Cherry Tart

Remember that time I told you guys I’d post something to the blog within a week, and then waited over a month instead?

Whoops…

In my defense, I’ve been ridiculously busy.  Grad school is craziness!  Don’t believe me?  Here is a sampling of data from a 27 page project/paper I wrote last week.

Difficulty
Very Difficult	3
Somewhat Difficult	11
Somewhat Easy	4
Very Easy	2
Comprehension
Very Difficult	0
Somewhat Difficult	5
Somewhat Easy	14
Very Easy	2
Again?
Yes	10
No	11
Why?
Benefits Reader	2
Benefits Writer	6
Limits Reader	9
Limits Writer	4
"Yes, but…"	1 r 1 w

1) Peer Review	2) Instructor Review	3) Final Draft
1	1	2
2	2	3
1	2	2
1	1	2
2	2	2
2	2	3
1	2	2
1	1	2
2	2	2
2	2	2
1	1	2
2	2	3
2	2	3
1	1	2
2	2	3
1	1	2
2	2	3
2	2	2
1	1	1
2	2	2
2	2	1
2	2	3

Class:	% Less Helpful	% More Helpful	% Most Helpful
AQ	42.6	33.3	24.1
RRE	40.4	40.4	19.2

Remember how I’m in grad school for creative writing?!  Yeah…

This project took me FOREVER to do, including a near-sleepless night grading student papers a particular way, and then wanting to crawl in a hole and die when it came time to teach my two composition classes the next day.  The most challenging part was figuring out what to do with all this data, because it included *gulp* math.  I actually did it correctly, which is impressive for me, considering the countless occasions where it takes me at least 30 seconds to add two single digit numbers together.  I wish I was joking.

Point is, I was busy.  Very very very busy.  But I missed the dear ol’ foodie blog, so I’m going to make an effort to be better about posting on here at least twice a month like I promised. 

Of course, for the month of November, I plan to do another project (like the one I referenced above) for the same class, visit my sister in Michigan, do a public reading of one of my stories, finish revising the third draft of my children’s novel, and write another novel in 30 days for NationalNovel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year.  This is on top of teaching my 2 classes and fulfilling the regular course work for my graduate classes that I’m a student in.

I know, I’m insane.  If between now and December 1^st you read in the news that a grad student in California spontaneously combusted, you know it was me.

I’m supposed to be writing a story right now that’s due tomorrow, so I’m not going to let much further ado get in the way of you and the second recipe I picked out from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. 

During one of their mealtimes, J says, “We finished up with tea and cherry tart.  Montmorency [the dog] had a fight with the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poor second” (193).

I wanted to try cherry tart, so I did.

There are lots of different kinds of tarts (you can check out my spiel on them on my post for TreacleTart).  I tried to pick a recipe that most befitted common fruit tarts in Britain, particularly in the late 19^th century when this book was written.  I decided to make a cherry custard tart.

My decision to make a cherry tart wasn’t very timely.  Cherries simply aren’t in season in mid September.  So I worked with cherry pie filling.  I think that’s what made this dessert only so-so.  I mean, it was good, but it tasted very store-bought (not a compliment, coming from me).  So if you plan to make this recipe (now that I’ve given it such a rave review), USE FRESH CHERRIES!  You can use any fruit, really.  Just make sure it’s fresh.

Cherry Tart

Shortcrust pastry (This is same recipe I used for Treacle Tart)
Makes 6 oz.

·         125g/4oz (1/2 cup) plain flour

·         pinch of salt

·         55g/2oz (1/4 cup) butter

·         30-45ml/2-3 tbsp cold water

Place cold butter in a medium bowl and add flour and salt.  Using a pastry blender (or 2 forks), cut the butter into the flour/salt until the butter is in small little cubes/chunks.  It will looks crumbly. 

 

Sprinkle water tablespoons at a time, stirring slightly with a knife after each tablespoon (I used about 2 ½ tbsp).  When you can clench the dough in your fist and it stays in a ball, there is enough water. 

Immediately put in freezer for at least 10 minutes.  When you need the dough, take it out of the freezer and put it on a floured piece of wax paper.  Roll out the dough as thin as you can get it without tearing.

