrap I stored the dough in on top, and never have to clean my rolling pin. Yes, I am lazy. Using the back of the sheet pan offers a few advantages: no repositioning to roll around the lip of the pan and it's easier to score the dough when the lip isn't in your way. If I need the cookies to cool quickly, I can very easily slide the parchment and giant cookie off the back of the pan onto the cooling rack (or my granite counter top, if I'm in a big rush).
• Make sure you roll them thin enough, or the middle will be more like a bread than a cookie. Still good, but the star of these cookies is the crispy edge.
• Experiment with flavors! You could use Dorie's method of rubbing citrus zest into the sugar for lightly lemony cookies (or orange, lime or grapefruit!) Dip them in melted chocolate before serving. Finely chopped nuts or, gasp, cocoa nibs, would take these in an entirely different direction. So would finely chopped rosemary or thyme leaves.
• My blogging, Twitter and Words with Friends buddy Di suggested dividing the dough in half to make two smaller giant cookies. Her rationale is you would end up with more edge area, and the best part of these cookies is their edge. 
• Let them cool completely before eating them. The cookie needs cooling time to crisp on the edges. Are you sensing that we like the edges?

Guess I should have taken the photos before sampling the cookie. Next time.

I made these for French Fridays with Dorie. The group made them a couple weeks ago, but I am so behind I'm just getting to posting them. If you want the recipe (after all, who doesn't need an easy butter cookie??), you can find the recipe here.

Savory Cheese & Chive Bread

Last week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe was one of the things I made in my flurry of baking two weekends ago. I was celebrating my return to baking (wrist is 98% pain free-yay!) and with the restraint typical of addicts, I was impossible to separate from my kitchen. This bread, with its flavors of chives, Ementhaller cheese and spices was actually my lunch that day. I changed up the recipe quite a bit, using spicy olive oil, substituting pine nuts for walnuts and adding sun-dried tomatoes. It was delicious, though M. and I agreed a little roasted garlic would have made it even better.

The recipe for this loaf came from Dorie Greenspan's book Around My French Table. Every recipe I've tried from this book has been successful and a surprise, either for the flavors or the ease of preparation (or both). Amazon has it for $25. Sweet! But if you're not up for buying the book, you can find the recipe here.

Gerard's Mustard Tart

I knew it was bound to happen.

See this beautiful (use your imagination) tart? The recipe came from none other than Around My French Table, the new book from Dorie Greenspan. I had no problem with the crust. I mixed up the custard, poured it over the shell, artfully arranged the lovingly steamed carrots and leeks, and carefully placed the tart in the oven. All was good in the world.

Then my tart seemed to be baking much more quickly that it was supposed. I pulled it out of the oven and wondered, where did the filling go? Dunno. It leaked out the bottom of the tart pan (which was thankfully on a sheet pan), leaving a thin layer of well done custard in the tart shell with the lovely vegetables caramelized by their exposure to the oven's heat. Even with virtually no custard in the tart, this was gobbled up by the next day. In my mind, that's a great recipe: I can mess it up, and it still tastes good and disappears quickly.

I made this for the new group French Fridays with Dorie. I've already seen some of their mustard tarts, and they didn't spring a leak in their crust. You can find them all here.

French Fridays with Dorie - Gougeres

The collective buzz you've heard is the sound of hundreds of bloggers blissing out over Around My French Table, the new cookbook by Dorie Greenspan. It was released early and those of us who pre-ordered it raced home to find a lovely surprise from Amazon on our doorsteps. I was so blown away by the book that I could only cover 20 pages at a sitting. Each page I thought "This is it...this is the first thing I'm going to make from the book." Then I'd turn the page and think "No, this is the one." And so on. With its eye popping photos, mouth watering recipes, and evocative prose, this is the most impressive cookbook I've seen since Ad Hoc at Home.

French Fridays with Dorie is the brainchild of Laurie of slush. Laurie formed Tuesdays with Dorie when she committed to cooking her way through Baking From My Home to Yours. The group is so popular that Laurie had to close the group to new members, and several hundred people have been patiently waiting for a group to tackle the new book.

The dilemma of what to make first was solved for me when Dorie herself picked the recipes for the first month of French Fridays with Dorie. And the first recipe for the group is gougeres, the classic French cheesy puff. A group of my Twitter buddies set a date for a Twitter bake-along, and we grated cheese, tweeted and had a great time.

