Sunday, November 21, 2010

Drunken Pumpkin-Bourbon Tart

People tend to have strong opinions about pumpkin pie. They either love it or they hate it. In the South, where I live, most of my friends prefer pecan or sweet potato pies for their holiday feasts, yet nobody ever turns down my pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. In fact, I'm making two of these babies this Thursday to share with said friends.

This tart is similar to a traditional pumpkin pie, but, it's sleeker and sexier. It's not as deep and not as filling as pie, but it's plum full of fresh, roasted pumpkin flavor. Please don't substitute canned pumpkin unless nothing else is available. It literally pales in comparison in every way and it's so easy to roast pumpkin. Look for the petite pie pumpkins that are on grocer's shelves as we speak. They can be roasted off and pureed days in advance (see directions below).

In this recipe, the custard gets pumped up with bourbon and plenty of spice so that it takes on a beautiful, burnt caramel color and layers of festive flavor. It is best served cold or at room temperature served with a generous dollop of freshly whipped cream. Maybe it will become part of your holiday table's annual offerings. Happy Thanksgiving!

Drunken Pumpkin-Bourbon Tart
(Serves 8 to 10)

Equipment Needed: One round 9" X 1" round tart pan with removable bottom

For the pastry:
2 1/4 cups White Lily All Purpose Flour
1/4 cup sugar
generous pinch sea salt or kosher salt
2 sticks cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes
approximately 1/4 cup ice cold water, or enough to just hold together the pastry

1 egg wash - yolk, pinch salt, splash water, blended together

For the filling:

2 cups of roasted pumpkin flesh
3 large eggs
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons bourbon
1 tablespoon best-quality vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
2 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375. Prepare the pastry. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a plastic blade, pulse together the flour, sugar and salt. Add the cold butter all at once. Pulse 40 - 50 times or until the flour is the size of tiny peas. Gradually, drizzle the ice water through the mouth of the food processor, while pulsing. Stop just when the pastry begins to hold together. Pour out onto a lightly floured surface and form into a disk using your hands. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. (Note: This can be done several days in advance and stored in the refrigerator until baking day, which, for me, will be Thanksgiving).

Meanwhile, cut the pumpkin in half horizontally, and remove the pulp and the seeds using a stainless steel spoon. Discard the pulp and the seeds. Turn the pumpkin halves cut-sides down on a roasting sheet and cook in the pre-heated oven until the flesh is soft to the touch and beginning to implode, about 45 minutes. When the pumpkin is done, remove from the oven and cool at room temperature.

Once the pastry has rested/chilled at least 30 minutes, roll it out on a lightly floured surface, to about 1/4" thickness. Line the tart pan with the pastry, leaving enough pastry to create a slightly elevated pastry border, about 1/2" higher than the edge of the tart pan. Line the pastry with crumpled parchment paper and fill it with pie weights or dried beans, gently pressing the beans into the bottom and edges of the paper so that they're evenly distributed. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Remove the parchment and weights, brush down the bottom, sides and edges of the tart shell with the egg wash using a pastry brush. Return the tart pan to the oven and bake another 10 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven and set aside. Reduce oven temperature to 350F.

To prepare the filling, scoop two cups of the roasted pumpkin flesh out of the pumpkin halves and place in a large bowl. (Note - any left-overs can be stored in the freezer or refrigerator and later turned into a lovely savory soup or puree!) Using a hand-held mixer, blend together the pumpkin for 2 minutes on medium and blend into a smooth consistency. Add the eggs and light brown sugar, and blend together on medium for another minute, or until fully incorporated. Add the remaining ingredients and blend to combine on medium until fluffy, aerated, and fully incorporated. Gently ladle or pour the custard into the prepared tart shell, leaving a 1/4"-deep tart border. Place on a baking sheet and bake on the center rack of the oven. After 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 325F and continue baking until the custard has just set and quivers slightly to the touch, about 45 minutes total. Cool completely before slicing, or refrigerate for several hours or overnight before serving.

Bring on the whipped cream!

Recipe from Tart Love - Sassy, Savory, Sweet and Southern by Holly Herrick (Gibbs Smith, Fall, 2011. Photo taken and generously shared by Helene DuJardin, www.mytartelette.com)

8 comments:

Ricky Addy said...

VEEJAY SALES CORPORATION (INDIA) - Manufacturer and exporter of supermarket racks, supermarket shelves, checkout counters, electronics showroom racks, departmental store racks, racks for laptop, display racks India.

Supermarket racks manufacturer

Unknown said...

I am not yet familiar with White Lily Flour. Is it some kind of flour that starched from lilies, or something? Your pumpkin pie looks gorgeous!

Indirect Heat said...

That looks delicious. I'm going to make that as soon as I return home from my T'giving travels.

About Holly Herrick said...

White Lily Flour is a brand of self rising flour made from 100% soft winter wheat. I find it makes exceptionally flaky pastry. If you can't find it, substitute another self-rising flour. Happy cooking, Arfi. I'm glad you'll be cooking this Dude! Happy Thanksgiving.

for the flour: www.whitelily.com

Stacey said...