Custard

You will need a flan tin about 2.5cm (1 inch) deep, 18cm (7 inches across) with a removable base. (I used my spring form pan)

• 5 oz shortcrust pastry
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup  milk
• ½ tsp  Almond extract
• 3 tbsp  sugar
• 1/2 can Cherry pie filling (or 3/4 cup fresh cherries, pitted)

1. Roll out the pastry and line the flan tin. Prick it all over with a fork and bake blind at 400F for 10-15 minutes or until it is very slightly colored.
2. Beat the eggs lightly with the sugar. Heat the milk and almond extract until it begins to steam and add the egg mixture to it, whisking everything together.
3. Strain out the liquid from the cherry pie filling and set aside.  Spread cherries on the bottom of the pastry case, evenly.
4. Pour the custard mixture into the pastry case and bake in the centre of the oven at (425F) for ten minutes and then turn down the heat to 180C (350F) and bake for a further 20-25 minutes until the custard is just set.

Pre-bake

Post-bake

I really liked the custard part of this tart.  And the shortcrust pastry was good, like it was for the treacle tart.  I just didn’t let it pre-bake it quite long enough, so it wasn’t quite as flaky as my treacle tart crust.  All in all, it was a good dessert, but… meh.  Not fantastic.

I thought it looked kind of ugly when I pulled it out of the oven (Admit it; you thought so too), with the cherries floating to the surface, but not completely, and the deflated bubbles the reminded me of a really bad sunburn.  I knew it was supposed to look like this, because I googled pictures, but I still didn’t like it, so poured my left-over cherry pie filling liquid onto the top of the tart.  It made it look much more appetizing.  In terms of the flavor… meh. 

Mucho mejor!

I’ve never been a fan of the fake cherry flavor, which is what cherry pie filling tastes like, so that’s probably why I wasn’t over the moon about this dessert.  But I love real cherries.  I think this tart would be really good if you used fresh cherries in the middle, and fresh cherry juice to make a homemade cherry syrup for the top.  Mmmmm…  

Here are some parting words from Mr. Jerome:

“We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach.  Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgement [sic].  Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own” (133).

P.S. From Julie: "Tell blog world I said hello again!  I'm going to try and collect mange (many) Danish recipes. :)"

Irish Stew

Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite non-children books.  Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is a book nobody in America seems to have heard of, but everybody should read.  It’s a hilarious story about three Englishmen in the late 1800s, all the best of friends, who decide to take a boat trip down the Thames.  The book is of their adventures while they’re packing and on their trip, as well as a lot of random digressions from the narrator.  The best parts are in relation to food.  For instance, there’s a huge long part about them trying to open a can of pineapple without a can opener, and the injuries to pride and person that result from it.  I reread that part recently, and I was nearly crying from laughter.

I first heard about Three Men in a Boat when I was traveling in England.  While we were visiting Hampton Court Palace, some of us sat next to our tour guide, Ian Godfrey, at lunch.  He asked us if we had gone through the hedge maze on the grounds.

I had, and we talked about people getting lost in there, and the technique for how to get out (I won’t tell you, so that if you’re ever in the Hampton Court Palace maze you can relish in getting lost and figuring it out yourself).  Then he started chuckling to himself.  I asked him what was so funny, and he asked if I had read Three Men in a Boat.  I said I hadn’t.  He continued chuckling to himself as he explained that it was “a very English book,” “a classic,” and “quite silly.”  (I remember during this conversation just relishing in the fact that I was having a conversation with a real Englishman.  His accent was awesome!)  He talked about a particular part of the book, where the characters go into the Hampton Court Palace maze, and get so hopelessly lost that they end up electing a leader and charging about the maze trying to find a way out.  I was totally interested, if only for the cultural aspect – A famous English book that they don’t talk about in America, which has a scene that takes place where I’ve been?  I was all over it.  And the fact that it was supposed to be funny put it at the top of my reading list.  I’ll never forget Ian saying the author of the book, all slow and poetically as only a true Englishman can do: “Jerome K. Jerome.”  He repeated it several times, and I promised I would check it out.

So when I got to Oxford, and I had a tortuous couple of days to wait for the 7^th Harry Potter book to come out (how do I manage to sneak Harry Potter into everything?  I astound even myself), I decided to go to Blackwell’s Bookshop and buy Three Men in a Boat. 

I am forever glad I did.  It’s rich with English humor: ridiculous yet subtle, absurd and yet strangely mundane.  Every bit of it is entertaining – I never got bored reading it.  It's also 100% clean, which is a necessary qualification for me, and very difficult to find.  Plus, I got a kick out of reading parts and thinking, “I’ve been there!”  I loved it so much that I shared it with a bunch of my family members and friends when I got home.  Everyone who read it loved it.  I think it’s now one of my sister Sarah’s favorite books.

