Plum Rhubarb Custard Pie

I bought an obscene amount of rhubarb these few weeks. To me they are like Cadbury Easter Eggs or Hallowe'en Kisses: Load up on as many as you can because they will disappear before long.

As a result, bundles of scarlet stems pack my fridge, they jut here and there and balance precariously on yoghurt tubs and containers of leftovers. Every time I open the door my ideas and experiments flood my my mind.

The other week a colleague brought in a rhubarb custard pie for the staff picnic. It was lovely--just sweet enough to let the fruit's tartness shine through. It was also something I'd not had before --a plain rhubarb pie or rhubarb or rhubarb-strawberry, yes, but a custard pie. No.

So that got me thinking.

Thinking about how custard pies scare me. Just a little.

Not scared in the sense that I break out in hives at the thought of someone leaping out from behind a hydrangea bush to slap me in the face with custardy-whipped creamy-crusty goodness

Scared...as in...they consistently cause problems...but in an inconsistent way.

Sometimes the custard just doesn't happen...and by that I mean it disappears. POOF. Gone. I don't know if it absorbed into the fruit or crust or simply decided to go AWOL when my back was turned.

Other times the custard just doesn't set. Slicing into the cooled pie reveals fruit in an eggy pools soaking into the crust.

No. I don't understand either.

Something happened when I made this pie. The custard not only appeared, but it set. It surprised me so much I made it twice to ensure it wasn't a fluke. It wasn't a fluke.

With my custardish conundrums overcome, I decided to infuse its cream sweetness with cardamom and match it with a compote of rhubarb and plums.

The result was visually stunning-- claret-coloured fruit swirled with primrose custard; its floral tartness contrasted against a sweet cardamom'd custard. I am quite happy with this.

The pie is easy to make, but is a bit involved. You can make things a bit easier for yourself by making the custard and compote a day in advance; the pastry can be made well in advance and frozen.

Plum Rhubarb Custard Pie

Yield: one 23cm (10") pie

Ingredients
For the crust
350g (625ml/2.5c) all purpose flour
0.5tsp (2ml) salt
1tsp (5ml) sugar
150g (165ml/0.66c) very cold (frozen, preferably) butter
65g (80ml/0.33c) very cold (frozen, preferably) lard
60-90ml (4-6Tbsp) ice water

For the fruit
250g (500ml/2c) rhubarb, chopped into 1cm pieces
250g (3-4) plums, chopped into 1cm
pieces
100g (125ml/0.5c) brown sugar
1tsp (5ml) vanilla
0.25tsp (1ml) salt

For the custard
310ml (1.25c) table cream (18% cream) or milk
0.25tsp (1ml) ground cardamom
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
100g (125ml/0.5c) sugar
1Tbsp (15ml) cornflour

Method:
For the crust
Mix together the flour, salt and sugar. Grate in the butter and lard and then rub into the flour mixture. You're looking for a rubbly mixture where some pieces are like coarse sand and others are no larger than the size of a pea. Sprinkle in enough water so the dough comes together. Form a ball and flatten into a disc. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

For the fruit mixture
Mix all the fruit ingredients together into a saucepan. Over a medium flame, bring to a bubble, stirring occasionally, and let cook for about 10 minutes or until the rhubarb softens and the juices are thick. Take off the heat and let cool.

For the custard:
Add the cardamom to the cream or milk. Scald the cream, take it off the heat and let cool.

Beat the eggs into the sugar. Keep on beating as you dribble in the slightly cooled cream.

Remove about a quarter cup of the mixture and mix in the cornflour to make a slurry.

Rinse out and dry the saucepan in which you scalded the cream. Return the cream mixture( (the one without the cornflour) to the pan. Over a low flame, stir the custard for a few minutes. Add the slurry and keep on stirring until thick and the custard coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat and let cool

To assemble.
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F

Roll out the pastry to fit a 23cmx5cm (10" x 2") tin. Blind bake for 20 minutes.

Spoon in the fruit mixture and then pour the custard over top. Level as best as you can and bake for 30 minutes.

The pie is done when the custard is just set.

Remove from the oven and let cool thoroughly before slicing. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream, if you wish.

Notes:
- You can use pluots or apriums instead of plums
- If you can substitute vanilla for cardamom
- If you have a pastry recipe you prefer (or a store bought crust in your freezer), you can use that instead of the pastry I suggested.

cheers!jasmineI'm a quill for hire!

Estonian Lenten Buns...and bunnies and duckies and tap-dancing Barneys

When I saw our dear Pille's recipe for Vastlakuklid (Estonian Lenten Buns I knew I had to make them. Rich, tender and flavoured with cardamom, how could I not make them?

Well, that was three or four years ago.

Just before each subsequent Easter I have every hope and intention of making her perfect buns. But then...well...I forget. Yes, even though I can recall many conversations word-for-word (ask any of the men I used to go out with), at times I cannot keep a simple, seasonal foodish intention in my mind long enough to follow it through to fruition.

It was almost the same story again this year. Almost.

Long after I declared my Lenten promise a disasterous foray into self-improvement, I remembered the buns. Those lovely, cream and jam-filled buns. Well, if I can't actually get around to 100 pages of pleasure reading every day during Lent, I can get these buns done. Yeah, it was probably safest for those around me that I not give up chocolate, caffeine or anything that keeps my few shreds of sanity firmly within my possession.

Since it's Easter, I also decided to use some of the dough and revisit the bunny-shaped bread I made a few years ago. I mean, how perfect would it be to make a Lenten bread in the shape of a cute little Easter bunny? Well...

