pies and tarts – FoodWatcher

Bourbon-Ginger Pecan Pie

I wasn’t planning on beginning this post for a pie recipe with anything other than a story about how much I liked it, encouraging you to make it. (Which I’ll get to later.) But after I had started writing it, several neighborhoods in Paris came under attack, including mine, and I put everything on hold. Cafés and restaurants that I knew, and areas that I frequent, were…

Pecan Pie with Bourbon and Ginger

Cafés and restaurants that I knew, and areas that I frequent, were targets, as was the area around the theatre where my outdoor market is, which suffered the worst of it. Everyone I know is okay, but others were not so fortunate. It’s a crazy world we are living in and often we just see it on television and switch the channels to something more entertaining, so we don’t have to think about it. But when it happens right outside your door, or in a city that you love so much (whether you live there or are just an occasional visitor), you can’t avoid the shock and the grief. In addition to some introspection, my hope is that this will bring a conversation and dialogue that will somehow address why – and how – this happened, and where to go from here.

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Summer Fruit Tart with Almond Cream

This is one of the simplest fruit tarts to make. Juicy fruits are embedded in a rich almond frangipane, making it easy to slice, and it keeps well, too. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about nectarines. Peaches get a lot of press. Yes, they’re juicy and yes they’re sweet. But honestly, I prefer the more assertive flavor of nectarines,…

Frangipan French fruit tart recipe with nectarines and raspberries

This is one of the simplest fruit tarts to make. Juicy fruits are embedded in a rich almond frangipane, making it easy to slice, and it keeps well, too. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about nectarines.

Frangipan French fruit tart recipe with nectarines and raspberries

Peaches get a lot of press. Yes, they’re juicy and yes they’re sweet. But honestly, I prefer the more assertive flavor of nectarines, with their slightly tooth-resistant skin, just enough to provide contrast to the juicy flesh, but not enough to make them necessary to peel. Yay for that as well.

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Summer Fruit Galette

Being a baker, summer is my favorite time of year. Not only are peaches, nectarines, cherries and plums abundant at the market, but as the seasons progress, the volume of fruits lowers the price, and I stock up on whatever I can, whenever I can. At Paris markets, I try to search out producteurs, the vendors who grow the food they sell, and every summer, one in…

At Paris markets, I try to search out producteurs, the vendors who grow the food they sell, and every summer, one in particular shows up at my market with lots of Reine Claude and mirabelle plums, a few different varieties of cherries, plump melons that you can smell standing a few feet away, tender figs, and fresh apricots.

Making the shopping experience even better, were the fellows who sold the fruits. Not only were they easy on the eyes, but they often put punky-looking cherries in baskets, labeling them “for clafoutis” (a nicer way of saying “for baking”) and selling them at a reduced price. This year, there seems to have been a turnover in staff – zut – but the replacements also offer up the imperfect fruit, or even an overload, at a discount.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

There’s a certain ease and simplicity to free-form tarts like this. Sometimes they’re called a crostata, sometimes a galette. You can call it whatever you want, but I call it a fast way to use great fruit when it’s in season, without a lot of fuss. At the beginning of summer, when rhubarb is still lingering around, and strawberries are elbowing their way forward, it’s a…

At the beginning of summer, when rhubarb is still lingering around, and strawberries are elbowing their way forward, it’s a good thing the two go so well together. And I’m happy to help them hook up.

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Chocolate Pecan Slab Pie

Pecans are the great American nut and at no time of the year are they more in demand than around the holidays. There are a lot of different nuts grown in the United States; walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts, but a pie made with toasted pecans is a holiday tradition and every year I have the urge to make one. Recently an American membership-only store…

Recently an American membership-only store opened in France, and while there are many French hypermarchés (mega-stores), this one caused a splash, particularly amongst Americans, because they have things like big rolls of their famous plastic wrap with that superlative cutter, IPA beers, and from what I hear, big bags of pecans.

There’s always been Metro, a similar mega-store that carries more restaurant-supply items. But there’s a huge refrigerator filled with every kind of French cheese (and butter) that you can imagine, sold whole (like an entire wheel of Brie) or butter in large blocks, and they give you down jackets to wear because you want to spend so much time in there. It really is that cold. But you need to be a professional to go there.

