Black Bean Burritos

It’s been a long week, kids.  I don’t know if it’s the let down after the excitement of having a four day weekend or the *&$^(#%^!@ bell ringers on every corner or the tourists stopping to ooh and ahh over traffic lights and jamming up the sidewalks, but I am seriously considering staying home until January 2.  I am trying to get into the holiday spirit, but since I don’t think it’s appropriate to bring a flask of Maker’s Mark to work, it’s slow going.

Of course, cooking has kind of taken a back seat since all I really want to do is have Frosted Flakes for dinner, but last night I really needed something a little more comforting (especially since snow was in the forecast).  I got home late and opened my refrigerator to discover I had the following: olives, mustard, one tortilla, an onion, milk and potatoes.  A survey of the pantry led me to black beans, saltines and brownie mix.  As tempted as I was to just make the brownies and call it a day, I realized that I could make black bean burritos and I instantly felt better (and thank goodness there is a 7-11 downstairs so I could pay $5 for some Monterrey Jack cheese). 

I haven’t made this in ages, but years ago when I lived with three vegetarians, I ate more black bean burritos than anyone really ever should.  One of my roommates made up the recipe and it supplemented the rice and soy sauce, canned soup and spaghetti with olive oil and Kraft parmesan we ate on a regular basis (no sodium deficiencies for us, obviously!). 

The burritos were incredibly easy and we always had the ingredients in the house, which meant that we’d make them for dinner or as a 4am snack.  We told ourselves that they were totally healthy–fiber! protein! dairy!–and they are until you add half a cup of sour cream and eat 3 of them in one sitting. 

It was the perfect thing to have after a long day, though, because the curry and cumin make it taste as though you really put in a lot of effort, when actually it takes 20 minutes from start to finish. 

And really? There is nothing better than melted cheese and little bit of spice to make you forget that winter hasn’t even technically started and you still have to do holiday shopping.  Someone pass the Maker’s…

Black Bean Burritos

• 1 can black beans, drained
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1/2 cup shredded cheese
• 1/2 an onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon hot curry
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• whole wheat tortillas

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.   Add the olive oil to a sauce pan set over medium heat and saute the onions, until wilted.  Add the garlic and black beans.  Stir and let simmer for about 5 minutes.  Remove from stove, add the corn (still frozen. Told you it was super easy!) and let sit while you grate the cheese (this will let the corn thaw).

Add a layer of the bean/corn mixture to middle of tortilla, top with cheese and fold into burrito.  Place on foil or cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes until cheese is melted.  Top with salsa and sour cream (if you actually have either of those things in your refrigerator, unlike me).

Cornbread Stuffing

When I was a kid I had an irrational fear of three things: being kidnapped, quicksand and being poisoned.  The first two I blame on Scooby Doo and Bugs Bunny cartoons (no, seriously.  Those dang kids in the Mystery Machine were always getting themselves in trouble and would wind up in some haunted mansion tied up and left to fend for themselves and some Warner Bros. character was always either setting a trap over quicksand or falling into a pit of it.  Where I thought I’d find a pit of quicksand in downtown Chicago was beside the point.  As is this lenghty parenthetical, I realize). 

The poisoning was a little more rational, or at least a little more understandable.  My family, coming from an island, always worried about food spoiling if left out too long.  They would also get packages of canned food items from Jamaica like ackee–which were hard to find in New York–and talk of botchulism swirled around my grandmother’s kitchen (unripened ackee can also kill you, so there was that added delight).  I barely understood what they were talking about, but I knew enough to be afraid that one bite of the wrong thing could spell the end of me (dramatic? Me? Never…).

Anytime a turkey was involved the question of whether to put the stuffing inside or bake it separately came up, because stuffing left in the cavity of the bird could spoil, and you guessed it, kill us all.   It was a great debate each year, because the stuffing was more moist if baked inside the turkey, and that, for some reason, seemed worth the risk.  I wasn’t taking any chances, though, so I never ate stuffing unless it was of the Stovetop variety.  I refused to taste it, and truth be told, the texture and mushy look of it (plus the addition of things like giblets) let me know I wasn’t missing anything.

