for an impromptu dinner party

It was more than a year ago that I printed out a recipe for an apricot tart from my favorite food blog Orangette. I love making tarts because they're pretty and they look a lot harder than they are. Even so, I don't make them very often. When our friend Betsy came to visit us from Missouri, we ended up throwing an impromptu dinner party - the best kind - and I made a tart for dessert.

The recipe calls for apricots, but they're not in season now. I found some decent looking plums instead. You bake the tart for almost an hour, so the fruit gets soft and jammy. The amount of sugar is just right, and I added in some lemon juice to balance it out.

I love those evenings when you bring people together who don't know each other, but by the end of the night all your friends have become friends themselves. It's such a nice surprise when that happens.

Fruit tart
Recipe courtesy of Orangette. 
Use any kind of stone fruit; I used plums, but I'm looking forward to apricot season. Peaches would be very nice too.

Crust:
4 Tbsp. ice water, plus more as needed
¾ tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. sugar
¾ tsp. salt
9 Tbsp. (4 ½ oz.) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Filling:
5-6 ripe, good quality plums, halved and then quartered (8 pieces per plum)
1/3 cup sugar
3 pinches of salt
juice of 1/2 lemon

To make the dough:

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the ice water and cider vinegar.

In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse to blend. Add the butter, and pulse until the mixture resembles the size of peas. With the motor running, slowly add the water-vinegar mixture, processing just until the dough comes together and moist clumps form. The dough should hold together if you pick up a handful. If the dough seems a bit dry, add more ice water by the teaspoon, pulsing to incorporate. If it seems to wet, add a tiny bit of flour.

Dump the dough out onto a wooden board or clean counter-top sprinkled with flour. Shape it into two balls, and then press each ball into disk about 1 1⁄2 inches thick. Smooth the edges with your hands. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap, smoothing out any cracks with your hands and the pressure of the plastic. Refrigerate the wrapped dough for at least 2 hours. (Dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. Thaw it in refrigerator overnight before using.) Before rolling it out, allow the dough to soften slightly at room temperature for about 20 minutes. 

To assemble the tart:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a large, wide circle big enough to fit a 9-inch removable-bottom tart pan. Gently place the dough into the tart pan and press to fit, making sure the sides reach to the top. Put the pan with the dough into the freezer while you prepare the fruit.

In a large bowl, combine the halved-and-quartered plum wedges with the sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Toss well to combine. Remove pie crust from the freezer. Arrange the fruit into a concentric circle, starting from the outside and working your way in. Drizzle the remaining juices from the bowl over the fruit.

Bake on top of a cookie sheet for about 50 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. The filling will look very juicy, but will thicken as it cools.

Serve with fresh whipped cream.

a weekend in san francisco

The options for a weekend in San Francisco are endless. Our friend Betsy came to stay with us last weekend and we did some of my most favorite things. I started thinking some of you might be interested in a sample non-touristy SF itinerary, no?

Here are a few suggestions:

Friday night dinner at Bar Tartine in the Mission. This place is quickly becoming my favorite restaurant here. Get the brussel sprouts and fried potato bread with dill and sour cream.

Grab some quick breakfast and coffee on Saturday morning at the Ferry Building Farmers Market. Beautiful (expensive!) produce, food carts, and good people watching right on the water.

Head to wine country for the day. Before filling up on good wine, stop at the Fremont Diner for lunch. Get the basket of biscuits. I mean it.

We typically stay on the Sonoma side of wine country. When we have time, we go up to the Russian River Valley and visit Copain and Porter Creek.  This time, though, we were invited to the wine pick-up party at Scribe, which is a members-only vineyard just a short drive from the Fremont Diner. Scribe completely won us over; it was phenomenal. We sat on a beautiful hillside drinking their chardonnay and eating fresh dungeness crab. It just doesn't get much better than that.

A must-stop on the way back into the city is Ram's Gate Winery. Get the pinot and sit outside curled up with their monogrammed blankets, or inside by the fire if it's too cold.

When you get back to the city, you'll be too tired to do much else besides get a burrito from Gordo Taqueria and watch a movie in your PJs.

