Sunday Feast № 13 | Tarte au Citron: The "ooh la la" of Lemon Tart

I guess I could wax poetic about spring and sunshine and how lemons are yellow like the sun in child's drawing and awaken with their tangy freshness and tartness. All beautiful and true, but not quite were my head was at.    I have not made a desert in eons, and especially one that requires some layering where one layer is the dough, pastry dough. Dough can taste doughy if mishandled, and with mounts of sugar to boot, it's a disaster. "But lemons might help the "lemon"! Dress up the disaster!" Alas, that was just wishful thinking. Yes, I've made some baking mistakes. The best way to address this situation was head on, and try again, sweetly and lemon-y.    At $1 for 10 lemons, and more sugar types than my kitchen has seen not just in years but ever, the weekend called for a lemon tart with sweet pastry made from scratch. Reminiscent of pasta making, the flour well contained what became effectively a goop-y mess of butter, sugar, and eggs, all stuck to my fingers. Flour saved my perturbed sanity as the mix finally coalesced into a ball of smooth dough ready for chilling after I chilled myself and summoned patience. Exhale. Rolling it out - easy. Lining a tart tin with it - no problem. Shell baking - fingers crossed and exhale regardless. Mixing and pouring the filling - good to go. Final bake and cooling - not fast enough.   It was worth it. The recipe is from “The Food of France: A Journey for Food Lovers”. I stuck to one set of measurement units (grams and milliliters). It is baking after all where precision serves a novice or a scaredy-cat. Leftover pastry or filling? No worries! There are solutions for that. Now watch me go pro! OK OK. Not quite that ready.

Fun with the leftovers Filling Preheat the oven to 180°C/355°F. Using small oven proof cups or ramekins, spoon in the filling to fill each. Place the cups or ramekins in a baking dish and pour enough close to boiling or boiling water into the dish to come halfway up to the sides of the cup or ramekin. Cook for 25 min or until set. Remove from the oven and baking dish, cool completely and then refrigerate for couple of hours. Sweet pastry Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to thickness similar to that when rolled out for the tart. Cut out shapes - I cut 4.5 cm/~2 in circles, rolled the remains into a ball and rolled out again, cut circles and repeated as often as needed till all the pastry was used. Place shapes on a floured baking tray - they can be relatively close to each other but not touching - and bake for ~15 min or till golden. Remove and cool on a rack.

Sunday Feast № 12 | Chinese Five-Spice Spare Ribs with Hoisin Glaze

The beauty of communal feast preparation is that you do not have to do it all, and since I hosted, I took to what required overnight preparation and slow cooking. To boot, one of my local supermarkets had a deal on pork spare ribs (2 for 1) that primed me for taking on this spare ribs recipe twice!    The recipe came courtesy of a friend who attended a Chinese New Year meal class at Chicago's The Chopping Block, with original Hoisin Glaze recipe halved by me second time around. And since she attended the class, the accompanying chicken bao and vegetable pot stickers were under her purview - she was effectively branded "The Chef" - and the purview of a friend that has mad bao assembly skills - "The Sous Chef" - with the bao dough prepared by a friend that is a real life pastry chef and who also made crêpes for desert - "The Pastry and Deserts Chef". All of these require skills which are currently beyond me - yeast dough is involved, nimble fingers and good eye for "done" are required. Hence, I was an apprentice line cook chopping, stirring and cleaning when required, a dish washer, and when just watching or calling to the table, a self-appointed "Restaurateur".    The ribs were the appetizer to give us energy to prepare the rest of the feast, but they also make a great main dish with rice and vegetables or salad.

Sunday Feast № 11 | Rosemary Chicken and Beans

Once upon a time I cooked the old fashioned roasted chicken Provençal, a very good dish with herbes de Provence, lemon, garlic, dry vermouth, and garnished with fresh thyme sprigs, among the usual suspects including the said chicken - bone-in, skin-on thighs. Tasty as it was, dredging those thighs in flour before placing them in oiled roasting pan I could've done with out. Then I stumbled upon a riff on the very dish, sans flour dredging, at Petite Kitchen blog. Then I played with that.    In the recipe below, compared to the Petite Kitchen one, I halved the amount of chicken, and doubled the amount of beans and used two varieties of beans. Yes, I swapped white wine with sherry or vermouth, depending which I had on hand, and also tried the chicken with or without skin, all on separate occasions. And I eye-balled the garlic. The Petite Kitchen called for one bulb, but my bulbs seemed enormous enough that I opted for 8-10 cloves instead. This is a superbly easy, self contained, and forgiving dish you can make your own.

Sunday Feast № 10 | Rosemary Tuna Steaks with Cabbage Salad

Living in a cold climate has its practical upsides. When schlepping frozen produce back home, the freezing temperatures ensure nothing will thaw en route. I take full advantage of that fact whenever possible or when the freezer looks empty. Not living close to the coast where either sea fishing is done or the sea bounty arrives relatively soon after it is caught, and looking to stock the aforementioned freezer, I grab fish frozen in its raw state after some deft filleting. Call me lazy. This is how I end up with ahi tuna steaks as often as I like, and considering it is still in season, this is how I still have cabbage on hand.    Ahi tuna and cabbage. Perusing internet seemed to provide, at least in my case, Pan-Asian options, which tickled my fancy as is, except this time I wondered about a different take. I looked to "The Cook's Companion" by Stephanie Alexander. And Bob's your uncle.    The cabbage salad can also be used for sandwiches a la Reuben, if there is any left over from both recipes which are to serve 4.