I’m not sure when my boycott against stuffing ended, but a few years ago I found a recipe (in a magazine ad for chicken stock) that sounded too good to pass up.  And it is so delicious that I make extra and freeze it so I can have some on a random Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  The recipe is also super easy, especially if you cheat and use Jiffy cornbread mix instead of making your own.  It’s moist and not the least bit mushy (thanks to the bits of french bread) and since you bake it separately from the turkey, there is no risk of poisoning yourself or your family, which is always a good thing….  Happiest of Thanksgivings to you!

Cornbread Stuffing

Corn Goodness

So Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love that there’s no pressure, no presents to buy, no songs to get sick of; it’s just about good food and family and friends and if you’re lucky lots of leftovers. I also love that you can make an entire meal out of the side dishes. Turkey and ham are lovely, but really, they just take up room on the plate when sweet potatoes and stuffing and rice and peas and roasted vegetables are available. For the next couple of days, I’ll be posting my favorite sides that I wish I could eat all the time, but only get made during the holidays (for no other reason than I totally OD on them for a month and then can’t really think about them again for awhile).

A friend of mine used to host a holiday girls’ night where she’d pull out her good plates and glasses, decorate her apartment and have about 10 us over for dinner. Some years it was just before she left to go home to Texas for Thanksgiving; other years it would be around Christmas and we’d do a present exchange.  We were all asked to bring something, and one year another Heather brought this corn dish that I took one bite of and promptly pulled the rest of closer to my plate and guarded it like a prisoner getting extra bread and water (or whatever prisoners eat). It was kind of like a soufflé, but a little denser and grainy, like polenta. I admit that I stalked Heather for the rest of the party until she finally wrote down the recipe for me and when I tell you it is the simplest—and likely one of the best—things I’ll ever post, I’m not exaggerating (like I’d ever do that). She didn’t have a name for it, so I instantly named it Corn Goodness, because that’s exactly what it tasted like—all the sweetness and goodness of corn, baked into this better than cornbread, almost like stuffing, happiness.

It’s insanely easy, but no one has ever tasted it and not asked me for the recipe immediately. It goes with just about everything, so memorize it and keep the ingredients handy, so you can whip it up on a cold day when you need a little goodness in your world…

Corn Goodness

• 1 box Jiffy cornbread mix
• 1 egg 
• 1 cup sour cream 
• 1 can sweet fresh corn 
• 1 can creamed corn 
• Dash of salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix all of the ingredients in bowl.  Stir well until the mix is fully incorporated.  Pour into pie dish (or individual ramekins) and bake for 30 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean. Cool slightly and then cut into triangles.  Serve warm.

Anniversary Potato Salad

A number of years ago today—I’d have to go into witness protection if I gave the actual number—my mother and aunt arrived in New York City from Jamaica.  They were 11 and 9 years old and had been separated from their parents and brother for four years.  My grandparents left one island where the sun actually provided warmth for another one where the few rays of sun were deceptive.  My grandmother left first, going to Canada and then coming into the United States where she found work in the Garment District and set up a small approximation of the life they’d had in pre-independence Kingston.  My grandfather and uncle followed, and I imagine that the rationale for leaving my mother and aunt behind was that it was easier to start a life in a new place with only one child instead of three.  I have been told this story for as long as I can remember. 

Every year on this day, either my mother or aunt would call the other and wish each other happy anniversary.  Then they would reminisce about how it was so cold, a sensation they couldn’t possibly have ever imagined, and how a few days later it snowed, just little flakes, but enough to make them stop whatever they were doing to watch this magic falling from the sky.  They’d talk about how the American accents sounded so odd to their ears—so flat—but how they were the ones who got teased for their lilting British voices.  The phone call always ended with memories of their first Thanksgiving, just a week after they arrived, with friends who lived in the same building.  First they were served Velveeta and Ritz crackers (imagine never having had American cheese and your first introduction being Velveeta!) and then the turkey and stuffing and ham and the thing my mother remembers most, potato salad with mayonnaise.  As she tells it, the white potatoes (which they’d also never had) were completely overwhelmed by heavy mayonnaise and it was cold and unfamiliar and just so not good.  The texture and the temperature and the very idea of mayonnaise were more than she could handle, and to this day she will make a face when she thinks of it.  Again, I’ve been told these stories for as long as I can remember. 

