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Bon Appétit: Pear-Cardamom Pie with Almond Crust

You may have let this little jewel slip by, but recently Bon Appetit published a huge dessert recipe book. It can be found at most major bookstores or on Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Bon-Appetit-Desserts-Cookbook-Wonderful/dp/0740793527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295127505&sr=8-1

I’ll go on record as saying I think this book is going to be a classic dessert book. There are so many great recipes that cover a huge range of tastes. I think it will be a go-to book for many cooks for many years to come and I expect to turn to it often.

I’ve had the photos from this recipe done for a few months now, but haven’t had the time to write it up. I originally did this as the birthday pie for my wife Nedda. We both like the taste of cardamom as it lends an exotic flavor, one that she grew up with. Of all the cooking I’ve done I can honestly say I haven’t made a lot of pies. So I expected this to be a learning experience, particularly since marzipan, the almond paste flavoring, is in the crust. Great pies always look so good, but I wasn’t sure how mine would turn out. I’m happy to say I was pleased with the crust and the flavors of this recipe.

Epicurious.com publishes Bon Appétit recipes and this one can be found online at:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pear-Cardamom-Pie-with-Almond-Crust-100327

Ingredients

For crust

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 7-ounce package marzipan or almond paste, coarsely crumbled
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
5 tablespoons chilled solid vegetable shortening, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
5 tablespoons (about) pear nectar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

For filling

1/3 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1 vanilla bean, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
3 pounds firm but ripe Bartlett pears, peeled, halved, cored, cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch-thick wedges
2 tablespoons pear nectar

1 egg, beaten to blend (for glaze)
1 tablespoon sugar

Most of these ingredients can be found at your grocery store, including cardamom. It’s just not a spice that we normally use day in and day out. But if you look close at the spice rack in your grocery store you’ll probably find it. I was unable to find pear nectar, but ended up substituting apricot nectar instead.

If there was one thing I would do differently next time it would be to make sure the pears were perfectly ripe. The ones I had were a little firm and I thought they would soften up a lot during baking, but they turned out to be on the soft side of crunchy. I’m sure it would have been more flavorful if they had been more ripe. That’s not a fault of the recipe, just a fault of my impatience to try this dessert.

In a food processer, blend the flour, marzipan, and salt together.

Next, add the butter and the shortening and blend together until it’s a course meal. Make sure the butter is chilled again after you have cubed it prior to placing in the food processer. As most any good dessert chef will tell you, cold butter is the key to making a flaky crust. If you put it in too warm or work the dough too much then it won’t be as flaky. Because the food processer blade is putting a lot of energy into the dough to get it mixed up, the dough will also start to rise in temperature. This is one reason why you want to start with chilled butter.

In a small bowl, combine the 3 tbsp of pear nectar and almond extract. Begin to add this liquid mixture to the dough and as you continue to work the dough it will begin to come together in clumps and balls. When you see this happening, stop and take off the lid and use your fingers to squeeze a small bit together. You want it to stay together and not crumble otherwise when you try to roll it out it will not stay together. You want to stop just when the dough hangs together to the pinch. If it doesn’t, then add a little more liquid and a little more processing until you’re there.

Marzipan pie crust dough

Remove the dough to a board. Divide it into two pieces and wrap each with plastic wrap. Flatten each piece into a round disk and refrigerate for at least two hours. The recipe says that you can do these steps up to a day ahead of time. I’m sure that could work well if you’re looking to offload some work from the day you cook.

Next, chop up the whole vanilla bean into 1/4″ segments. This is just breaking the bean down so it will be easier to break up with the food processer and combine with the brown sugar. Depending on how hard the vanilla bean is, this could take a minute or more in the processer.

After the vanilla bean is cut up really well, add the corn starch and ground cardamom. Process the mixture until it is very fine.

Peel, core, and chop up the pears into 1/4″ to 1/2″ pieces. Add them to a large bowl along with the brown sugar, cardamom, and vanilla bean mixture. Add the pear nectar for moisture and toss to coat all the pear. Set aside.