This recipe made a salty pie!! I think the measurements are wrong. My family is sad :(

About Holly Herrick said...

Stacey - I am so sorry! Yesterday, when I was making what I promise you is an otherwise delicious tart, I noticed the salt measurement typo. It should be 1 teaspoon salt in the custard, not one tablespoon. I feel terrible. It is since repaired in the recipe. Please email me your email address at hollyherrick@hotmail.com. I'd like help make it up to you! All the best, Holly

Caitlin said...

Hi Holly - let me start off with the positive: the tart was great, and everyone at New Years Dinner (also, 2nd Christmas with missing family members) really enjoyed it, even the kids. I made it with Tartelette's marscapone whipped cream topping and they pair well together.

Ok, now the constructive criticism. I'm sure the book copy will have more detailed instructions, but I got really frustrated when making this. So you said use "White Lily" and then in the comments said it was a self-rising flour. White Lily makes both self-rising and regular flour and so in my original plans I had just put in regular flour. When I saw the comment I ran out and bought some baking powder and added it, though issue #2 makes me wonder if this was right or not. Anyway, it would just be good to have specifics like that rather than relying on a brand name, especially because of the limited availability of some stuff.

So, my crust rose A LOT. To the point where I had to scrape off the top layer and re-brown it in order to fit any filling. The crust was tasty but seems ill-suited to a tart pan, which is so shallow. Perhaps this was because I added baking powder and maybe you didn't really mean self-rising flour? Anyway, confusion!

My other notes are kind of nit-pick. It would be nice if you provided a guess as to how many sugar pumpkins yields 2 cups. I have an extra roasted pumpkin to worry about now (not that it should be a problem.) I also had to google what temperature to roast it at. You just said "pre-heated temp" but is that the heat you're prepping for the pie? What if I'm making them at different times, should I assume you meant both temps for both applications? Just some more clarity in the instructions. Also, splitting the instructions between crust and filling so I don't have to scroll up and down searing for the stage that I'm supposed to be at (especially if I'm doing prep work ahead of time, or not in the same order that you've laid it out in.)

Like I said, the final product was great, but hopefully I've provided a few notes on making the ideas more clear -- at least to me. Thanks for the great recipe and congrats on the book.

About Holly Herrick said...

Hi Caitlin,

Thanks so much for your constructive criticism. I need to be more careful w these blog posts. They do not transfer directly from the book. There is a lot of cross-referencing in the book that doesn't translate well to the post, particularly regarding making the pastry and the flour. It's all detailed at the front and the roasting temp (which should be 425 degrees) is in a separate side bar in the book. It also talks about yield for the pumpkin... A pie pumpkin should yield about 2 - 3 cups. You can roast off the other one and freeze the squash for later use in a soup or pie. You did NOT need to add a leavening agent. I'm sorry for that confusion, too. Tart/pie pastry rises/puffs with the butter which is cut throughout the dough.

I will be more careful to avoid confusion in the future - I promise. I love the flavor of the custard of this tart and am glad you enjoyed it, despite your aggravation.:) I hope you had a beautiful Christmas and will make this again. I REALLY appreciate your input and will put it in place during the final edit in Tart Love! Happy New Year!! Holly

Culinary Cost-Cutting 101

Coupon Crazy

When I was a little girl, I marveled while watching my Great Aunt Frances sitting at her linoleum-topped kitchen table, cutting coupons from the daily newspaper in the tiny Kansas town she lived in until she was nearly 100 years old.

It seemed like such a waste of energy in order to save a few pennies on, what I thought, were probably things she wouldn't normally buy anyway. But, I was naive. She, a thrifty survivor of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, had her coupon system down pat and it's probably one of the reasons she made it through a long life of hard times, many of them spent alone.

The latest bout of monetary unpleasantness, however, has created a market for New Age couponing systems. The internet now has a number of hot coupon sites (I like couponmom.com) which provide free, brand-name coupons and more if you select to register as a member. They're just a click, a printer, and five minutes away. In addition, many grocery stores' websites offer lists of daily specials. And, here's the kicker. Many provide selections from the kind of items you usually purchase, anyway. That was it for me. The last straw supporting my long-standing anti-coupon mindset finally broke its resistant back.

Harris Teeter's online specials shopping list became this list-hater's new best friend. I dipped into it with reckless abandon. With a little practice and increasing knowledge, I'm slowly forming my own semi-profitable coupon system. By combining the free manufacturer's coupons from sites like couponmom.com with a daily special shopping list constructed from Harris Teeter's web site (harristeeter.com) , my handy VIC card, and an extra dose of concentration at the grocery store, I have scored some serious savings.

The best yet happened last week. Granted, it was a big sales day at the downtown Teeter. The store was offering buy one get one, two or even three, all over the place on big ticket items like beef, coffee and wine. Since I'm expecting company in a couple weeks, I decided to stock up on these and other staples. The net result was a whopping $67 total savings. In essence, I bought three weeks-worth of groceries for less than I usually spend in one week!

