Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen

The table on the porch was set and ready to go. We watched the weather report. Storms were popping up all over the mountains. This was an important dinner because my blogging friend Penny and her hubby Mr. Comforts of Home were expected. We had a cooler packed with a French Rose wine and appetizers to be enjoyed on the boat. All looked well when they arrived.

Penny and Penny ready to go for a boat ride.

The sun was shining and the lake was awash with boat traffic which made for a choppy ride.

We enjoyed our cocktails and appetizers. Penny and Mr. Comforts of Home were delightful and we really enjoy their company.

David loves to give people a tour of the lake and even though the skies became threatening suddenly, he had just one more thing to show us.

Even though we sped back to the cottage, we all got drenched. But you know what? It was fun. The rain did not last long, we dried off and David fired up the grill and soon dinner was ready.

The menu was Grilled Garlic Lime Pork Tenderloin with Red Onion Marmalade. Click here for the recipe. We also had my garden Southwestern Squash Casserole which I just recently posted, coleslaw, and Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing. The sweet potato recipe came from Bobby Flay and has been a favorite of mine for a long time.

SWEET POTATO SALAD WITH WARM BACON DRESSING

6 slices bacon, medium dice

1 red onion, finely sliced

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3/4 cup white wine vinegar

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

4 large sweet potatoes, peeled, cooked and cut into 1-inch dice, kept warm

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 green onions, finely sliced

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Heat pan over high heat. Add bacon and cook until just crisp. Remove bacon to drain on paper towels. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat. Add onions and garlic and cook until soft. Remove pan from heat, add vinegar, olive oil, sugar and reserved bacon. Place the potatoes in a large bowl, pour the dressing over and season with salt and pepper. Fold in the green onions and parsley. Serve at room temperature.

Because it has been so hot and steamy lately, I decided to make a frozen dessert. What could be better than a Toasted Almond Mocha Ice Cream Tart redolent with coffee ice cream, Amaretto, chocolate and almonds. I love desserts that you can fix ahead of time. The recipe appeared in a 1992 issue of Gourmet.

TOASTED ALMOND MOCHA ICE CREAM TART

For the crust:

1 1/4 cups chocolate wafer crumbs (about 25 wafers)

1 cup sliced blanched almonds, toasted lightly, cooled, and ground fine

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

1/1/2 cups sliced blanched almonds, toasted lightly and cooled

3 1/2 tablespoons Amaretto

2 pints coffee ice cream, softened

4 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (about 1 cup)

1/4 cup sliced blanched almonds, toasted lightly and cooled

1 ounce fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine or grated

Make the crust: In a bowl stir together witha fork the wafer crumbs, the almonds, and the butter until the mixture is combined well, pat the mixture onto the bottom and sides of an oiled 10-inch fluted tart pan with a removable rim, and freeze the crust for 30 minutes, or until it is firm.

Make the filling: In a food processor blend the almonds, scraping down the side occasionally, for 5 minutes, or until they form a nut butter, and with the motor running add the Amaretto. Add the ice cream and the chocolate and pulse the motor 6 to 8 times, or until the filling is smooth and combined well.

Transfer the filling to the crust, spreading it evenly. Garnish the top of the tart with the almonds and the chocolate and freeze the tart, uncovered, for 1 hour. Cover the tart with plastic wrap and freeze it overnight.

Penny brought me the most beautiful linen dish towels. She knows me well and these will look beautiful in my kitchen. They also brought us a fine bottle of French wine. Nothing could be finer than spending time with friends. Visit Penny’s blog for more pictures of our visit.

Printable recipe Sweet Potato Salad

Printable recipe Ice Cream Tart

There is a food blogger that I admire very much. Tartelette, aka Helen, is a French expatriat living in Charleston, SC. She was a head pastry chef in a French restaurant and now makes her home here with her husband. She concentrates mostly on desserts. Her photography is professional, beautiful and dreamy. She recently posted a recipe for this apricot tart. I have had a rectangular tart pan in my baking drawer for a long time. I have been waiting for the right recipe to christen it. This was the one I was waiting for.

The recipe is deceptively simple. The crust that Helen used was a gluten free mixture, but she offers an easy flour based alternative. If you do not like to make your own crust, feel free to substitute a store bought crust. The filling is quickly whisked together. I added a small amount of almond and vanilla extracts. The apricots are merely sliced in half, pitted, and nestled into the almond filling. It is not an overly sweet dessert and is best served warm. The following recipe is my adaptation. You can go to Tartelette’s blog for her version. It is a truly satisfying dessert, made even more special by the memories it stirred of her Grandparents.

APRICOT AND ALMOND TART

For the Crust:
5 tablespoons softened butter
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup cold water

In a mixer, beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks one at a time until they are incorporated. Add the flour and salt and beat briefly to incorporate. Add enough water to make a pliable dough and mix gently in. Dump dough unto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently into a compact disc. Refrigerate at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Remove dough from refrigerator and roll it into a shape to fit your pan. Line the dough with parchment paper or foil and add rice or dried beans to weigh it down. Bake in oven for 10 minutes. Remove pie weights and foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Cool slightly if using immediately or you can store it in the refrigerator until you are ready to fill it.

