Tarts and Vicars...minus the vicar

I spent most of afternoon and early evening making a tart on Saturday. I had bought a pan and had made a deal to myself signed in blood that I would achieve a tart recipe this weekend. And it was so worth the effort.....

Oh yeah! That is some good looking dough! I was a bit doubtful that it would come together, but look at me continually surprising myself. The entire process of making this dish was one of the most relaxing things that I will probably do this weekend. There is something innately comforting in getting your hands dirty with crust and having the rising smells of roasted cauliflower and caramelized onions enveloping you. With the addition of Lady Gaga in the background to provide some good cooking music, the evening just flew by.

This is a rich tart. The original recipe has you using mascarpone cheese for the custard, but I took Smitten Kitchen's suggestion of using ricotta as a replacement. Next time I would also use a low fat milk instead of heavy cream, which was another of her suggestions. I was worried with the use of skim ricotta that I would be lacking something, but hell this tart is still delicious. And I think you could definitely apply this same recipe to many different vegetable combinations. Once summer is in full bloom I would love to try it with summer squash and asparagus. Oh the possibilities.

But I think that it is important to remind you that this is me cooking. And when I cook something always goes slightly awry.

Mishap 1: When I checked my tart after 40 minutes the custard was set, but upon cutting I thought the crust still needed a little more time to crisp up some more. So with one piece missing I put her back in the oven for another 15 minutes to really finish off the bottom of the crust. Kinda ghetto? Yes! Did it work though? Yes!

Mishap 2: After finally sitting down to my dinner and taking my first bite I was ecstatic. And then I looked at my tart again and...oh crap. A hair, obviously one of mine, had somehow managed to insert itself into all of my hard work. You have to understand, I shed like a long haired kitten and am constantly battling the onslaught of stray hair encroaching on my life. Inside I battled with the fact that I had somehow managed to let a strand, albeit a small one, into my masterpiece and the fact that the only person eating this is me so who really cares. Can you guess which battle won? You better bet I just took that bad boy out and continued on. Are you disgusted by me? Well you can buy me a hair net for future recipes that will be shared, but since this tart is mine, all mine, I'm going to shake it off and move on.

2 days in a row blogging?! I surprise even myself.

I am seriously amazed with myself. I have been a bit of a lazy oaf when it comes to cooking lately, but something has hit me over the head and I am back at it. Could it be the nice weather, vegetables staring at me guiltily from the counter, or just a new lease on life? I think it may be all of the above and I am not going to question it.

Here is the problem with me. I am not much of planner when it comes to knowing what I will make with all of the lovely food that I make. I just see something pretty and go for it and then spend a week trying to figure out what the heck I should make; and then it is some lat minute thrown together meal in an effort to use everything before it goes bad. Recently I have actually been making shopping lists and looking up recipes before hand, which has made me feel triumphant with all of my wonderful left overs for the week and it is also so much more cost effective for my wallet. (Who would've thunk it?! ~sarcasm~) But alas, I am a vegetable/fruit-holic and sometimes fall off the truck when I see a scrumptious food thing. That was the case with my lovely acorn squash that had been languishing on the counter. Poor thing! I tried to avoid eye contact, but I could feel her giving me the evil eye. It must be done, and did it was! HAHAHAHA! I know...I'm the only one that thinks I'm funny.

Inspiration came in the form of Pioneer Woman and her Trinidadian Chicken Curry. It looked so delicious and I had been having a hankering for some curry. The stars aligned when I realized that I had the necessary ingredients, with the exception of chicken. But what about using my acorn squash and some shrimp that could be de-frosted in no time? Only one way to find out.

In her recipe she marinated the chicken for at least an hour in garlic, tomato, onion, cilantro and mustard. I didn't have much time for marinading but I coated my squash in dijon mustard and minced garlic. The actual curry making was very straight forward: take turmeric, curry, and water to make a slurry, add it to heated vegetable oil, and allow to form a fragrant paste. Once the color had deepened and the slurry had thickened I added the squash and water. From that point it was pretty much guess work. Pioneer Woman cooked her chicken for 15-20 minutes, but as I wasn't really sure how long the squash would take to soften so I just had to play it by ear. Once the squash was fork tender I added the shrimp and then called it day! It took about 30-35 minutes, but the results were delicious!

I had some left over colcannon from last night's St. Patrick's Day party so I used that as my curry sauce catcher instead of rice. I'm going rogue over here! Yum and yum! Though not traditional it was really filling and I had one less thing I had to worry about cooking, which is always a plus in my book.

And now it's cooking picture time!!!

Curry Slurry!

Squashing the competition...curry style!

The final product.

One more day of celebrating St. Patrick's Day...why I think I will!

Top of the mornin' to you! Okay so it is the afternoon, but let's not split hairs here. It is gorgeous in DC but I had to spend some time in the kitchen to make my dish for a belated St. Patrick's Day party. So with the theme being Irish, duh!, I was on a quest for some simple and inexpensive to make. There is definitely one thing to be said about Irish food, a lot of the traditional dishes are simple "peasant" food that had to be filling and inexpensive, which works out for me. I actually found my recipe on tastykitchen.com. If anyone has ever read Pioneer Woman you should definitely check out this newest addition to her site that is a place where her readers and friends can share recipes. It was in this member site that I found:

Can you tell why I picked this recipe? Hmmm...Difficulty=Easy and Time=35 minutes, this has my name written all over it. And Calcannon has a very short and approachable list of ingredients: potatoes, kale (or cabbage if you like), onion, whole milk (I used skim to cut some of the calories), unsalted butter, salt and pepper.

And yet with a simple ingredient list I somehow managed to make things difficult for myself. The thing is I have never cleaned, cut, or cooked kale. In the end it was not bad, it was just more work then I had anticipated. And after I had cleaned and chopped all of my kale I wondered about this line in the directions, the 3rd line to be exact:

It says, "to another small pot of water add the chopped kale......". But how was this bowl of kale possibly going to fit into a small pot?

It just didn't make sense. I mean I knew it would wilt, but it was barely fitting in my large pot and here they were telling me to use a SMALL one. But then I saw this cute guy on my bananas and all was right with the world again.

Okay, that was just a complete 180 in topic direction but I seriously saw that monkey while I was corralling all the kale in my pot and I just cracked up. Anyhoo, large pot+a whole lot of kale=perfectly boiled and wilted kale. Everything was going right with the world. It definitely took me longer than 35 minute to get this all together, but it still was easy to pull together. Since I did decide to use skim milk, I added more butter to add a bit more richness. I think next time I would add a bit of sour cream to bring some more creaminess to the dish, but besides all that I think it will be a great contribution for tonight.

After my morning of cooking it was time to enjoy the sunshine. Color has started to come to DC and there is no way you can't feel good with such gorgeousness surrounding you. And now a little picture montage of my neighborhood, enjoy!