Gougeres are made from choux, and they are easy and delicious. It's very helpful to have all of the ingredients measured and ready. I used my small cookie scoop to measure out the gougeres, and the recipe yielded 46 petit gougeres. I baked some to enjoy for lunch, and the rest went to the freezer (freeze on sheet pans until solid, then transfer to a zip top bag). To prepare frozen gougeres, place them on a baking pan lined with parchment paper or a Silpat, and bake them without defrosting.

These were sooo delicious, they were almost irresistible. They'd make the perfect hors d'oeuvres for a party or an ideal snack if you have company drop by. You can vary the cheese (I used Gruyere) and even add spices to change up the flavor.

Thanks, Dorie, for getting the group off to such a great start with this delicious and easy recipe. If you'd like to see how other FFwD cooks fared, you can find them here. And check out the book here. It's getting rave reviews, and not just from those of us who have followed Dorie for quite some time.

Tuesdays with Dorie - Tarte Fine

In the summer of 2008, I learned of Tuesdays with Dorie, an extraordinary group (led by Laurie of slush) working their way through Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. I loved all the recipes I saw them making, and it sounded like such fun. The problem was, you had to have a blog to join and I hardly knew what a blog was. Nonetheless, I resolved to join as soon as my new kitchen was completed. But before the kitchen project even began, Laurie announced she was closing the membership of the group at the end of the following month. Panicked, I quizzed savvy (younger) coworkers, and my blog was born.

Fast forward to July 2010. We were picking dates for our vacation and M. pretended to be astonished that I would schedule our vacation around my turn to pick the recipe. Since I thought my turn would fall the first week of October, we decided on mid-October. Imagine my surprise to get an email from Laurie telling me I'd be the host this week. It was time to pick the recipe the group would make.

I knew my ideal pick would be one that had no chocolate (shockingly, since chocolate is a favorite) so that my friend Kayte could enjoy making and eating it. It would have no nuts, since so many of my fellow bloggers (or their kids) don't like nuts. Ditto coconut. It wouldn't have ingredients that are out of season for bakers in the southern hemisphere. There would be no custard, caramel or pie crust to stress out those who feel angst over these things. It would photograph well. It would be easy, not requiring expensive ingredients. And it would be delicious. So I chose tarte fine.

What could be easier? Frozen puff pastry, sliced apples, a squeeze of lemon and a bit of sugar, cream and egg and it's in the oven. It looks impressive, tastes fabulous, and carries you away to Paris. Which is where we'll be vacationing next month. We'll stock up on memories, buy many pastries at Pierre Herme, indulge in our favorite treats at La Maison du Chocolat, fill up on pain Poilane and their punitions, nut oils from J. LeBlanc (I'll definitely be trying the pistachio oil), fresh Maille mustards... And we'll surely have this tart in various guises.

The recipe truly couldn't be easier. Here are my suggestions:

• Unless your kitchen is very warm, get the puff pastry out and let it defrost as you peel and slice the apples. If your kitchen is hot, peel and slice the apples, toss them with a squeeze of lemon, then get out the puff pastry. 

• I rolled my puff pastry on a Silpat with a sheet of parchment on top. That way, I didn't roll flour into the puff pastry. It's also easier clean up (laziness is one of my primary drivers). Don't think that the paper that separates the pieces of puff pastry is parchment and you can roll with that. Not that I made that mistake. Well, just once.

• As you roll the puff pastry, start from the middle and roll out toward the edge, but don't roll over the edge repeatedly. You want the pastry to puff around the edges and if it's been compressed by the rolling pin you'll get less lift.

• Move the puff pastry to a sheet pan before arranging the apples.

• I made the tart once with Golden Delicious apples, which Dorie recommends, and once with Gala apples. My Galas were a bit mealy and I had a lot of angst over using them. But they melted into the pastry and the mealiness was not detectable.  My tasters liked the tart with Golden Delicious apples but LOVED the one with the Galas. Use whatever apples you like and adjust the sugar accordingly.

• The love of the Gala apple tart may have something to do with using Dorie's playing around suggestion for a sweeter tart: bits of butter, then a sprinkling of sugar on the pastry before arranging the apples. Then brush with melted butter and sprinkle with more sugar. Delicious! 

