Lemon Cream Pie {A Recipe}

You may have noticed, there hasn't been a whole lotta baking going on over here at Casa Q. Foodie lately. We've been watching our girlish figures and trying to eat more healthfully overall - so at the very least, whenever I do get the itch, I make sure I have a plan for the results that doesn't involve us eating the whole thing ourselves.

One such opportunity presented itself a few weeks ago when our good friend Tommy was visiting from San Francisco with his lovely girlfriend Liz. We threw them a little dinner party with some other mutual friends. The menu included Aperol cocktails, honey and thyme glazed ribs, a fava bean, cucumber and herb salad, and for dessert, this lemon cream tart - which was so thick and so deep, I'm just going to call it a pie.

For the crust, I used some butter cookie dough I had made a few weeks ago and blind baked it in a fluted quiche pan because I wanted it to be deep enough to accommodate whole strawberries standing on end. The filling was Tartine's recipe for "lemon cream" - which they put in small tart shells at the bakery. It's creamy, rich and slightly tart -  unless you're the one who makes it you'd never guess how much butter is in it. And cream. Especially once you whip a whole pint and pile it on top...

Just try not to think about it. Or do.  Whatever you think is best. :)

Lemon Cream Pie with Strawberries
adapted from the Tartine Cookbook

For the crust:
(You will only need about a third of the recipe, but the rest freezes well.)
4 sticks (1 pound) fresh, best quality unsalted butter, softened. (I like Plugra and Straus.)
1 1/3 cups sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract - or vanilla paste, if you like flecks.
4 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

Beat butter, sugar and salt together in a standing mixture with the paddle attachment. Blend in the egg yolks, one at a time, and then the vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour gradually, mixing just until combined. Divide dough into thirds. If you want to bake right away, just press and flatten chunks of the soft dough into a 9 inch quiche pan or regular pie pan until the bottom and sides are evenly covered. Pat cookie dough to be used later into a 1.5 inch thick round and refrigerate. (To bake, roll out or slice and bake at 375 for 5-10 mins depending on size. Also makes great thumbprint cookies.)

Chill the shell thoroughly before baking - you can even pop it in the freezer if you're in a hurry. You want it nice and cold when it goes into the oven. When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375, and line the shell with parchment and pie weights or beans. Blind bake the shell at 375 for about 15 minutes with the weights in. Take them out, and bake about 5 minutes more, until it's nice and golden brown. If you're using a fluted shell, when you take the weights out - use the round handle of a wooden spoon or a pen to press the dough against the sides of the pan all the way around. Allow to cool completely before filling.

For the filling:
1/2 cup plus 2 T. lemon juice
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 cup unsalted butter, cool, cut into tablespoon sized slices or cubes

1 pound of medium to large sized strawberries

Heat about 1.5 inches of water to a simmer in a double boiler, or a saucepan that is the right size for a non-reactive metal bowl to fit into so that the bowl doesn't touch the water but sits just above it. In the bowl, combine the lemon juice, whole eggs, egg yolk, sugar and salt. (Add the egg yolks last and whisk immediately - if you let the egg yolks and sugar sit, they will become grainy.) Rest the bowl on the pan and whisk until the mixture becomes thick and registers 180 degrees on a thermometer, this will take about 10 minutes. Remove the bowl from the water and let the mixture cool to about 140, stirring occasionally.

When the mixture has cooled to 140, strain it with a fine mesh sieve, and use a hand blender in a high sided bowl or bar blender to blend in the butter one chunk at a time, blending continuously, and allowing each chunk to become incorporated before adding the next. It will be pale yellow and very thick. At this point you can add a little lemon zest or up to a tablespoon or so of lemon juice if needed to brighten the flavor. (I did, but I used Meyer lemons, which are a little more mild than Eureka.) Chill the cream until your tart shell is cool, or if it is, go ahead and fill it.

To assemble the tart (which you should do no more than a few hours before you plan to serve it) cut the tops off of the strawberries and dot the tart shell with them flat side down, points up, about a quarter inch apart. Pour the lemon cream over the top and chill for at least an hour.

To unmold the chilled tart from it's pan, turn a stove burner on, and quickly but carefully turn it over the flame to warm the outside of the tart pan all the way around, using a dish towel to protect your hands. Place your hand on the bottom and gently pry the ring down off the tart. Use a long thin knife to slide the tart off of the bottom of the pan and onto a platter or plate.

For the topping:

2 cups of cream

2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar

Beat cream in a standing mixer with the whisk attachment on high until soft peaks start to form. Add powdered sugar and continue to beat until stiff.

Dollop the top of the tart with the whipped cream, spreading to the edges with an offset spatula, and dot the top with smaller whole strawberries. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Dinner at Andrew and Heidi's

A couple of weeks ago, we were the lucky dinner guests of our friends, Andrew Spurgin, formerly Executive Chef at Waters Catering and now a partner in the new catering company Campine, and his wife Heidi - a graphic designer and all-around super cool chick. I tend to think Heidi is responsible for the super chic decor of their vintage jewel-box home on a Mission Hills canyon, but Andrew clearly has his creative side as well. The food he turned out for us was artful and delicious in equal measure. The meal was influenced by their recent trip to Japan, and our first course was this beautiful and delicious plate of sashimi - sliced raw Mano de Leon scallops, uni and beautiful garnishes of crunchy seaweed, a Japanese spice blend, a salted cherry blossom, vanilla salt, and fruit...