After the marzipan dough has had time to chill again and rest in the refrigerator, remove one disk from the plastic wrap on top of a floured piece of parchment paper. Begin to roll out the dough into a roughly circular shape. It might be easier if you place a second piece of parchment paper over the top as that can help keep the roller from sticking to the dough. Of course you want to coat your roller with flour to help control any sticking.

This might be a good time to preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Carefully place the rolled out dough in a 9″ pie plate and center it. If you happen to tear it while putting it down simply press a little dough on each side toward the tear and merge it back together.

Use a simple butter knife or other implement with an edge on it to trim the crust to the edge of the baking dish.

Pour the pie filling on top of the bottom crust and spread it out evenly in the dish.

Roll the next disk of dough out on parchment paper just like you did for the bottom layer. Position the top layer over the pie.

Trim the excess dough off by using a knife around the edge of the pie plate. Using your fingers, press the outer edge and two layers of dough together in a decorative shape similar to what you see below.

Beat one egg in a small bowl and brush the top of the crust, but not the edges, with the egg and sprinkle the entire top with a little layer of sugar. Between the egg wash and the sugar you will get a nice crispy top to your pie. With a small prep knife, cut several slits into the top layer. This helps let the steam from the pears escape during the baking process.

Bake the pie for 15 minutes at 400. Then cover the edge with a layer of aluminum foil to keep it from browning too much. They make special crust protection rings for this purpose and after I did this one I went out and got a crust ring because it’s a pain to fashion one on top of a pie that has already been in the oven at a high temperature. Continue baking the pie at 400 degrees for approximately 40 more minutes until the crust is golden brown. This hopefully happens at the same time that the pears get tender and if you have selected ripe pears then you don’t have to worry about them getting tender enough. Just watch the crust and pull the pie when you like what you see.

Remove the pie from the oven and let it cool for 1 1/2 hours. This will let the pie filling set up a little bit and of course you can’t bite into a 400 degree pie right away anyway.

When it’s time, whip up some of your favorite cream or a nice rich scoop of vanilla ice cream to go along and enjoy it. Let me know how it goes.

Bon Appétit: Seared Asian Steak and Mushrooms on Mixed Greens

We saw this recipe in the November issue of Bon Appétit and just had to give it a try. Several months ago I bought a whole beef tenderloin and prepared several filet mignons from it along with a nice little roast and a chine that I have yet to figure out what to do with. I vacuum packed several of the cuts with my Food Saver and they’ve been waiting patiently in my freezer. If you’ve ever seen a tenderloin you know that it is bigger on one end and tapers off to a very flat piece toward the end. I had used up all the choice steaks that work well for searing and looking proud on a plate. But I did have three much smaller cuts left in my freezer and decided their day had finally come and what a wonderful way for them to go.

The recipe calls for rib-eye steaks and I’m sure that would have worked well. I love rib-eye and if I hadn’t had the filet mignon in the freezer I would have gone to it in a heartbeat. I think a lot of us never really have filet mignon as often as we would like primarily because when prepared it can turn into a very expensive meal. The little cuts that I had leftover, in my local market, would have cost nearly $40 to buy from the meat case. If you pick up a tenderloin from a warehouse store like Costco, you can get an entire tenderloin that will make 7-9 cuts for perhaps $5 per cut. When cooked properly (read not over-cooked) you barely need a knife.