This is the first year that my aunt will not be here so that my mother can wish her a happy anniversary.  It is the second that my uncle is not here to chime in with what little he may have remembered about his two older sisters on this day.  It has been more than a decade since my grandparents told their version of the story.  Even though they were separated for years, the five of them stayed a family and were finally brought together many years ago today and remained together from that moment on.  There was so much between then and now, more than I’ll ever know, about struggles and fear and being strangers in a strange place where everything was new and sometimes not so shiny.  But I know that they were happy to be together, that they were happy to be here in this country where they made the best of every day, that they loved to dance and laugh and taste new foods (even things like mayonnaise), and that their story—which has become mine—is one of the best stories I’ve ever been told…

 Mustard Potato Salad With Capers (Happy Anniversary, Mom!)

Soup Dumplings

Many many months ago, Michelle and I got it into our heads that we wanted to make soup dumplings.  I’d read a recipe for them, but had never actually tasted them (sensing a theme here?) and Michelle had eaten them, but couldn’t find a good recipe.  We had all of these visions of how we would do a mini-cooking demonstration in her huge kitchen and post it here and become famous for our soup dumplings and end up on Good Morning America and Top Chef (ok, maybe that last part was more my vision than hers, but whatever).  Between the time we decided to try this (sometime last October) and the time we actually did it (sometime in April), I actually did get to try some dumplings, and even though they were prepackaged ones, they were tasty enough to get me hooked.  In the time since Michelle and I created our own version and now (let’s forget that two seasons have come and gone and that we’re well into a third), neither of us have tried the recipe again.  But we totally want you to, because it was yummy and fairly easy and totally impressive (and it wasn’t the bottle and a half of wine we drank while cooking that made us think that). 

We ended up using two recipes, one from Saveur and one from some random website I found when I googled “soup dumpling recipe.”  We like to believe that we are fairly good cooks (or in my case, a fairly good recipe follower), but we were stopped cold by the Saveur recipe, mainly because it made little sense to us, especially the first step of making gelatin out of pork skin.  What now?  Luckily, the second recipe said we could use gelatin packets, which we did.  The pork belly turned out to be the easiest of all of this, as Whole Foods had some on hand (call first) and I bet any big grocery store carries it (I was nervous about finding it, because it always seems so exclusive on menus, but there it was hanging out next to the pork loin).  Michelle found all of the other ingredients at a local Asian market and her grocery store and we decided to use pre-packaged wonton wrappers (they worked only ok.  They tore easily and we had to double wrap some of the dumplings, so we’d make our own next time [or how about you make some and tell us how it worked?]).

The other part of the recipe that we really didn’t get was where the soup part of the “soup dumplings” came in.  We knew that something would have to melt or dissolve and become a liquid, but we really couldn’t figure out what it was.  Michelle had the grand idea of freezing some soup first in a tiny star shaped ice cube tray (no particular reason for the stars, other than they were cute).   It wasn’t until we read the directions from the second recipe that we understood that it was the gelatin that would dissolve and give us our delicious soupiness (and maybe you all saw that one coming, but we–with 5 degrees between us–were completely bewildered).  We ended up doing two (ok, about 16) batches of dumplings, some with the frozen soup cubes and some with the gelatin.  The soup cubes were a lot faster, but the gelatin ones held together better.

If you’ve clicked on the Saveur link above (you can go ahead and do it now, I’ll wait), you’ve seen that the recipe has a lot of steps and as much as I’m committed to this whole blogging thing, I really don’t think you need me to retype it here.  But! I will give you our tweaks to each step in the recipe, so that you can run out, get the ingredients and impress your family or latest crush tonight…

1.  We are all for finding shortcuts to recipes to make the time between cooking and eating a little shorter.  We highly recommend using 2 packets of unflavored gelatin dissolved in 1-1/2 tablespoons of water and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce rather than all this crazy talk about boiling  and leaching pork skin. 

