Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Post #2083: Leek and Mushroom Tart Recipe
Looking for an appetizer or holiday party offering? I made this leek and mushroom tart on the weekend and it was a huge hit. Serve it warm at your dinner table, or cool and cut thin for finger food (which is how I served it) – either way, so great!
Nice to have:
- 11-inch tart pan – we aren’t making a quiche here so you want something shallow, and preferably with the removable side-ring for easy cutting and serving (plus presentation!)
Ingredients
Pastry
Whatever pie pastry recipe you normally use. Lots of suggestions on the Internet.
Filling
5 eggs
1/3 cup heavy cream
2 small leeks sliced very thin (or one large)
15 mushrooms sliced very thin (any variety – you are looking for 1 1/2 cup of sliced mushrooms)
1 cup grated gruyere cheese
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Make your pastry, let it rest and then roll it out to the size of your pan. (I personally don’t like rolling out pastry so for tart recipes in the past I have simply pressed the pastry into the form – but my husband doesn’t mind, so he did this for me on the weekend).
- Prick all over with a fork, bake the pastry shell for 25 minutes until it is pretty much done. Remove pastry shell from oven.
- Turn oven up to 375.
- Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the gruyere cheese on the bottom of the tart, then spread the leeks and mushrooms over that.
- In a small bowl, hand beat the 5 eggs and the heavy cream until they are well-mixed.
- Add 1/2 cup of the grated cheese to the egg/cream mixture and stir in.
- Pour the egg/cream/cheese mixture over the other ingredients in the pastry shell. Ensure even distribution.
- Sprinkle the last 1/4 cup of the cheese over the top.
- Put your tart pan on a large cookie sheet and place in the oven. (The cookies sheet is there in case the egg mixture wells up and overflows during cooking).
- Cook for 35-40 minutes, until the egg mixture has set and the top is golden.
Enjoy!
Post #2082: Each and every life
On my way to work this morning I walked by the scene of something with many first responders standing by and a section of building entrance cordoned off – when I turned my head to look at the site, I noticed a body covered in a white sheet on the ground, about ten feet away from the sidewalk. There was no blood or gore, no other indication that an accident had taken place, just a sheet draped over the form of a body, which could have been anything. You could walk by and not notice – it wasn’t overly dramatic except for the presence of an ambulance – but that body was there in the heart of downtown this morning.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen a body on my way to work, and the last time was *much* worse as a woman had just been hit by a coach-bus and was lying half-under it. She was not covered, and it was not clean. In comparison, this was much easier to take.
But still, I couldn’t help but think about fragility, and the lightness of our beings as I walked by. Of the presence of each and everyone of us, and how quickly that is extinguished – in an instant, on a cold morning, left in the dark.
Temporary though we may be, we hold each other warm in the palms of our hands. And so a whispered prayer for the person whose body lay on the pavement this morning. For the home that is found in dying, for a safe journey there.
And peace to each of you as we prepare for the renewal of the light.
Post 2081: A little knitting catch-up – finished objects, wips, and new year plans
While there has been no sewing since earlier in the fall, airplane travel lends itself particularly well to knitting and crochet – so while I’ve been in the air, in hotels, and passengering in vehicles – lots of knitting has happened since the last thing I posted (The Beacon Shawl). The featured image is my current WIP which is a gift-in-the-making so I won’t tell you too much about that. Instead feast your eyes on the following finished projects (click for larger pictures):
The Cowls and Mitts are knit up in Malabrigo Arroyo, and the Hot Pad and Mitt use Galway Worsted and Chunky yarns. Looking for patterns?
- Farm to Needle is available for purchase and includes several very cool patterns.
- Susie’s Reading Mitts is a free pattern available on Ravelry.
- DK Pachena is available for online purchase through the DK-Dydee Knits online store.
Other projects on needles include the never-ending Paulie Sweater (which is just hours from being finished but I keep setting aside for quicker gifty projects), the gift project up above, and a second Imperial Hot Pad to use up the leftover yarn from the first. Once those are done I plan to do some steeking practice and then start Andrea Rangel’s latest version of the (Knitters) Dude Sweater for my husband, plus I’m going to make the Aspen Leggings for myself out of Briggs and Little. Oh! And I just bought the kit for this fabulous shawl (the Favorite Boots Sierras Polydactyl Set and Simee Dimeh Pattern) as well:
Looking at the pattern, this seems very advanced for me – but I’m game because it’s so stunning, and it gives me lots of practice in stitch variation. I’m planning for lots of lifelines as I go.
But before anything new is started, I vow to finish what’s on the needles right now. For real. That’s what I am going to do next.
Post #2080: Instant Pot breakfast goodies
As promised, here’s the quick skinny on my second set of weekend kitchen experiments — homemade granola and homemade yogurt in my Instant Pot. For those of you who don’t know about the magic of the 7-in-one Instant Pot, I highly recommend you look it up. It works as a electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, steamer, warmer, and sauté pan all in one – and so far I’ve been very impressed with everything I’ve made in it. More on that later.
