Things I did this weekend:

[eruthros]

1. Cooked! A lot. I made apple-pear crostada and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and mashed yam with oranges and rum and pecans and salad and other things as well that I've forgotten. m_shell made kick-ass apple-cranberry-turkey sausage stuffing, and was responsible for cooking the turkey. (Turkey is scary.) It was all quite good, even if we did have a minor pie crisis (for unknown reasons, it took an hour to cook instead of thirty minutes -- baffling). Also, we then ate leftovers for days.

2. As a corollary to #1, I did a lot of dishes. Because I have only three mixing bowls, I washed them about every thirty seconds all day Thursday.

3. Taught m_shell to knit. Go me! She picked out some yarn and everything, and is knitting a hugemongous scarf, which she had time to practice because...

4. ... I watched the entirety of the 2005 series of Doctor Who since Friday. We'd both sit here with our knitting, and then I'd pause it to explain Daleks to m_shell, and then we'd agree that Daleks were creepy, and then we would watch more Doctor Who. Um. Yeah. It ... didn't feel like thirteen episodes?

5. Knit. A lot. (See #4.) I finished a scarf and am halfway through a purse made of sari silk.

6. Discovered that I live in a town where you can buy pony carts on craigslist and the police need to remind people to lock their doors when they leave for a month. A month. I cannot deal. It was a front-page story in the local paper: attention! lock your doors! Where is reality from here?

Comments

Fooooooood

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

apple-pear crostada

That sounds reeeeally yummy. Do you have a recipe you might share?

Re: Fooooooood

[eruthros]

Sure! It's a really easy Mollie Katzen recipe, from Sunlight Cafe, her breakfast book. The crust is cornmeal-based, and thus almost impossible to ruin. She gives instructions for a food processor, but a pastry cutter would work as well. I'm going to paraphrase madly, because she's wordy.

Oven: 375*. Pan: 10-inch springform.

The crust:
1.5 c cornmeal (medium ground)
1.5 c flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)
.25 c sugar
.5 ts salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter
1 large egg
cream or half-and-half to moisten (usually takes somewhere from .25-.5 cups)

1. Combine dry ingredients in food processor.
2. Cut the butter into thin slices with a knife. Set these pieces on top of the dry ingredients and pulse until meal-like texture and even distribution of butter.
3. Add the egg and pulse until incorporated. Then add just enough cream to bring the dough together.
4. Remove the dough and push it into a mass. Split into 2 pieces: one 1/3 of the dough and the other 2/3 of the dough. Form into two balls, flatten into disks, place each disk between two sheets of plastic wrap (I use baking parchment) and roll until about an eighth of an inch thick. Ease the larger circle into a 10-inch springform pan. Cut the smaller circle into strips for the latticework on top.

The filling:
2.5 lbs mixed apples and pears (not Boscs) - I usually use more than this, in a ratio of about 3:2 apples:pears.
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB flour
3 TB sugar
.25 ts salt

1. Mollie Katzen says peel the fruit. I say "ha! as if." It's quite good without peeling. I just cut it into thin slices, put the slices into a bowl, and put everything else on top. Then I toss the fruit and coating until it's even.
2. Spread the fruit in the crust. Arrange the dough strips on top in a lattice, pressing the ends of the strips into the sides of the crust to hold.
3. Place the tart on a baking sheet, and then bake about 40 minutes until light golden on top and around the edges.
4. Cool for at least 15 minutes before removing the rim of the pan.

I sometimes find that the tart dries out too much, especially in a gas oven, so I sometimes add more lemon juice or a bit of apple cider or something to keep the fruit moist until it starts to soften and release liquid.

Enjoy!

Re: Fooooooood

[(Anonymous)]

Ooh, that does look yummy- the last crostada recipe I tried had way too much pastry per unit apple and came out awfully dry. But this looks much better.

I may very well have to try this.. it also doesn't look incredibly sugary which is good. Hmm. And no spices either? Interesting..

Re: Fooooooood

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Now why did the pesky browser log me out? Rats. That was me..