2.  We never really figured out why you needed to blanch the cabbage leaves, but we also didn’t figure out an alternative, so go ahead and do it.  We also didn’t have a bamboo steamer, so we used a colander (or the steam basket from a double pot) set over boiling water.

3.  This step is easy.  Go for it!

4.  This is the step where you break out the wine.  Really?  If you’re one of the people who just happens to have a meat grinder sitting in your kitchen, have me over; otherwise a food processor will do.

5.  We totally skipped this step and used premade wonton wrappers.  I think it would be worth trying to make your own wrappers, but make sure there is more wine somewhere.

6.  I highly recommend watching the little video that Saveur provides, because you think you know how to fold a dumpling (I mean, don’t we all think that?) until you read these directions and you realize that either you are illiterate or they make no sense.  We watched the video 3 days before we tried this, and ended up folding them any which way, but you aim high and do it right, ok?

7.  Don’t fall for the temptation of splitting one open to see if they are cooked, because all the soup will come out.  Not that we did that or anything.  Trust the timing directions here.  Totally worth the wait…

Challenge #2: Heidi’s Creamless Cream of Mushroom Soup

So the last couple of weeks in Chicago have been cold (which we know makes me very sad).  And I had a cold.  So the last thing I wanted to do was cook or think about cooking, but I also wanted some comfort food, because I felt incredibly sorry for myself.  I’d bought crimini mushrooms before I got sick, but mushrooms and cream and, frankly, the million and seven steps in Julia Child’s version of cream of mushroom soup did not fill me with any type of excitement or joy.  Like the previous challenge, I’ve never actually eaten cream of mushroom soup, aside from a little experiment that I did with chicken pot pie years ago.  The only canned soup we had when I was growing up was chicken noodle, and I’ve never had any desire to order cream of mushroom soup in a restaurant (and now that I think about it, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it listed… Is it not a favorite?).

Given how I felt, plus the fact that I am not a fan of cream based soups, I decided that I was going to make a creamless version of a soup I’ve never actually had a good version of.  Why do I do these kinds of things to myself? Why do I feel as though I actually know what I’m doing in a kitchen?? What is wrong with me??? 

The idea for the creamless soup actually came from a roommate I had senior year of college.  There were four of us living in a townhouse and we would take turns cooking, which really meant we would take turns warming up meals one woman’s mom would freeze for us or making ridiculously large bowls of spaghetti with gobs of butter and salt.  My three roommates were vegetarians, which was fine, but really limited what we could eat since none of us had the time or ability to cook anything tasty (let me be honest: they truly drove me insane, because they would say things like “I’m a vegetarian, is there meat in that?” as you handed them a glass of water.  I knew that it was a passing fancy (especially since somehow going to McDonald’s for happy meals did not register on the vegetarian radar), which made it 20 times more annoying when I had to use separate pans to make chicken.  I know for a fact that two of them now eat meat happily). 

I digress… We ate a lot of beans and pasta and rice and one roommate taught us to make creamless cream of broccoli soup.  We would boil frozen broccoli in some water until it was cooked through and then strain the liquid and add the broccoli to a blender with salt, pepper, nutmeg and a little of the liquid.  Instant creamy soup (with a touch of milk if we were feeling extravagant) and incredibly healthy and easy.  The same thing can be done with pumpkin or butternut squash soup, so I figured why not mushroom?  So I chopped up my mushrooms and sautéed them in some butter with shallots and thyme, added them to some chicken broth and eventually decided to thicken it a bit with a super easy version of béchamel sauce (a white sauce which is the base for a lot of other sauces).

And kids, it was fabulous!  No seriously, I don’t think I’ve been this happy about an experiment in a really long time (if ever).  It was smooth and creamy with nice bits of mushrooms for texture.  The flavor tasted like fall to me, maybe because of the thyme and shallots. The white wine I used to deglaze the pan with the mushrooms and shallots added a bit of richness to it and brought it all together.