The Uni was melt in your mouth delicious, and the mano de leon scallop was utterly perfect. All of the seafood came from Catalina Offshore Products. This is Andrew's rendering of the dish - I wanted to frame it. (See what I mean about that artistic side??)

The next course - also depicted above - was a four part dish of clams in a bacon "dashi" - with an uni pudding, sticky rice, butter poached spot prawn, deep fried prawn head and roe. The spot prawns also came from Catalina Offshore Products.

With the meal we enjoyed this very lovely cold sake....

Between the courses, Andrew retired to the kitchen to do his work, while we drank more sake.

This course was a rich braised pork belly with udon noodles - and yes - indeed that is a cricket on the plate. A green curry cricket, to be exact. I couldn't detect much green curry flavor - but it was certainly crunchy.

For dessert, Andrew plated up some mochi with strawberries as a refreshing little palate cleanser. We also had some crunchy crabs - and I have to admit, around that time my memory gets a little fuzzy.... lots of sake you see...

It's true that Andrew and Heidi could have served us rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and we still would have had a blast spending the evening with them - but this kind of skill (and their great stylish space) deserves to be shared. So please to enjoy... but don't bother asking me for Andrew's phone number. If you want to eat this food yourself, you'll have to call Campine!

What We Did on New Year's Eve

I'm having one of those moments/weeks/days where I'm paralyzed by all I have to say.  I realize I have to start somewhere though, and it feels like something time and date specific should be at least a little timely, so before the week completely passes me by - here goes.  On New Year's Eve, we hosted a dinner party for fourteen friends, and served lobster, caviar, and champagne. Here is the menu:   

New Year's Eve

December 31, 2010

Farm House Cafe Chicken Liver Moussse
with Pickled Onions and Toasted Acme Bakery Baguette

Blini with Osetra Caviar and Creme Fraiche
and

 Smoked Salmon, Creme Fraiche and Trout Roe

 Castelvetrano Olives

Marcona Almonds
***

Billecart Salmon NV Brut Rose Champagne

Endive and Frisee Salad with Shallot and Mustard Vinaigrette

Fuji Apples, Toasted Hazelnuts and Goat Cheese Crostini

Locke Ober "JFK" Lobster Stew
Acme Epi Bread

***

Simi Sauvignon Blanc

Lindsay Shere's Chez Panisse Almond Tart

Mignardises
***

Tokaji

coffee

The blini with caviar, smoked salmon, creme fraiche and trout roe were stellar - a complete and total delight. I ordered the smoked salmon from Barney Greengrass, and Andrew helped procure the caviar and trout roe through a wholesale connection.  I used the Barefoot Contessa's blini recipe (with whole wheat instead of buckwheat flour and a little more liquid than called for.)  Standing at the stove flipping blini, tossing back  Billecart Salmon and popping these little lovelies into my mouth is surely going to go down as one of the high points of 2010 - no doubt about it. Never mind the blistering burn I gave myself on my pinky during the process. I drank another glass of champagne, shoved it in a glass of ice water, and presto!  It didn't hurt at all anymore.

The chicken liver mousse, procured from one of my favorite restaurants in town - Farm House Cafe - was stellar as always.  It's on the menu every night, and it's one of my favorite things to eat in this town.  The salad was also pretty great - curly endive with mustard vinaigrette is one of my all time favorite flavor combination, and Jora helped me plate these individually with a couple of leaves of belgian endive, some matchsticks of fuji apple, toasted hazelnuts and a goat cheese smeared Acme baguette crostini. 

For the lobster stew, I used this recipe, with the addition of some finely chopped shallots, onions and garlic sauteed in a little onion and sherry.   I bought the lobsters - nice, big, healthy ones - for $13.95 a pound at Point Loma Seafoods.  I researched the best way to kill/cook them extensively, and what I saw seemed to indicate there was really no benefit to stabbing them in the head with a knife.  I couldn't bring myself to do what Andrew suggested though, and skewer them through the tails before cooking.  They were pissed off enough as it was.  Instead, I brought about five inches of water to a boil in a massive pot (from a turkey fryer) so that the water wouldn't cool down when I added them, and cooked them two at a time, dropping them into a sink full of ice water straight out of the pot. I put the lobster meat into the fridge, and the shells in a large pan with lots of cream, milk and butter. That mixture simmered for quite a while, and then went into the fridge overnight to steep.  Just before the party, I sauteed the lobster meat in butter and more sherry, and added it to the cream mixture to reheat.  The only problem was that by the time I was done ladeling it into all of the bowls and sprinkling them with chopped chives, it had cooled a bit too much.  I could have kicked myself, but I was so afraid of overheating it and making the lobster tough.