Here’s the official recipe from the magazine:

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2010/11/seared_asian_steak_and_mushrooms_on_mixed_greens_with_ginger_dressing

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
• 4 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil, divided
• 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon Asian chili-garlic sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon plus 2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil, divided
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 12-ounce rib-eye steaks
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
• 8 ounces crimini (baby bella) mushrooms, quartered
• 8 cups mixed greens

Pre-heat your oven now to 190 degrees. We’re going to use this low heat to pre-warm the steaks. One of the keys to getting a nice rare steak, but not have it be raw or to not have the outside overcooked while trying to get the inside done, is to warm the meat slowly and gently before you sear it. We’ll put these steaks in the oven for about 15-20 minutes and this will make it so that you don’t have to cook the outside of the steak so long to get the center temperature up. A steak whose internal temperature is 90-100 degrees before it ever hits the pan will be much easier to cook correctly. Go ahead and lay out the steaks in a baking dish, blot them dry with a paper towel on both sides, and place them on the center rack of the oven *after* it has preheated. Some methods I’ve seen will have you put the steaks in a 250 degree oven. I’ve found that this can be too warm and the steak will start cooking on the bottom before it has come up to an internal temperature of 95-100 degrees F. You would like to get the steak up to temperature and still have it be red on both sides.

Now it’s time to toast the sesame seeds. I was a little reticent about putting any heat on them knowing that they would be the crust for the steak that would be hitting an extremely hot cast iron pan. I didn’t want them to be scorched. So I brought up the heat slowly and toasted them slightly. Remember that the pan will retain heat and continue to toast the seeds unless you remove them from the pan. Use your judgment as to whether you need to remove them or just leave them in the pan to cool down. I took them off the cook top early enough that I just let them cool in the pan.

If I were you this is where I would seriously depart from the recipe. Baby bellas, otherwise known as crimini mushrooms, are a wonderful addition to any steak and salad. The recipe calls for 8 oz. If you saute down 8 oz of mushrooms you will be left with enough for one good helping on one plate. I bought 16 oz and wished I had doubled that. If you are cooking as much steak as the recipe calls for, 2 x 12 oz rib-eyes, and slicing it up to split amongst several salad plates, you will have much more steak than mushrooms and will come up very short. So don’t follow the recipe. Get a bunch of mushrooms and hope that you have some left over.

Gently clean the mushrooms and then slice them vertically into 1/8″-1/4″ slices.

Bring your saute pan up to medium heat. Add just enough oil to the pan to be able to coat the mushrooms and add them to the pan and toss to get them coated. You don’t want the pan too hot because the mushrooms cook by giving up steam from the moisture inside. That moisture needs to escape and if the pan is too hot you will burn the mushrooms before they’re cooked. There’s no precision to when it’s done. It will smell wonderful as it gets going. The more you cook them the smaller they will get. You want them to have some tooth, but not to be cooked so much as to be leathery. Go ahead and snitch one out of the pan to test it. While it’s finishing up give it a few turns of fresh ground black pepper and a pinch of salt and stir it around.

Next, turn your attention to making the ginger dressing. I have to admit I made a mistake at this point. The recipe calls for 8 cups of mixed greens that this dressing will go with. I was making dinner for two and we weren’t about to need 8 cups of salad. I went ahead and made the dressing according to the recipe, sampled it and thought it so good that I just added it to a smaller amount of salad. It turned out much too salty with the soy sauce. But at the same time I wanted all of the flavor of the ginger and the garlic chili sauce. I think next time I would cut back some on the soy and replace what I pull out with a bit of water and some more canola oil. There’s no doubt you would still taste the soy, but it would also allow some of these other flavors to emerge.

Chop the cilantro. In a mixing bowl mix the soy sauce, rice vinegar, vegetable oil, minced ginger, chili garlic sauce, and sesame oil. Add the chopped cilantro and mix and set the dressing aside to marinate.

You’ll have to monitor your timing with the steaks. If you’re slow with a knife then you may want to wait to preheat the steaks until you have more of the prep for the salad and mushrooms done. If you have been warming up your steaks you should periodically check their temperature and pull them out when they are between 90-100 degrees. This should be a temperature that will give the steak a head start when it hits the pan, but it will not have started cooking or turning brown.