The recipe is a bit of Joy of Cooking with a bit of what-do-I-feel-like-doing, so once you get the base, I’m sure it would be easy to change it up with different mushrooms (I’d actually bought shitake mushrooms to sauté and put on top, but I let them sit a bit too long before cooking them and they seemed a bit rubbery.  I’m not a fan of the earthy taste of porcini mushrooms, but I bet they’d work well, too). 

The soup was the perfect comfort food on a cold day when all I wanted was a good book and something warm to make me feel better.  Of course, I hope that when you make it you are healthy and happy, but keep a bit in the freezer just in case…

Update:  Heidi made the soup and contributed this lovely photo…

 

Creamless Cream of Mushroom Soup

Food Challenge #1: Moe’s Mofongo

A friend from law school responded to our plea for things to make with a suggestion for mofongo.  I will readily admit that I had to Google it, because I had never heard of it, let alone tasted it.  I found out that it’s a traditional Puerto Rican dish made from fried plantains mashed together with garlic and pork cracklings or bacon.  A few things here: (1) anything mashed together with bacon will happily become a part of my life, but (2) what are pork cracklings? Are they pork rinds like the ones they sell at convenience stores?  Or was I going to be required to make my own and seriously, who does that and how?  And (3): despite the title of this blog, I don’t actually own a pestle and mortar, which in every recipe I read for mofongo said I must have—a food processor would not do (which is fine, because I don’t have one of those either).  So this little recipe became a challenge, because I’d never tasted what I was about to make so I’d never know if I got it right, I didn’t know what one of the main ingredients was exactly and I don’t own one of the appliances crucial to the recipe (actually, two appliances, because I discovered I should also have a deep fryer).  Oh, ok… Let’s start cooking!

 

Needless to say, I didn’t have a recipe for this.  I thought I’d come upon one in Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World.  The recipe for fufu from Ghana sounded similar, but some searching on the interwebs led me to believe that these are two completely different foods with different textures and eaten in totally different ways.   My main problem was that I had no idea what the consistency of mofongo was supposed to be.  I could guess what plantain, garlic and pork would taste like together, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to have something creamy or crispy, dense or light at the end.  I thought all of the frying would leave me with crispy and dense, but then I discovered that the end result needed to be rolled into a ball that could be added to soup or eaten with a sauce, so how was crispy going to work?  Finally, one recipe said it should have the consistency of mashed (not whipped) potatoes.  I decided to go with that and hope for the best.

I made the decision that recipe integrity be damned, I was not going to schlep home a pestle and mortar and deep fryer for this one dish.  So I decided to use my blender set to chop and a deep bottomed skillet for frying.  Luckily I have a candy/deep fryer thermometer, so I could test the temperature of the oil.  I also decided to go with the bacon rather than trying to figure out the pork crackling sitch, because it was Sunday and I wanted bacon for breakfast anyway…

Green Plantain

All of the recipes called for green plantain, which was readily available at the local grocery store, so yeah! for one easy part of the recipe (an aside here: plantain is not pronounced plan-tane, but plan-tin.  Trust me on this [but if you don’t believe me or my Caribbean family, dictionary.com will say it for you].  If I can stop one person from mispronouncing this word again I will feel my work in the food blog world is done).

 

So the recipe. Most of the ones I found online were the same except for one thing, which I learned late Sunday afternoon is kind of a crucial difference between the recipe working and failing miserably.  The recipe I went with the first time around—from El Boricua, a Puerto Rican newsletter (http://www.elboricua.com/mofongo.html) –said that I needed to make tostones first and then use them in my mofongo.  Tostones are basically twice-fried plantains (you fry the plantain, then press them down so they spread a bit and then fry them again). 

Tostones

While really tasty and happy, I couldn’t get this version to stay in a ball if my culinary life depended on it. 

Extra Crispy Mofongo Before It Fell Apart...

 

It was too crispy and there wasn’t nearly enough moisture to hold it together.  I thought about adding some chicken broth, but that would have involved actually having chicken broth, so, um, yeah…. I also thought that adding broth would make it soggy rather than making it moist.  There’s no way that this version would hold up in a soup or sauce without falling apart, but I could see substituting it for breadcrumbs on chicken or fish or a roast.