For dessert, I made Lindsay Shere's legendary almond tart - served after the first dinner at Chez Panisse. It's actually a little underbaked here - I slipped it back in the oven to toast a bit more until it was nice and brown. This was a  hit with the guests, and fairly simple to make.  It's made with a cookie crust, filled with sugar and cream cooked to a caramel and baked until thickened and browned.  The only tricky thing is that you have to continuously poke the sliced almonds down into the caramel as the tart bakes, since they have a tendency to float to the top.  I also did little trays with Italian nougats and chocolates from Mast Brothers and L.A. Burdick. 
 
I've said before that you can never have too much champagne, but I think we actually might have had a little too much this time.   We went through twenty four bottles (including a few bottles of wine) for fourteen guests.  The plan had been for everyone to either sleep over or come back the next morning for brunch - but not everyone made it.  Let's just leave it at that.  :)

I was glad at least a few people were there to share in the smoked salmon and bagels.  There were also  cinnamon rolls from Con Pane and fresh squeezed tangerine juice. We've done this before and I can vouch that it is a great way to spend the first day of the new year, or any day for that matter.  Russ and Daughters wasn't taking mail orders the week before New Years, but Barney Greengrass came through in spades, snowstorm or no.  If the shipping didn't cost as much as the goods, we'd eat this a whole lot more often! 

My Favorite Chocolate Cake (No Foolin'!)

I've tried a lot of chocolate cakes in my time, and baked a few myself, but I knew, the instant I tasted it at Starlite one evening last fall, that this one was The One. It was dark, dense, moist, not too sweet, and absolutely huge - with nice thick layers about one and a half inches tall. I liked it so much that I asked our server for the recipe and wrote my email address on a slip of paper for him to give to the chef. I'd almost forgotten about it when lo and behold - about two months later the recipe appeared in my inbox.

This is pretty rare for me, settling on one recipe I could use for the rest of my life. Aside from my go-to roast chicken I seldom make anything the same way twice. This cake just really does it for me though. Not only is it perfect in terms of its flavor, moistness and size - it's one of the simplest recipes I've seen and very nearly foolproof. It also stores well (I froze mine for a week) and it's so moist that I can't imagine it would ever dry out.

The only caveat is that the recipe makes a LOT of batter. So much, that at first I didn't believe it would fit into the two cake pans. When it came time to mix the wet and dry ingredients together, I discovered I actually didn't have a big enough bowl, and had to retrieve an enormous one I found at an estate sale, that I had planned to sell in my Etsy store. That bowl is now in my kitchen cabinet, which is where it will stay now that I know I will need it every time I make this cake. If you don't have an enormous bowl, you might try adding half of each of the wet and dry ingredients (by weight) to a third bowl in two batches.

This cake bakes up so tall that you could probably get away with halving the recipe and baking one layer for most occasions. It is nice to know though, that when one of those occasions comes along when nothing but a big, honkin' chocolate cake with thick, fudgy frosting will do - this one's your man.

Starlite Devils Food Cake
adapted from Sharon La Bate - Pastry Chef at Starlite, and graciously shared by Marguerite Grifka.

Dry Ingredients:
3 cups sugar
2 ¼ cups All Purpose Flour
2 ½ cups cocoa (I used Valrhona)
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt

Wet Ingredients:
3 eggs
3 yolks
1 ½ cups coffee
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
6 oz. melted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 ½ cups buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Line two nine inch cake pans with parchment and grease well (grease the pan before putting the parchment in so it doesn't slip, then grease the paper too.)

Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk all of the wet ingredients together well in a separate bowl.

In a very large bowl (a six quart or larger Kitchen Aid should also work) gently fold the dry into the wet ingredients, and whisk gently, just to get rid of any lumps. (If you don't have an enormous bowl but you do have a kitchen scale, you can also weigh out half of each and blend them together in a third bowl, then just pour each batch directly in the cake pans.)

Evenly divide the batter between the two pans, and bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out nearly clean (a few moist crumbs are ok) Allow the cakes to cool on a rack for 15-20 minutes, then turn out of the pans, peel the parchment off, and allow to cool completely before storing.

This batter would also make great cupcakes - just fill your papers about 3/4 full, and bake for about 15-20 minutes, until dry and springy to the touch. Take the cupcakes out of the pan as soon as they are cool enough to handle, so that the steam doesn't cause the papers to come off.

Thick Fudgy Frosting
1 pound of powdered sugar
3 sticks of butter, softened
8 ounces of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, melted
2 Tablesoons cocoa powder
1/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
dash salt

Whisk cocoa powder and salt into warm melted chocolate until dissolved set aside to cool to warm. Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment on high speed, beat butter until light and fluffy. Lower the speed and gradually beat in powdered sugar, then sour cream and vanilla, scraping the bowl down as needed.

With the mixer running on low speed, add melted chocolate to mixture and blend, scraping the bowl well to make sure it's all incorporated. Frost the cake immediately. If the mixture gets too thick, you can thin it with a little milk or cream.