Sunday morning, get in line before 10:00 am. for brunch at Outerlands Cafe in the Outer Sunset. The word on the street is that the Dutch pancakes are amazing and worth the wait. If you need a second cup of coffee, walk a few doors down on Judah Street to Trouble Coffee & Coconut Bar, and pick up some pretty gifts at The General Store. Finish the weekend with a walk on Ocean Beach. I have a feeling you'll want to come back again soon.

one for the recipe box

Do you have a recipe box? Like the old fashioned kind where your grandma kept all her favorite recipes, printed in her handwriting? I do, but I'll admit I hardly ever use it. I wish I did, but instead, I inevitably end up printing off recipes from my favorite food blogs. I like the idea of writing them out by hand to pass down for generations. We still have some of Jason's dad's recipes written out in his familiar scrawl and I always like seeing them.

This recipe is one for the recipe box. It's a no frills, traditional apple pie recipe, but one that I've made enough times to know how to get it just right. My husband is what you might call an apple pie connoisseur. His grooms cake at our wedding was his mom's apple pie. It was a lot to live up to, but he loves this pie. It's high praise coming from him.

Simple Apple Pie
Adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

3 large granny smith apples, peeled and sliced
3 large sweeter apples, like jonathan or gala, peeled and sliced
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar, plus a little for the top of the pie
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
pinch of salt
4 T butter
1 1/2 T corn starch
2 pie crusts (store-bought, or see recipe below)
2 T milk or cream for brushing on the top

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Place the peeled and sliced apples, the sugar, spices, salt, butter, and cornstarch into a large sauce pan. Stir together and cook until apples are slightly soft, about 10 minutes.

Prepare a pie pan with one of the rolled out pie crusts. Pile the apples onto the pie crust and cover with the other crust. Pinch the edges of the crust together making a curvy shape all around the pie. Brush lightly with the milk or cream and sprinkle with sugar. Place on top of a cookie sheet to catch any drips.

Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 40-50 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Cool to room temperature before serving.


Pie Crust
courtesy of Orangette; I doubled it to make two large pie crusts.

8 Tbsp. ice water, plus more as needed
1 1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 sticks plus 2 T cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

In a small bowl or measuring cup, combine the ice water and cider vinegar.

In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Pulse to blend. Add the butter, and pulse until the mixture resembles the size of peas. With the motor running, slowly add the water-vinegar mixture, processing just until the dough comes together and moist clumps form. The dough should hold together if you pick up a handful. If the dough seems a bit dry, add more ice water by the teaspoon, pulsing to incorporate. If it seems to wet, add a tiny bit of flour.

Dump the dough out onto a wooden board or clean countertop sprinkled with flour. Shape it into two balls, and then press each ball into disk about 1 1⁄2 inches thick. Smooth the edges with your hands. Wrap the dough tightly in plastic wrap, smoothing out any cracks with your hands and the pressure of the plastic. Refrigerate the wrapped dough for at least 2 hours. (Dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or frozen for up to 1 month. Thaw it in refrigerator overnight before using.) Before rolling it out, allow the dough to soften slightly at room temperature for about 20 minutes.

an excuse to make food (not that I need one).

The Super Bowl, for me, is really just an excuse to make food. It's not that I need an excuse to make regular, everyday food, but seven-layer dip is not one of my everyday foods. But I'm here to tell you that it's so worth the extra effort to make the guacamole layer from scratch. Trust me on this.

Our SB Sunday started with a pre-game bike ride out to Ocean Beach with our whole crew on a 65-degrees-and-sunny February day (seriously? seriously.). We made a pit stop at Devil's Teeth Baking Company for $1 beignets, which is quickly becoming my favorite bakery in the city. Everything there is delicious, they serve Sightglass coffee, and they have a parklet outside for seating. It's like the San Francisco trifecta.

Our SB menu consisted of a gigantic seven-layer dip that ended up being around ten layers; Edyta's spicy spinach-artichoke dip with sourdough bread; Bobby's bloody mary's, complete with fancy pickled green beans; Mexican pozole soup for the meat-eaters and veggie soup for the non-meat eaters; and salty peanut butter cookies (recipe here). We ate, we drank, and we all agreed that Madonna really rocked it at half-time. Don't you think?