Sourdough and Tarts

A couple weeks ago, some of my family and I visited some friends in North Carolina. It was a good trip. While I was there, I took baking classes on how to bake sourdough bread and tarts. The classes were given by La Farm Bakery. They have a website, www.lafarmbakery.com if you are interested. Since then I have been working on making sourdough bread, and it has turned out, so-so. I will have to improve on that sometime, but just a couple days ago, I tried for the first time to make tarts, and they turned out very well. Just one thing, be prepared to use A LOT of butter!

For the tart crust:

• 4 cups flour
• 2 1/2 cups butter
• 2 1/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 egg

Basically, just mix everything but the egg, until it is all flaky and as mixed up as possible, and then add the egg. Be careful not to over mix once you have added the egg. You can use this dough to make one big tart, or several small tarts, like we did. Furthermore, if you decide to make small tarts, you have the option of either using small tart forms, or just making free form tarts. At La Farm, the called them, "rustic tarts." That is what we did. So, once you have it mixed up, let it sit in the fridge, so that it will be easy to work with when the time comes.

Meanwhile, begin working on a filling.

• 4 cups almond flour, we just milled a bunch of almonds up in the blender.
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cups regular flour

To make this filling, fluff the butter and sugar. The use of an electric beater is recommended. Add eggs, one at a time to this mixture. Add the almond flour and regular flour slowly. Now this is ready to go into the crust.

Assembly instructions:
Roll out about half a cup to a full cup of dough, onto a counter dusted with powder sugar. Put some filling in the middle. We put about a couple tablespoons in, but had a bunch leftover, so be generous. Also, you can just spoon it onto the middle of the crust, or like us, pipe it. Then add your favorite fruit, I would recommend strawberries, raspberries, blue berries, or cherries. Finally now, fold up the edges of the dough and place on a baking sheet. It is okay if there is a gap in the middle of the folds of dough, it is actually good because it lets the steam escape. Then bake it at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 20-30 minutes. That's it, if you have any questions fell free to comment!

Rhubarb Pie

This is a simple recipe for some plain old rhubarb pie. You could probably spice it up if you wanted something with more bang! or do something to make it more juicy. But if you like simple, this is for you. You could probably memorize the recipe in a couple minutes:D

To make a home made pie crust, (go ahead and buy one at the store if you don't feel like it):

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup shortening, I use lard
• 1/3 cup cold water

Blend the flour, salt, and shortening together. I use a pastry blender, I'll post a pic of what it looks like. But is says you can use two knives to combine the mixture if you don't have one of these. If you use your hands to mix it up, you may lose a lot of dough due to it all sticking to your hands. It should resemble coarse cornmeal. Then sprinkle about 3/4 of the water over the top of the mixture while using a fork to turn up all the dry stuff at the bottom of the bowl. Press the dampened dough together into a bowl and then add only enough water to get the remaining dough in the bottom of the bowl to form into a ball. You have to be careful not to add too much water. Then grease the inside of your pie plate and you can use your hands to spread the dough into the inside of the the pie plate. I found these directions in the New York Times Cook Book.

To make the pie filling, which I found online, use:

• 4 cups sliced rhubarb, cut it whatever size you like, I would make it less than one cubic inch though, to make sure it gets cooked through.
• 6 tablespoons flour, to soak up extra juice from the rhubarb.
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter, you could probably do better with more though.

This is the filling, you could probably just throw it all in together, but it says to lay around one forth the combined sugar and flour on the bottom, then put the rhubarb in, then the rest of the sugar and flour as well as the butter. Bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit, then turn the temperature down to 350 and continue baking for another 4o minutes. You can serve it hot or cold. I have made this recipe twice, and wish I would have taken a picture of the second one, because I made the pie crust part a little better and was able to flute the edges. Oh well!

Rice Pudding with Poached Rhubarb

Today is the first day back at school from spring break. Spring break was fun and pretty busy.

After Easter and finishing some exciting homework early, we headed down to visit some family friends in NC. One of the cool things we made was a rice pudding and poached rhubarb desert. We got the idea from the Food and Wine magazine.

The rice pudding is made by boiling a cup of arborio rice for 3 minutes and then straining it. Next you return the rice to the sauce pan and then add a cup of heavy cream, 2 1/2 cups of whole milk, and a half of a vanilla bean stripped of its seeds. Cook that on low heat for 25 minutes. To finish off the pudding, mix in 1/2 cup of sugar and then chill it in the fridge. The original recipe calls for 3/4 cup of sugar, but more people than not said that the dish as a whole was too sweet.

To make the rhubarb topping, start by simmering 3 cups of water with 1 cup of red wine, the other half vanilla bean, seeds scraped, a cinnamon stick, a lemon's juice, and 2 cups of sugar. I know I said some people thought it was too sweet, so why is there so much sugar here? Well, remember that this is a poaching liquid and that you are only eating the rhubarb, which probably does not absorb all the sugar in the liquid. Also, rhubarb is a very sour veggie, so this sugar may be needed to balance the sourness. After this has simmered for 10 minutes, add a pound or more of rhubarb, cut into 1 inch slices and simmer that for 15 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender. Let the mixture cool.

Finally serve the pudding and top it with rhubarb after straining it out of its liquid. Both the pudding and the rhubarb can be made ahead of time. It doesn't have to be served right away. It may also be nice to garnish with some fresh mint.