Blot the steaks dry again with a paper towel. We do this so that the steaks will sear better in the pan. If they are wet then you won’t get the nice color or texture of a nicely seared steak. The moisture will simply steam the steak with less satisfying results. Salt and pepper them on one side and then sprinkle them with the toasted sesame seeds and press the seeds into the steaks with your hands or the back of a spoon. Carefully flip them all over and salt and pepper and coat the next side with sesame seeds.

If you have a cast iron pan then there is no better time to use it. In fact, the best thing to do, if you have a double oven, is to preheat this pan to 500 degrees before putting it on the cook top. I keep a high heat safflower oil on hand for searing like this. When the pan is super hot then hitting it with a lower temperature oil that will seriously smoke and break down is not good. Safflower oil is one of the best oils to use for high temperature cooking. Add a tablespoon or two to the pan and let it heat. Then nestle each steak on top of some oil in the pan.

From the side you will begin to see the steak cook from the bottom. When that brown layer is about a quarter of the way up then it’s a good time to flip the steak. Of course, if you want it done more then just keep cooking it at your own peril. I would expect to cook these for no more than about 3-4 minutes per side. Remember that at super high pan temperatures the steak will continue to cook after you pull it from the pan. Once you’ve cooked them on both sides, remove from the pan to a plate or cutting board and cover with aluminum foil to allow them to “rest”.

Resting the steak after it is cooked is very important. For starters, you really don’t want to put piping hot steak slices onto a salad unless you want wilted salad. So you have some time to let it cool down. But more importantly it gives the juices that have been driven toward the surface of the steak time to reabsorb into the steak making it juicier. The same concept applies to cooking a chicken or turkey. If you cut into meat too soon after it has come off the heat, all the good juices will come out and the meat will be drier.

While the meat is resting, go ahead and toss the salad along with the ginger dressing and place a pile of salad onto a plate. Spoon some of the mushrooms alongside. With a sharp knife, cut the steak into slices that are not too thin, but not so thick as to make a tough cut with a knife. If you’ve cooked the steak right it will be very tender and easy to cut. Let the knife do the work without pressing too hard. Extra pressure simply forces more juice out of the steak and is not desirable. Lay slices of the steak over the salad greens. If you have any leftover chopped cilantro or toasted sesame, feel free to garnish the dish by sprinkling both over the top of everything.

Next time

I’m happy to say I’ll make this again. I would even make the dressing separately just for a nice twist on salad when you need it. But next time I think I will cut back on the soy so that the ginger and chili garlic sauce can have more of the stage. Also, make sure you cook plenty of mushrooms. They are so good that you’ll be snitching them while you’re cooking and dreaming about them the next day if you don’t have any leftover.

Bon Appétit: Halibut Fish Sticks with Dill-Caper Tartar Sauce

This fourth and final installment from recipes in the June 2010 issue of Bon Appétit comes from their “Quick Recipes” section. There is nothing complicated about this meal, but it turned out really tasty. The breading for the fish sticks was a simple egg coating and panko crumb followed by a saute and the tartar sauce was easily completed with just a few ingredients. Perhaps the best twist is that we’re doing this with a really high quality fish as opposed to the no-name white fish that you get in a frozen super market fish stick. Honestly, the target customer of this recipe versus the target of frozen fish sticks is completely different, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t cast yourself back to your youth and enjoy a great tasting fish stick.

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/quick-recipes/2010/06/halibut_fish_sticks_with_dill_caper_tartar_sauce

* 1/2 cup mayonnaise
* 2 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
* 2 tablespoons drained capers
* 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
* 2 tablespoons finely chopped cornichons or dill pickles plus 1 tablespoon pickle juice from jar
* 1 1/4 cups panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
* 1 large egg
* 1 1/2 pounds 3/4-inch-thick halibut fillets, cut into 3×3/4-inch strips
* 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

As you can see by the price showing in the photo, good halibut can set you back. This 1.8 lb was right at $30 and it was enough to feed three people, or in my case two people with enough for one serving as a leftover. The beauty of this recipe is that it could easily be used on a cheaper fish so you can make it as high or low end as you want.