I don’t have room for an entire wheel of Brie – and I’m not talking about in my stomach (which I’d be up for trying…), but in my refrigerator – but I do have room for pecans, which I stockpile as the holidays get closer and closer. Over the years, I’ve made Ginger Pecan Pie and Chocolate Pecan Pie with my precious pecans that I haul back from the States because I’m not schlepping out to the boonies on the outskirts of Paris to get a bag of pecans when I can carry them 5500 miles over the Atlantic. (And sometimes pay extra in luggage fees.) That makes sense. Right?

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French Apple Tart (Tarte normande)

It’s the season for apple tarts, Fall, when the biggest bounty of apples shows up at the market. I’ve had to learn about all sorts of other varieties of apples since the ones available in France differ from the ones in the United States that I was used to. But it’s been a wonderful journey of discovery and I’ve found unusual varieties that were one day, abundant at the…

When I lived in California, we had some terrific apples, coming from places like The Apple Farm, which resurrected many varieties of “lost” apples, or what would be called in French – pommes oubliées. Thankfully most are as close as my local market.

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Flan Parisien

When people inquire about recipes from the pastries on offer in Paris pastry shops, I look at the recipes we used when I went to pastry school at Ecole Lênotre and it’s hard to imagine cutting down a recipe that makes a hundred canelés into a recipe that makes six or eight for a home cook, who likely doesn’t want to go out and buy a hundred copper canelé molds at 35 dollars (or even €10-15) a pop. Professional bakeries don’t make a single gâteau Opéra or eight éclairs; it’s might be a dozen cakes, five or six dozen éclairs, and hundreds of caramels. So paring down a recipe that won’t overwhelm the oven, kitchen…or budget…of a home baker can be a challenge

Professional bakeries also make components separately as part of their schedule, and in large quantities, and will start the puff pastry or make the pastry cream for a cake or tart in advance, then assemble them over the course of several days. Often recipes depend on techniques learned over a period of time, such as macaronage, the proper stirring and folding of macaron batter, and aren’t just a list of ingredients. So as wonderful and generous as bakers tend to be, not all professionals can share (or in some cases, are willing to part with) the secrets of their success.

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Quiche Lorraine

Quiche got a peculiar rap back in the 1980s when eating it was described as something that was not masculine. I’m not sure where that came from, but in France, everybody eats quiche. As the French debate how to address gender pronouns, in a language where crème, baguette, and salade are feminine and pâté, vin, and quinoa are masculine (although quinoa is a plante céréalière, which…

Quiche got a peculiar rap back in the 1980s when eating it was described as something that was not masculine. I’m not sure where that came from, but in France, everybody eats quiche.

As the French debate how to address gender pronouns, in a language where crème, baguette, and salade are feminine and pâté, vin, and quinoa are masculine (although quinoa is a plante céréalière, which is feminine), for no reason other than to make the language more challenging for the rest of us to learn (whether tique, the word for tick, was masculine or feminine has been hotly debated), quiche is enjoyed by tous (or everyone, which is masculine) in France, without any blowback.

Got that?

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Chocolate Hazelnut Tart

I’m back on the wagon of tackling the recipes in the bulging files of recipes that I’ve been collecting and hanging on to for the past thirty years. Many pre-date the internet and were from food magazines (made of paper) that I subscribed to. A surprising number of the savory recipes have the words “adobo” or “chipotle,” and “pork” in the title, so if I ever…

This one is from Gourmet magazine way back in 2004, a few years before they ceased publishing. I knew people in the test kitchen at Gourmet and they thoroughly tested their recipes, so you know they’re going to work. Gourmet was “modernized” under its last editor, Ruth Reichl, but the test kitchen remained a constant; she knew the value of a solid recipe and good testers. She also knew the appeal of a great photo and Romulo Yanes, who recently passed away, created many of the great images that Gourmet was known for.

Many questioned why Condé Nast killed Gourmet but not Bon Appétit, but the subscription numbers were more favorable for the latter, which didn’t end well, and is now undergoing another revamp. I, for one, am happy that there hasn’t been that much turnover here at the blog, but I should probably shake things up here at some point, too.

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Caramel Almond Pie

After my summer break, I came back to the blog and found out that it still thought it was on vacation…and wasn’t accepting any photos at this time. I was proud of myself for finally tackling a recipe that I’ve had on my radar for a while and spent a day baking it, taking pictures, and writing up the post. The recipe was quite a doozy, but with a name like Smoky Caramel Almond Pie, how could I not make it? It was a bit of a project but I persevered (in the name of smoky caramel and almonds…) but when I came to upload the photos, my blog wasn’t having any of it and said non.

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