I decided to do the recipe again, but skipped the second frying of the plantains and that led me to as close to a mofongo as I think I’ll get until I taste a professional version and try it again.  It was much easier the second time around, and the flavors and texture seemed right. 

Is this the real deal?

 I got the mashed potato consistency after about 10 seconds in the blender and was able to roll it into balls with no problem.  I didn’t try dropping them into soup to see how they’d hold up, but I think it’d work.  I leave it up to Moe to test and let me know if I’m even close…

 

 

Mofongo (compilation of recipes)

What’s Next?

We’ve discussed the fact that Heather doesn’t really know what to cook or bake on any given day.   And Michelle is super busy getting a PhD ([from Heather]: because she’s a rockstar like that!), so cooking has kind of taken a backseat to statistics.  Add to that the fact that buying the ingredients, actually making the dish, taking a gazillion photos of it and then writing about it takes time, and you can see why days, weeks, months pass before anything new and tasty is posted here. 

So!  We’re asking for your help (and knowing what nice and lovely people you are out there in food blog land, we know you won’t let us down [hint hint]).  Is there a recipe out there that you’ve been wanting to try, but don’t have the time to test?  Or one that you’ve tried that didn’t quite work and you want to know if it’s you or the recipe (trust us, it’s the recipe–you’re a fabulous cook!).  Or! Is there something you’ve tasted and really really want to duplicate, but can’t find a recipe for?  Send them to us and we’ll work on it and post our thoughts, tweaks and pictures (and totally give you the credit for how well it turned out).  You can leave it in the comments or email us at pestlemortar@sbcglobal.net. 

Of course, keep in mind that neither of us are independently wealthy, so let’s keep the recipes involving shaved truffles and foie gras to minimum.  And if there’s some exotic ingredient not readily available at our local grocery store, give us a hint as to where to get it.  Finally, it should come as no shock that neither of us are professional cooks or bakers, so if it involves plucking our own chickens or making mayonnaise from scratch, pretty much go ahead and figure we aren’t going to do it.   Otherwise, we are totally up for some challenges!

Think of us as your personal chefs and taste testers.  What can we make for you?

Comfort Food 101

Even though summer never really started, fall totally snuck up and scared me half to death.  And I didn’t really expect it to pull up a chair and get comfy so quickly, you know?  One day I’m in a cute sundress and flippies, the next I’m seeing 48 degrees on the weather channel.  Give a girl a minute to transition the wardrobe and shoes, ok? 

At any rate, this is my favorite season and not just for the boots and sweaters and Halloween candy.  I love that after months of eating salads and fruit and everything else that screams summer (ok, ice cream and hotdogs, too), I can switch out the teeny outfits for comfy clothes and make soups and stews and breads and pies to keep me warm from the inside out.  I don’t have a fireplace, but if I did it would be blazing at all times so that I could burn leaves (is that legal?) and curl up with a glass of wine and a book.  Fall definitely speaks to my Cancer-esque homebody tendencies.  

Last year, a good friend gave me a crock pot for my birthday (she was a good friend before, but that really upped things!) and although I was a little wary of leaving it on all day, when I learned about all of the happiness that slowed cooked meat can bring to my life, I was a quick convert. 

 

Just as belted cardigans are the “it” fashion item for the season (really?), a crock pot is a definite accessory (really!).  I do lamb and chicken and beef stew and soups in it and most recently, pulled pork. 

I’m a little sad about the pulled pork discovery, because (1) I missed out on a whole year of it and (2) I doubt it’s something I could eat every day—regardless of it being the other white meat—even though I really, really, really want to. 

I also made s’mores in my oven. 

And while there is nothing quite like sitting around a campfire singing songs or telling scary stories while you roast marshmallows on a stick, making s’mores in your oven avoids that whole sitting-outside-in-the-cold-and-getting-splinters-in-your-unmentionables-and-then-having-to-sleep-in-a-tent-with-people-you-don’t-really-like thing (not that that’s a true story from Girl Scout camp or anything).