I hope that through my ramblings and reminiscences, you get the point: This book is awesome!  And I was delighted, upon rereading it, to realize that it mentions TONS of food!  So I’m going to be posting twice about this delightful, “very English” little book.  Tonight’s feature is Irish stew.

While camping on the bank of the river Thames, the three men – George, Harris, and J (the narrator) – decide that “it would be a splendid opportunity to try a good slap-up supper.  [George] said he would show us what could be done up the river in the way of cooking, and suggested that, with the vegetables and the remains of the cold beef and general odds and ends, we should make an Irish stew” (Jerome 191). 

This would be a wonderful idea, except that none of these men really know how to cook, and George’s understanding of “Irish stew” is shaky at best.  He seems to think that Irish stew is just a bunch of leftovers boiled into a stew.  This doesn’t sound too bad until he starts adding pork pie, cold boiled bacon, and half a tin of potted salmon to the pot.  “He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things.  I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and we put those in.  George said they would thicken the gravy” (192).  They even considered adding a dead water-rat the dog had found.  Fortunately, after some debate, they decided to decline the dog’s offering.

In terms of how the stew actually tasted, J says: “here was a dish with a new flavour, with a taste like nothing else on earth.  And it was nourishing, too….  The peas and potatoes might have been a bit softer, but we all had good teeth, so that did not matter much; and as for the gravy, it was a poem – a little too rich, perhaps, for a weak stomach, but nutritious” (193).

You may be wondering, “Why, Mary, after reading that nasty description, would you ever consider making such a stew?”  Good question.

This whole Irish stew business made me curious.  Clearly George didn’t know what he was doing, so what is a real Irish stew supposed to be like?  I looked it up.  Turns out Irish stew has a pretty set recipe for it’s base – it usually consists of lamb, potatoes, and onion.  Other ingredients vary, but it will commonly also include carrots, cabbage, and parsley.

I decided that didn’t sound nearly as bad as the Three Men in a Boat stew.  I actually wanted to try it.  I figure Jerome K. Jerome wrote so well about the preparation and final product of George’s stew that I could deviate from the literature a bit and make a proper Irish stew (except for the lamb, because I’m cheap).  You can choose for yourself which one you’d like to try.

Irish Stew

Serves 3-4

½ tbsp butter

½ lb beef chuck, cubed in small pieces (1/4 – ½ in)

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

¼ cup onion, chopped

2 carrots, chopped in small, thin pieces

2 cups water
1 cup chopped cabbage

1 tsp beef bouillon

2 medium russet potatoes, chopped in small, thin pieces

½ cup frozen peas

¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped.

Place butter and meat in pot over medium-high heat.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir the meat until all sides are brown.  Add onions and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5-7 minutes.  Add water and cabbage, cover, and boil mixture for 30-45 min.  Taste broth, and if it needs more flavoring, add bouillon.  Add potatoes and boil for an additional 25 min, still covered.  Add peas and parsley and boil for a few more minutes uncovered.  When the potatoes are soft and the meat is tender, it’s ready for eating!

Browning the meat

How do you like my gigantic pot and plate-lid? I work with what I

've got.

After adding the potatoes

The great thing about this stew is that overcooking the potatoes is okay, because it thickens the broth to the characteristic “stew” consistency.  (Please don’t add eggs to thicken the gravy like George did.  Follow these tips for thickening stew.)

This stew was delicious!  Seriously, it was awesome!  It was simple and easy (although I was hungry, so I didn’t like waiting over an hour for it to cook), and it definitely had a distinctly Irish flavor while not being too cabbagey or parsleyish.  What is it about potatoes, cabbage, and parsley that make you think of green hills, flutes, and Riverdance?  It was a nice way to bring me back to my family roots.  I might make this for St. Patrick’s Day instead of corned beef and cabbage (which is a family tradition and definitely good, but the stew is a better). 

I would like to thank Ian Godfrey – who I’ll never see again, I’m sure – for pointing me toward such an amazing book, which led to many laughs and such a yummy dish.  Next week’s post will feature a dessert from Three Men in a Boat (I cooked it tonight, so I promise I’ll post it soon).  Be sure to come back then and check it out!  In the meantime, go to your local library and check out Three Men in a Boat.  Seriously, you won’t regret it.