For the filling:
1 stick butter, softened
1/3 cup honey (or 1/6 cup honey and 1/6 cup sugar)
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup ground almonds
2 eggs
1/4 cup heavy cream

8 to 10 apricots, halved and pitted

Add softened butter and honey to a large bowl. Whisk until honey is incorporated. Add the extracts, ground almonds and eggs and beat until batter is combined. Add the heavy cream and gently stir it into the batter. Pour the batter into the cooled tart pan. Nestle the halved apricots into the batter. Place the tart pan into a 350 degree F. oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle the tart with powdered sugar and/or honey. Serve warm.

Printable recipe

I have had a passion for chocolate croissants ever since I saw the movie It’s Complicated. In the blogging community there has been much talk about this movie. The design bloggers are thrilled with the house because it is another beautiful set design by Nancy Meyers and her group of professionals. These are the same people who brought you the beautiful Hamptons house in Something’s Got to Give. I am also a fan of the design aesthetic and find myself looking at the details of interiors of houses in my favorite movies. What is so great about It’s Complicated is that there is so much eye candy that pleases both cooks and designers. Just take a look at Meryl Streep’s kitchen in the movie. She is planning on having her architect, played by Steve Martin, redesign it.

Would you trash this kitchen? I wouldn’t. It is charming and quirky and suits her family well. There is even a dent in the refrigerator door that you can see when you watch the movie. The story behind that is that when the refrigerator was deliverd to the set, they discovered the dent and wanted to send it back, but brilliant minds intervened and said “Why shouldn’t she have a dent in her refrigerator? She raised three kids. Real people have dents.”

But to get to the heart of this post, I have to tell you that my favorite scene in the movie was when Meryl Streep took Steve Martin to her bakery after hours and fixed him chocolate croissants.

Here they are eating Croque Monsieurs. I do not have a picture of the chocolate croissants, but the scene was evocative. It was late at night and they were hungry. They were “really” hungry. She offered him anything on her bakery menu and he chose chocolate croissants. The scene of her cutting and stuffing the croissants with chocolate was nirvana. Their enjoyment was even better. I became obsessed. But I haven’t had time to make croissants from scratch until now.

Life has been “complicated” and with the trip back to Lake Lure there have been other priorities. But yesterday morning I decided that it was time to tackle them. The recipe that I used was in From Julia Child’s Kitchen. It is a lenghthy recipe that goes on for pages and I don’t want to repeat it all here. There is a very similar recipe on the web at All Recipes which will get you the same results. To make them chocolate croissants just add 1/2 ounce of shaved chocolate to each one before rolling up.

Croissants are nothing more than a yeast dough that incorporates layers of butter. The butter is layered in by a folding process. The below picture shows the dough ready for its third turn. The butter is already between two layers of dough.

The top third is folded to the middle.

Then the bottom third is folded over it; like folding a letter.

It is then turned a quarter turn, rolled and folded again. There are many steps along the way when you can put it in the refrigerator and forget it. After the fourth turn and fold you can weigh it down and put it in the refrigerator for up to two days.

The final step is cutting the triangles of dough, sprinkling them with chocolate and rolling them up. They are ready for the final rise and baking, or you can freeze them. I chose to freeze six and bake the other six.

Although the process took me two days, there was very little real hands on time required. Now that I have done it, I will definitely be making chocolate croissants again. Who knows, maybe I can open a bakery like this one. You may consider purchasing commercial LED lighting products from Vonn lighting to make your bakery look more appealing and aesthetic.

No, actually I don’t think I am up to that. And maybe making croissants from scratch is too complicated. But I certainly hope my garden looks like this.

Dream on!

I am late with my Barefoot Blogger recipe this month but want to thank Cassandra of Foodie with Little Thyme for choosing this cookie recipe. We have had two cookie recipes this month and I am sure all of those with a sweet tooth are very pleased. But frankly, I hope that we have at least one savory recipe next month so that my scales will stop screaming at me. These cookies were very good and easy to make. For some reason my cookie dough was a little dry, so that the cookies crumbled when I rolled and pressed them. But that did not affect the buttery flavor. The coconut added a nice touch and you can get very creative with the jam that you use. All I had on hand was blueberry and raspberry. If you have apricot jam or orange marmalade it will give you a nice contrast with the raspberry jam if you do half of the cookies with each jam.

JAM THUMBPRINT COOKIES ( The Barefoot Contessa )

Everything is in the ground now. Pole beans will climb the round fence rails. The marked rows contain sugar snap peas, rainbow chard, shallots and green onions. We have two hills of squash and tomato plants, pepper plants and cucumbers.

Hopefully we will be harvesting by July. The Friends of Hickory Nut Gorge Community Gardens have asked all of the participants to donate 10% of the harvest to charity.

Printable recipe

One of the reasons I love being back at the cottage is that I have access to my considerable collection of Gourmet magazines. They fill the lower shelves of our bookcase and date back to the 1970’s. I still miss my favorite magazine and wish Conde Naste would bring it back. In the meantime, I will continue cooking the well thought out recipes that were published over the years and feel myself lucky to have been such a pack rat. You can still go to Epicurious to download many of their recipes.

Sunday night in our house is either pizza night or experimentation night. This black bean tart is just the kind of meal that fits the offbeat unusual meal that I favor. I love the spice accented buttery crumbly crust that is so easy to assemble and pat into a 10″ tart pan. I love the vibrant colors of the bean, corn, and red pepper toppings. And I love the flavor combination with the accompanying lime sour cream on the top. Add a salad and you have a supper to savor.

BLACK BEAN TART WITH CHILI CRUST (Gourmet Jan. 1996)

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