So, while I would have liked a bit more summer sun and warm breezes, I am happy that fall is here, with all of the goodness it brings.  Now if we can just get winter to maybe take a little sabbatical…

 

 

Pulled Pork Sandwiches (adapted from Good Housekeeping) and S’mores

Fall Plum Tart

Even though I haven’t been in school for many many [many] years, September always feels like the start of the new year for me.  I used to love getting all of my school supplies organized and ready, pack and repack my backpack and lay out my first day of school clothes (any wonder that I wasn’t invited to one party all of high school?).  I have been trying to remember my last first day of school, which would have been my third year of law school, and I don’t remember anything at all except that I really probably didn’t want to go.  I was over the whole law school thing before it even started, it seemed, which is not the best way to go into a situation that will leave you in debt well into your grandchildren’s adulthood. When I graduated from college—aimless, jobless and with a degree in International Studies and French—my family gave me a year to find gainful employment or go back to school.  Easy choice at the time.  I spent the summer after college in a tug of war between “oh my god, how embarrassed would I be if I don’t get in anywhere” and “oh crap, if I actually get in, I’ll have to go.”

My reward for my months of studying and writing essays and typing my name and social security number over and over was to spend four months in Paris.  I saved all of my money from the job I had for six months so that I didn’t have to think about lying to French employers about having a work visa.  I packed two huge suitcases and tried to forget that I would need to make a decision about the rest of my life by May 1.  I had no idea what I would do in Paris for four months by myself, which is exactly what I wanted.

My days quickly took on the pattern of being completely random;  my path decided based on how I felt or who could come with me or whether I’d stayed out too late the night before.   The only thing I did almost every day was go to a café a few blocks from my apartment called Les Recettes de Charlotte. 

It was this beautiful tea shop done up in lavender and yellow and run by a striking older woman (I never got up the courage to ask if she was Charlotte), with shocking silver hair and a waist-line that made me think she’d never tasted any of the pastries in the store.  She had the usual croissants and pain au chocolat, but then there was a separate part of the display case with mille-feuille (talk to me about why they are called Napoleon’s in English…), and pot de crème and delicate petits fours.  I sampled everything at least once, I think, but for some reason I always returned to the tarte aux pruneaux, the plum tart. It was kind of like a turn-over (which is such a sad way to describe something that good), with a flaky crust and a warm sweet filling.  I would order my tart and a cup of one of her specialty teas and she’d serve it to me on beautiful china.  I’d sit there for hours reading or writing in my journal and she’d walk around the store and we never spoke once, even though the place was usually empty.  I’m sure that I was on my way there when I dropped my deposit for the law school I finally chose in the mailbox.  I probably ordered two tarts that day.

I discovered that Charlotte and her tarts have moved on to places unknown [to me].  I can’t find a recipe that even comes close to what she made, but this one I made up will do in a pinch, especially since I cheated and used pre-made pie dough.   Italian prune plums are in season right now, and they are a perfect balance between sweet and tart.  

Any pre-made dough will work, and I did mini-double crust pies, but you could fold them over to make turnovers or make one big tart, if you want. 

 Now if only someone would serve one to me on fine china with a cup of tea….

 

 

 

 

Not Quite Charlotte’s Plum Tart

 

1 pre-made pie crust (thawed)

1/2 pound Italian prune plums

3 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

egg wash (1 egg yolk and 2 tablespoons water , lightly beaten)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Cut plums in half, using line down center as a guide; remove pit and cut plum into quarters.  Put  plums, sugar and water into saucepan over medium and cook until  plums have softened a bit but still have some firmness.  Pour a bit of the liquid in to a cup and stir in the cornstarch.  Add this mixture back to the saucepan with the plums and stir until liquid thickens.  Let cool.

Roll out pie dough and using a small saucer as a guide, cut out four equal circles.  Place on parchment paper and add filling to middle of two of the circles.  Cover with rest of dough, crimping edges all the way around.  Brush with egg wash.  Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.