My heart raced with anticipation as I watched the basket cave with the weight of my cache and the numbers creeping slowly higher on the cash register. Then, as the cashier started calculating in the selected coupons, the numbers amazingly started going down. It was like getting on the scale after a week of gorging Haagen-Dazs only to find you'd lost five pounds. I was beaming. She was beaming and said, "You did good today!"


Admittedly, a follow-up trip to replenish the fresh vegetable drawer just one week later only yielded $10 in savings, but next time I'll do better. I'm on a coupon-crazed mission. Intelligent use of coupons and smart shopping add up to saving a lot more than pennies. And, I'm not in Kansas anymore.

One Plucky Chicken, Four Marvelous Meals

With grocery costs rocketing to the stratosphere, it’s imperative to save wherever you can at the supermarket without eliminating taste. In addition to reaching for reduced daily specials, what you buy and how you put it to use in your kitchen can happily translate to huge savings with bodacious bite.

In this era of grocery gouging, chicken can become your new best friend for just pennies per four ounce serving when paired with practical pantry staples like pasta and veggies. Low in fat, high in protein and exceptionally versatile, chicken marries equally well with the exotic (think truffles or saffron) to the humble (think roasted potatoes and rosemary).

For these reasons, it’s a regular menu guest at my house, where I pride myself on transforming a single, four pound chicken (preferably organic and purchased at a reduced rate) into four fabulous feasts for a group of four. That’s sixteen meals, folks! A four pound chicken runs anywhere from $6-$10 (depending on where and how you shop), throw in a little change for ingredients to flesh it out into a meal (4X), and you’re looking at less than $20. A night out for a family of four at any fast food favorite will set you back the same amount or more faster than you can say “heart attack”.

Gotcha? Let me tell you how it’s done!

Meal #1: This is the launching pad for the meal plan event(s) – a whole roasted chicken. Since it’s going to be transformed several times, keep the seasoning simple – ground pepper, a nice crust of coarse salt and a rub down with olive oil. Roast at 425 until done (about 20 minutes per pound) and top it with a few love pats of butter to sink deeply into the bird. Allow the roasted chicken to rest and re-absorb its juices. Cut the both legs and thighs away from the chicken (reserving warm). Cut the breasts away from the rib cage, cool and store in your refrigerator for later use. Serve both legs and both thighs with steamed vegetables and roasted potatoes for a satisfying, nutritional meal. Go ahead and prepare a pan gravy with a little roux, white wine, chicken stock, Dijon mustard and fresh tarragon to dress things up, but hold on to the carcass!

Meal #2: Start this after the roast chicken dinner to prepare for tomorrow’s old-fashioned and DELICIOUS chicken noodle soup. With a sturdy chef’s knife, cut up the reserved carcass remnants – the rib cage and spine – into four or five coarse chunks and put them in a two quart soup pot with a quartered onion, carrot, celery stalk and a clove or two of garlic to make an impromptu stock. Add a few peppercorns, a bay leaf and fresh thyme for added flavor. Bring it up to a boil, reduce to a slow simmer over low heat and forget about it for three to four hours. Allow to cool and refrigerate, covered, overnight.
About thirty minutes before you’re slotted to serve dinner, skim off any accumulated fat off the top of the stock, strain it, discarding all solids except any bits of chicken flesh. Finely chop an onion, carrot and celery stalk and sauté them in the same pot with a tablespoon of olive oil until softened. Season, return the strained stock to the pan and bring up to a boil. Add reserved chicken and about ¼ pound of dried pasta (flat noodles, spaghetti, linguini – your choice) and cook until tender. Serve with a drizzle of fresh herbs (parsley, tarragon, or thyme will do) and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. A small, fresh salad and warm baguette make this a meal.

Meal #3: Chicken Salad Deluxe! This is where you can really have fun with chicken’s flavor/texture marriage versatility. Cut one of the reserved breasts into chunky, ½” cubes and toss in a bowl with coarsely chopped dried cranberries (or another dried fruit like figs or currants), coarsely chopped roasted almonds, fresh herbs, a dollop of Dijon, a dash of mayo and vinegar, salt and pepper and you’ve got a meal in minutes over a bed of greens. Other flavors that work in tandem with chicken include curry, paprika, cinnamon and almost any fresh herb imaginable. Make this your own!

Meal #4: Chicken Sandwiches Supreme! Again, versatility and imagination set the stage for show-stopping chicken sandwiches prepared with freshly roasted chicken breast. Go for the best quality bread you can find, from baguette to whole grain, and fill it with thinly cut slices of the remaining breast and toppings. One sliced breast will handily complete four sandwiches. Zip up mayo with fresh basil and Dijon mustard for a fresh, personalized sauce, top with a slice of red onion and crisp romaine. Go whole hog and add a few pieces of browned bacon and a slice of avocado if the mood moves.

Chicken never tasted so good for so little.