In that last rise, my lovely little bunnies took on lives of their own and turned into...edible instances Gestalt figure-ground principle (yes, those pictures that could be interpreted in more than one way, like the old woman-young woman picture).

Except my tray produced what some people would call bunnies...while other would see...I don't know...a toucan, a little lamb with a bow, a tap-dancing Barney, a mollusc, a duckie...some sort of leaping Pokemon character.

This isn't the first time my yeasted goods have taken on some sort of figurative bent.

Based on this, I'm sure I can come up with some sort of side business as a baker-teacher-cum-therapist: I teach people how to make delicious yeasted breads and when the treats are done, analyse the buns (or doughnuts) to help them lead a happier and less neurotic life...and one filled with tasty, tasty buns.


I'm late in making these (I hope Pille will understand)--they are traditionally eaten the day before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, much like pancakes are eaten here in Canada. These buns are easy to make have a light cardamom flavour. Split them open and fill them with sweetened jammy cream, jam (apricot, lingonberry or blueberry would work nicely), orange curd or even marzipan.

Vastlakuklid: Estonian lenten buns
adapted from Pille of Nami-Nami's Vastlakuklid: Estonian lenten buns

Yield 12 buns

250ml (1c) hand-hot milk
6g (1.75tsp) dry yeast
400g (3c less 2.5Tbsp) ap flour
0.5 tsp salt
0.5 tsp ground cardamom (seeds from 4 pods)
100g (0.5c less 1Tbsp) butter, melted and cool
1 egg, lightly beaten
cream or lightly beaten egg (optional)

Dissolve the yeast into the milk. Stir in approximately half the flour until fully incorporated. Cover with cling and let double in volume in a warm, draft-free place (about an hour).

Combine salt, cardamom and the rest of the flour and add to the yeasty mixture. Add the butter and the egg and mix well. Turn out to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, but not tacky.

Return to proving bowl, cover and let double in size.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F; line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Punch down and divide into 12 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls, and place on lined baking tin. Let rise for about 30 minutes or until the buns have doubled in size.

Brush on cream or beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and cover with a teatowel while cooling.

Split the buns and fill with sweetened or flavoured cream, jam, curd or marzipan.

cheers!
jasmine


I'm a quill for hire!

Persian Cardamom Biscuits

Well....I've "upgraded" my blogger accounts. I can't say it was painless--the system didn't accept my Gmail accounts, so I had to come up with a new one...I'm sure it made sense to someone at Google/Blogger/Gmail/Whatever. I've spent part of today and yesterday playing with the new features (Sensual Gourmet: Kitchen Diaries is my testing site for this)--much more user-friendly, but I seem to have lost my banner. I'll need to play with it some more, I think.

Back to business at hand.

It's been a while since I last posted a cardamom recipe--mea culpa, mea culpa--things got a tad busy last month :)

For our office cookie exchange, I searched for a Swedish cardamom biscuit recipe. I found several, but the one I followed wasn't Scandinavian in root, but Persian.

Last year I bought a copy of Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid's Homebaking: The artful mix of flour and tradition around the world. Beautifully photographed--quite honestly, if you weren't a baker or a cook, you could easily use it as a coffeetable book--this hefty tome is a record of baking traditions around the world. I hadn't cooked from it before (for fear that something so beautiful would be cullinarily useless), so I was rather hesitant to try this recipe.

I really shouldn't have been timid --the biscuits turned out beautifully. Light and crisp, and beautifully snowy white, this shortbread alternative was a definite hit (at the office, with friends and at home). These are very delicate cookies--too much of a jostle will cause them to crumble. I wouldn't recommend them for a cookie exchange, but they do dress up a sweet platter quite nicely.

Persian Cardamom Biscuits
Adapted from Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duiguid's Homebaking: the artful mix of flour and tradition around the world

225g very, very soft unsalted butter OR 1 cup melted unsalted butter
110g icing sugar
1 large egg yolk
3/4 tsp ground cardamom seeds OR freshly and finely ground seeds from five or six cardamom pods
275g very soft, rice flour mixed with a pinch of salt
2 Tbsp chopped pistachio nuts
gold dragees

Cream together butter and sugar until it's a very pale primrose yellow. Mix in the yolk and the cardamom. Add the flour mixture about a half-cup at a time, scraping down the bowl after every two additions. If it's too stiff for your mixer, turn it out onto a lightly floured (with rice flour) surface and knead by hand for a few minutes. You're looking for a very soft dough that's similar to a buttercream icing that's speckled with cardamom. Wrap the dough in cling film, and pop it into the fridge for anywhere from two to 12 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350F/190C oven and place two racks in the oven--one just above and the other just below the centre position. Line two baking sheets with greaseproof paper (parchment/waxpaper).

Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into thirds--wrap two pieces and put them back into the fridge. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Roll them into balls and place them onto the prepared baking sheets. Flatten them slightly and make sure to leave at least 2.5cm between cookies (they do spread quite a bit). With a thimble or a fork (what I use is a meat mallet) gently press a pattern onto the biscuit tops. Sprinkle and pat on some of the pistachio and dragees.

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the biscuit bottoms have turned a very light brown. Rotate the racks at about the 8 minute point.

Let the cookies cool on the baking trays for a few minutes before transferring them with a wide spatula to a wire rack for cooling. Like many delicate shortbreads, these will crumble if not given the respect they deserve, so be careful when transferring them to the rack. After they've cooled thoroughly, you can transfer them to an airtight container.

Notes:

• Use the softest rice flour you can find for this, otherwise you might end up with a "gritty" biccie.

cheers!
jasmine

tags: Baking Biscuits Cookies

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