Tart Red Cherries

Sour cherries are in the market for about 3 brief weeks of summer. We've all seen pictures of cooked cherry pies before, so today I decided to share a view of cherries sitting in their crust waiting to be topped. Lovely, yes?

Sweet Potato Goat Cheese Galette

I found this recipe on the Fine Cooking web site. It was featured as an on-line extra to issue 53 and was never in a printed issue. Anyhoo, it is so, so delicious. It consists of sweet potatoes, (very thinly sliced,) herbs, shallots, goat cheese and parm. cheese, layered together, lasagna-style, to create, essentially, a cheesy sweet potato cake. It is one easy dish to make. And you can adjust the amounts to make just what you want. I use one sweet potato to make two individual galettes. This is a savory, elegant dish; but you can literally make it on the fly, while the coals are getting hot, (especially if you make little ones that don't take long to bake.)



The galette would nicely serve as a veg. main course, especially with a tart green salad on the side. But what I love about this dish is that it will compliment simple grilled meat very well because it has a little complexity and richness.



Here's a pic. before I took it out of the gratin dish. It comes out very easily. The thyme leaves make it nice. I loved this dish so much that the day after I made it, I went out to buy more goat cheese so I could make it again. Try it with a grilled turkey breast.

Strawberry season

I have the hardest time at the farmers market. Everything looks so good that I sometimes tend to, ahem, buy too much. Berries can especially be a challenge because you really only have a small window of opportunity to use them at their peak. This week at the market, the strawberries were luscious. About the size of the tip of a thumb and smaller, they were sweet and red all the way through. Their perfume wafted from the stand as I approached. I just couldn't resist buying a couple quarts.

When we've eaten all the fresh berries we can, some sort of baked fruit thing is our favorite way to finish off the rest. This strawberry crisp is from Fine Cooking issue 72. It was an unusual recipe (to me, at least) in that the crisp topping is made from buttered bread crumbs. The author likened the finished flavor to "buttered toast with strawberry preserves." The topping turned out delicately crisp which was OK but not fantastic. It did taste a little like toast. I much prefer a classic crunchier crisp topping like the one from Fine Cooking issue 43, so I'll probably not make this again.

Tarts and Turnovers

Thumbing through Fine Cooking issue no. 79, I found an article on berry desserts that I had passed over and forgotten. The article incudes a butter dough recipe that you can use to make a few different desserts. One suggestion is a fruit tart using the dough for the shell and a mix of lemon curd folded into whipped cream for the filling. The tart is finished with fresh berries. You could use this dough to make eight little lovely tarts.


Another possibility with the dough is it to use it to make hand pies or what FC editors dubbed "Rustic Raspberry Turnovers." If you use the dough for this recipe, it will give you 12 turnovers, maybe more with scraps rerolled.



I, feeling especially frisky one recent afternoon, decided to try both recipes by making just two tarts and using the rest of the dough to make turnovers. This Buttery Shortbread Pastry Dough is delicious and worked really well for both recipes. The little turnovers are made from circles, 4 inches in diameter. You can only fit 3 or 4 sugared raspberries in them (5-6 blueberries, I made some of both.) The crust is like a flaky cookie, and the bright tart berries play off its buttery sweetness. These were great for a few days, just sitting on the counter. Dear husband took them to work for a snack.

As for the fruit tarts, the lemon curd/whipped cream was a revelation. I loved it with the berries and it was so easy using jarred lemon curd. You could easily have the tart shells and the lemon whipped cream made in advance and assemble these tarts right before you need them. Also I think children would enjoy assembling them, spooning in the cream and decorating with berries. And the shells are sturdy enough that you wouldn't need to worry about them breaking.

Buttery Shortbread Pastry Dough

yields enough for 1 single pie crust, 8 mini tarts, or 12 turnovers

9 oz. (2 cups) all-purpose flour
7 oz. (14 T) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 T granulated sugar
1 T chilled heavy cream
2 t fresh lemon juice
1 t table salt

In a food processor, combine the flour, butter, egg, sugar, cream, lemon juice, and salt and pulse until the dough starts gathering together in big clumps. Turn the dough out onto a counter and gather it together. Shape the dough as needed

Steak Sandwiches

My husband loves to eat leftover steak, cold, sliced thin and salted. But to me this sandwich is far and away the best thing to do with leftover steak. The recipe, Philly-Style Mushroom Cheesesteak, from Fine Cooking issue #47, starts with cooking a steak intentionally to make this sandwich. But I just pick up midway and use leftover steak. You saute mushrooms, onions and garlic until soft and then toss in a few cherry tomatoes and thin-sliced cooked steak. You heat it through, divide it into two portions on opposite sides of the pan and melt some provolone over each pile of steak and vegs. After it melts, use a big flat spatula to move the whole mess to a slice of toasted french bread. This is knife and fork food at its best. However, I'm quite sure it is nothing like an authentic Philly Cheese Steak.