Puff Pastry

Canadian chef Rob Feenie made this savory tart during the 2002 Workshop. Unlike quiche with its custard filling, the classic tarte flambée topping includes no egg—just fromage blanc thinned with crème fraîche, sweet sautéed onions, and smoky bacon. The name (“flaming tart”) derives from earlier times, when cooks would bake it near the embers of a wood-fired oven.

Using store-bought puff pastry allows you to make these tarts on a busy weeknight. Round out the vegetarian meal with a salad of mixed greens or any of the winter vegetable sides on page 279.

WHY IT’S LIGHT One crust makes this tart less fattening than a more traditional (read: double-crust) summer pie. It has a higher proportion of peak-season fruit, another bonus for the calorie conscious. Nectarines are featured, but plums, peaches, apricots, or any mixture of stone fruits would work beautifully here.

The fact is, I could come up with a hundred different cajeta recipes. Cajeta, a caramel-like spread traditionally made with goat’s milk, is readily available all over Mexico and is known as dulce de leche in other parts of Latin America. Cajeta, which translates as “small box,” used to refer to the box in which the cajeta was sold. Now you can find it in a glass jar, a much more convenient presentation. It is found in many supermarkets and Latin markets and is available in different flavors, the most common being wine and strawberry. Any flavored cajeta would work well in this recipe. Whipped with cream and a little sugar, it is a perfectly sweetened filling for this tasty treat—which is just as delightful as it is messy to eat.

If you don’t want to go through the trouble of baking the puff-pastry tart, just serve this wonderful chutney alongside the goat cheese for your guests to spread on crackers. I always have the chutney on hand to stir into hummus or to slather onto a piece of grilled chicken. The creamy goat cheese is the perfect counterpoint to the smoky-sweet chutney.

When it comes to cocktail food, I like one-biters and I like things that are dainty and beautiful. These pretty little tarts fit that bill and more. They taste as fantastic as they look. I prefer to use black-olive tapenade because of its richness, but you can certainly try green-olive, which is tangier.

I make these sweet and savory tarts all year round as a first course or served with a salad as a light lunch. The onions take on a lovely blushing red color when they caramelize. Shake it up with a SAZERAC (see page 28)

These are little golden pyramids of puff pastry with a savory filling of smoked duck, sausage, and apple, served with a tart cider sauce. When it comes to entertaining, these packets can be made a day in advance and baked right before serving. Garnish with a scattering of pretty celery leaves.

Like the asparagus tart that’s a harbinger of spring (see page 69), this mushroom-topped variation is a crowd-pleaser. It makes a lovely dinner, or, when cut into bite-size pieces, a perfect hors d’oeuvre for a cocktail party.

We like Granny Smith apples for this tart, but you could substitute a number of other varieties, including Macoun, Cortland, or Jonagold.

Although it takes just minutes to put together, this savory tart makes an impressive main course. A simple green salad completes the meal. The tart is also a lovely addition to a buffet or a potluck.

These turnovers are delicious! Plus, they’re quick to make and everyone loves them. When you’re making them, be sure to put only a few cherries and a little bit of sauce in each one; otherwise, they’ll be really hard to close and they’ll leak all over the place.

My roommate recently made this for a party we were having and was surprised that something so tasty and fancy looking could be so easy to make. Everyone loved it and was impressed that she had made it. It travels well, too. Combined with a side salad, it makes for a nice lunch.

The easy availability of butter in America was a boon for my mother, who saw endless possibilities for perfecting French pâtés chaud, large puff pastry rounds filled with an aromatic meat mixture. She regularly made the rich pastries from scratch, and they were standard breakfast fare for my siblings and me growing up. As adults, we have scaled back our consumption, making the pastries smaller and serving them as finger food on special occasions. Shaping tiny round pastries is laborious, so we form logs and cut them into diamonds. Unlike my mom, I don’t have the patience or time to make my own puff pastry. Instead, I rely on a local bakery for frozen sheets of all-butter puff pastry or use the frozen puff pastry sold at supermarkets. The latter are usually sold two sheets to a box, with each sheet weighing about 1/2 pound and measuring about ten inches square.

Onions make an important contribution to the filling of pies, providing a sweet balance for the savoriness of the meat and a necessary change of texture, too. A meat pie with no onions would be hard going. I rarely make a meat pie. It is one of those recipes I reserve for a cold autumn day, when it’s too wet to go out.

There is a point in the year, usually after the Christmas decorations have been put away, when the house gets too cold to sit still in without a wrap around you. I have always kept a cold house; hot rooms make me feel unhealthy. But sometimes the only way of getting warm here is to eat. Carbohydrate-rich meals, such as the tart of leek and cheese and pastry I made on the coldest day of the year, warm you in a way few others are capable of.

Having grown up on Dede’s Cheese Straws (page 15), I never knew this version existed until I went to culinary school. Like Dede’s traditional Southern version, these savory, buttery bites get their kick from cayenne. If cayenne is too hot for you, simply substitute paprika or pimento (smoked paprika from Spain). Store-bought frozen puff pastry can be gruesome, so choose carefully; I always use Dufour’s, available online and at gourmet markets such as Whole Foods.

There is no doubt that if you used only exotic mushrooms this tart would be delicious. However, white mushrooms, easier to find and less expensive, are fairly bland and will take on the flavors of other types. I suggest using a variety, including white button, for a balance of flavor and cost.

This is a standard tart in France, and I thought the combination of pears and chocolate on flaky pastry was so tasty I had to bring it back. This would be a perfect ending to one of the “Impressing Your Date” meals. It’s easy, tastes great, looks really cool, and can all be done ahead of time.

When we were testing the recipes for this book, all of our neighbors and friends thought we needed to try this one again. Not because it needed work, they just wanted more. Blueberry Turnovers are super easy to make and absolutely delicious. They would make a perfect ending to an “Impressing Your Date” meal. Serve them warm and believe me, your date will be impressed.

Making strudel dough from scratch is a pain, but puff pastry is a terrific substitute that makes this dessert surprisingly easy to put together. The crust gets all flaky, and with the apples and cinnamon . . . oh man, it’s good.

Peeling peaches with a knife can be a pain, but blanching them first makes it much easier. Lowering the peaches into a pan of boiling water for two or three minutes loosens the skins enough that you can easily peel them with your fingers. This works even better on tomatoes, which are impossible to peel otherwise.