• I didn't glaze either of my tarts, and nobody seemed to mind. The tart I made with the Golden Delicious apples (no butter) could have used a glaze but the version with butter didn't need it.

• If you live close to a Trader Joe's, rejoice! After 18 months of no puff pastry, they are finally stocking their excellent all-butter puff pastry again.

• Although apples are the classic topping for this tart, it should work equally well with any fruit that isn't excessively wet, such as pears or apricots.

• The technique can be just as easily used for savory tarts. Instead of dotting the puff pastry with butter, brush on a little pesto (basil or sun-dried tomato) and top with sliced Roma tomatoes, slivered basil and a sprinkling of cheese, or sliced artichoke hearts, olives and roasted red peppers.

Getting to pick the recipe was an emotional experience for me.  This group, this cookbook, its author, and my fellow TWD bloggers all mean the world to me. Dorie is always with me in the kitchen. I imagine her calm, encouraging voice giving advice and reassurance when I need it most. Because of her book I have grown so much as a baker and tried things I never would have attempted before. Dorie, thank you from the bottom of my heart for this cookbook. The recipes I've tried from Around My French Table have exceeded my expectations. French Fridays with Dorie will be a new adventure, and I know you'll be there with me, calmly guiding and encouraging me.

This is Pearl, my co-author

Tarte Fine - makes 6 servings
Printer-friendly recipe

Dorie says: In France, tarte fine is a chic, slender tart made from a slim layer of puff pastry topped with paper-thin slices of apple. In this country, it is often called apple pizza, a name that aptly describes the tart's looks, but not its elegance. In the end, the name is thoroughly unimportant--it's the taste and texture that mean something, and this tart gets a perfect score on those counts.

This tart is an easy treat to put together on short notice, since all it requires is store-bought puff pastry, a couple of apples, an egg, sugar and 15 minutes or less of active cutting and arranging.

The tart can be made with any sweet but lightly acidic apple, but I always make it with firm Golden Delicious apples, because they are most like the apples used for a tarte fine in France.

Note:  Pepperidge Farm puff pastry sheets are available in every supermarket across the country. However, I can't encourage you enough to search out an all-butter puff pastry at a local specialty store. If the store doesn't carry frozen all-butter puff pastry, perhaps it will order it for you. The pastry I buy--which is so good I stopped making puff pastry at home--is made by Dufour pastry.

3 medium-size firm sweet apples, preferably Golden Delicious
Squirt of fresh lemon juice
1 sheet (about 8 ounces) frozen puff pastry, preferably all butter (see above), thawed
2 teaspoons milk or heavy cream
1 large egg, beaten with about 1/2 teaspoon water, for egg wash
3-4 teaspoons sugar

1/3 cup apricot jam, for glazing

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Peel the apples, slice them in half lengthwise and core them. Cut the apples halves in half again and cut about 7 lengthwise slices from each quarter. Put the slices into a bowl and toss them with the lemon juice.

On a sheet of parchment paper or a silicone baking mat, roll the sheet of puff pastry out into a rectangle that is about 9 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches. If the dough is warm, cover it with a piece of plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about 20 minutes. If it's still cool, just lift the paper or mat and place it on a baking sheet. Arrange the apple slices in slightly overlapping rows on the pastry, making sure to leave a border of 1/4 to 1/2 inch bare. Brush the borders lightly with the milk or cream, then brush the egg wash over the apple slices. Sprinkle the apples and the borders with the sugar.

Bake the tart for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden around the edges and the apples are soft and brown at the borders. Remove from the oven. If you want the edges of the apples to be even darker, you can run the tart under the broiler; be very careful not to overbake the pastry border. (To avoid burning the edges, you can cover the perimeter of the tart with aluminum foil.)

Boil the jam with a smidgen of water until it liquifies, then brush the glaze over the apples (if the jam has any chunks of apricot in it, avoid them).

Serve the tart hot or warm.

Playing Around:
If you'd like a sweeter tart, before you arrange the apple layer, scatter 2 tablespoons butter, cut into bits, over the pastry rectangle and sprinkle over 2 tablespoons sugar. Omit the egg wash, and once the apples are in place, brush them with 3-4 tablespoons melted butter and sprinkle with about 3 tablespoons sugar. Bake and glaze the tart as directed.