This weekend, I decided to get the week’s breakfasts in order by making both granola, and yogurt in the instant pot (but not at the same time!) Recipes and instructions are below – and let me tell you, this makes for one amazing start to the day. Also, given that both of these are multi-hour projects, I give a time breakdown at the bottom that can help you plan for getting this all done in a day for a week’s worth of good starts.
Cherry Almond Granola
5 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup sunflower oil
1/3 cup honey
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup raw almonds
1/2 cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds
1/2 cup shredded coconut
Put everything in the instant pot except for the seeds and coconut. Stir. Turn the post onto slow-cook and adjust to high. Leave for one hour. After the machine beeps, add the seeds and coconut, stir and then turn down to low for four hours. After four hours is up, spread the granola in a roasting pan and pop into the oven for about 30 minutes – at 350 – stirring every 10 minutes until the granola crisps up. I didn’t find the slow cooker really got the granola crispy on its own, which is why I think the oven step is necessary. I’ve seen people recommend keeping the lid slightly ajar in order to let moisture escape – but really, the last bit in the oven is pretty straight forward and you can crisp it to your preference. Let cool completely on a cookie sheet and then store in an air tight container.
Instant Pot Yogurt
1 quart of milk
1/2 cup yogurt
Pour milk into the instant pot, press yogurt button and the adjust to boil. Milk will boil in the IP and then machine will beep. Take the inner lining out and allow the milk to cool in it (for about 1/2 hour or so) until it goes down to 115 F. Whisk the yogurt into the warm milk and then put the inner liner back into the IP. Press the yogurt setting again and don’t adjust this time! The IP will automatically set the time for eight hours. Once eight hours is up, the machine will beep and you’ve got yogurt! For Greek style yogurt, you can strain through a cheesecloth-lined strainer for three hours or overnight which will separate the whey from the yogurt and leave you with a really dense and creamy yogurt.
Timing for getting this all done on a Sunday
8:00 am – get the granola going in the instant pot. It will be done and cooling by 1 pm.
1:00 pm – get the yogurt going in the instant pot. It will be done by 10 pm.
Strain yogurt through cheesecloth overnight – in the morning there will be awesome breakfast!
Post #2079: Moosioloi and other kitchen adventures
Yesterday was a bit of a kitchen day – and a playing music day – and an eating day. It was a day at home after a month of mostly being away – and it was sorely needed.
The upshot of that kitchen day was a number of small experiments – the first being the olive-tasting that I wrote about in my last post. I later fed some of the olives to our friend Jon who came over to teach us about pasta-making and he said they were the best olives he had ever tasted. Real deal!
Then we got onto the pasta making. We had decided some time ago that moose ravioli was a think that should exist in the world. With a freezer full of moose, a pasta roller given to us by a friend, and Jon to show us how to put it all together – we decided that this was the time to make some food magic happen.
I won’t go into great detail here about the process, since there are a million places that you can learn about making stuffed pasta on the Internet, but I will give you the recipe (below) so that if you happen upon some ground moose (or venison, or beef) you can replicate the amazingness that was our pasta dinner.
The finished produce looked like this – not the prettiest thing I have ever made, but one of the tastiest by far:
We served this alongside pickled beets, a salad of greens, apple, and almonds, a tuscan bread and a nice chianti. All around fabulous food experience!
Moose Ravioli
Pasta Dough:
3 eggs
2 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
water if necessary
I do my dough in the Cusinart with the dough blade so I can only do a batch as large as this at a time. Basically, you throw all that into your food processor or breadmaker and churn until it forms an elastic and non-sticky dough.
We made two batches of dough which would feed 5-6 people (or 4 very hungry people and our dog).
Moose Filling:
4 cloves garlic
1 onion
1 pound moose meat
1 moose sausage (which gives a bit of fat and flavour)
1/2 cup blue cheese (or more if you like)
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/2 a bunch of Italian flat-leaf parsely
Saute the garlic and onion, then brown the meat. Once the meat is cooked, crumble the blue cheese into the mixture along with the pine nuts. Stir and season to taste. Add the parsely near the end. We added a lot of blue cheese which meant we didn’t need any additional salt, but fresh ground pepper bumped the whole thing up.
This filling recipe is enough for two batches of the dough recipe above.
Sauce
1-2 cups Tomato sauce
Fresh rosemary (to taste)
We used the tomato sauce that we canned this summer and added about a 1/4 cup of fresh rosemary from the garden to it. You don’t want the sauce to overwhelm the plate, so just make enough to coast the pasta.
Once the pasta is made, and then cooked, toss it in the tomato sauce and serve with parmesan cheese.
And delish! If you have a chance at some moose this season, and an afternoon with friends – this is a great social activity and meal rolled into one.
Next post? Homemade granola and yogurt – the second part of yesterday’s experiments.
Red Cedar 