Let’s get started on this really tasty tartar sauce. Consider doubling the recipe as the recipe makes barely enough. If you are like me then when you taste it you’ll want some sauce to go with every bite.

Combine the mayonnaise , capers, chopped dill, chopped chives, and chopped pickles in a small bowl and mix together with a fork.

I bought the halibut in one slab and had the butcher take the skin off. Skinning fish is not one of my favorite things to do and it’s just a lot easier to request the butcher to do it for you. Lay the halibut slab out on a cutting board and cut the pieces in such a way that they are roughly equivalent thickness on each side. The reason to make the sides equal is that we’re going to cook the fish an equal amount on each of the four sides. This allows you to cook the fish thoroughly, but not overcook it and it will turn out nice and flaky this way. If the halibut is really wide you may want to consider splitting it down the middle to make double the number of shorter sticks. This also might be more appropriate when you’re feeding more people or those with smaller appetites.

Place the cut fish into a small baking dish and salt and pepper top and bottom.

Now, the fun and messy stuff. Beat an egg in a small bowl. Since I had a bit more fish than the recipe called for I went ahead and beat two eggs so that I would make sure to have enough egg batter. Spread the panko crumbs into a small baking dish or other dish with sides like a pie plate.

If you’ve never cooked with panko crumbs you’re in for a treat. Panko crumbs are breadcrumbs made from bread without crusts. They tend to give your crust a lighter and crispier texture. Most supermarkets now carry panko crumbs near the ethnic food, particularly Japanese products. If you don’t have panko crumbs available you can also use regular bread crumbs.

I find it’s easiest to dedicate one hand (left in this case) to the egg coating and one hand to the dry crumbs. This will keep your fingers from building up a lot of crumbs and make it easier to do what you need to do. So take a fish piece in your left hand and dunk it in the beaten egg. Lift it up to let it drain off some of the excess. Then drop it in the panko crumbs without touching the crumbs with your fingers. Use your right hand to pick up crumbs and toss over the top of the fish and then roll it around in the crumbs to make sure it’s well coated. Then lift it out to a separate plate where it will await cooking.

When I sautéd the fish I ended up using a bit more olive oil than the recipe called for. That was because the first side you cook can soak up a substantial part of the oil making it difficult to properly brown the fish on the other sides. Don’t over-oil the pan or the breading will come out oily and soggy, but make sure there is enough to wet the crumbs so they can crisp up. You will probably have to do this in two to three batches. You don’t want to mash as many pieces as you can or what happens is the sides of the fish will get mushy due to the steam that gets trapped. So don’t overcrowd your pan.

Even though the fish will be coated with panko crumbs, you will be able to see it cook where the underlying flesh will go from a translucent color to white. It might only take 2-3 minutes, at most, per side and less as you are cooking the last two sides. I added some more oil to the pan in the middle of cooking and then tilted the pan to move the oil around and under the cooking fish. Doing it this way I was able to get a nice golden brown on all sides.

I used tongs to grab along the length of the fish to turn it. The closer the fish gets to done, the more likely it is to flake apart. If it looks like it’s going to be weak, just use a spatula in your other hand to help take some of the turning pressure off.

Once the fish has cooked on all four sides, remove the fish sticks to a plate with a paper towel. You can loosely cover the plate with foil, but make sure you don’t make a tight seal or you will end up trapping steam which will make your nice crispy crust a bit soggy.

I blanched some asparagus and then plated up the fish with a little ramekin of tartar sauce. Very simple. Very tasty. And very much better than a frozen fish stick.

Dinner Dot

If they do it, so can you

Bon Appétit: Pear-Cardamom Pie with Almond Crust

Bon Appétit: Seared Asian Steak and Mushrooms on Mixed Greens

Bon Appétit: Halibut Fish Sticks with Dill-Caper Tartar Sauce

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