Salted Chocolate Tart

How about a little slice of heaven?


This particular slice happens to be called a salted chocolate tart. It's a July 2008 Sunset recipe I tried out last Sunday for Conservative Family Dinner.

I know some people might resist the notion of salt atop a lovely chocolate tart, but trust me on this. Those little grains of sodium-loaded goodness are key to the tart's flavor. Even Kid Sister, who'd rather do without the salt atop my favorite Smitten Kitchen Chocolate Toffee Cookies, agreed the salt was necessary for this creation.


(In case you're saying well, heck, I can't make this if it has salt, I'd like to bring you this public service announcement: Salt is OK in moderation if you're in good health, eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and keep active. Limit sodium intake in processed foods, and you can indulge in a few flakes atop your chocolate tart. That is all.)

Making this tart requires some time, and based on the length of the recipe I thought it might be a bit ambitious. But Conservative Hubby requested it, and you know I'm a sucker for chocolate, so I decided to give it a try. In case you're so inclined to attempt it yourself, here are the details.

For the Crust
In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (softened) and 3/4 cup powdered sugar until smooth.


In a separate bowl, sift together 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour and 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, then add to butter mixture and mix until combined. Add 5 large egg yolks.


Mix on low speed just until dough comes together. If small pieces remain, knead dough to blend them in. Form dough into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for at least 1 hour and up to 3 days.

Unwrap the dough and set it on a lightly floured work surface. With short strokes from the center outward, roll the dough into a 12-inch circle.


Transfer the dough to a 9 1/2-inch tart pan and, using your thumb, press the dough into the sides and bottom corner. Trim dough flush with top edge.


Line shell with parchment paper and completely fill it with dried beans, pie weights, or a mix of dried beans and rice if you're short on beans and must improvise. Chill at least 30 minutes.


Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Bake the dough 10 minutes, then remove the parchment and beans and return to the oven until dough looks dry, about 5 minutes. Set on a rack to cool slightly.

For the Filling
Put 8 ounces extra-bittersweet top-quality chocolate (chopped) in a medium-size heatproof bowl.


In a medium saucepan, combine 3/4 cup unsalted butter, 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1/4 cup brewed coffee and bring to boil over medium heat.


Pour hot liquid over chocolate and let sit 3 to 4 minutes, then gently stir until smooth.


Break 4 large eggs in a large bowl and slowly pour in warm chocolate mixture, whisking constantly until incorporated.


Pour warm filling into still-warm tart shell.


Bake until filling has risen slightly, appears dry on the surface, and seems firm when shaken slightly, about 10 minutes. Set on a rack and let cool completely.


For the Glaze
Put 4 ounces extra-bittersweet top-quality chocolate (chopped) and 2 tablespoons light corn syrup in a medium bowl.

In a microwave-safe container, heat 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream to boiling; pour over chocolate. Add 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (softened) and stir slowly until smooth, working in one direction to prevent air bubbles from forming (if butter doesn't melt completely, which mine didn't, microwave in 5-second intervals to warm slightly).


Pour glaze onto center of tart and use a small spatula to push glaze to edges. Let sit at least 15 minutes to set up before slicing. Serve with Maldon salt for sprinkling.


(You can refrigerate the tart for up to 8 hours ahead of time, but you'll want to bring it to room temperature before serving. Trust me, it's much tastier when it's not too chilled.)

Now enjoy, you salt and chocolate lovers you.

Cardio Kickboxing

I have a new addiction. Unlike my addiction to baking and cooking and baking and cooking, this one actually helps me burn calories. It's cardio kickboxing.


This new addiction hasn't replaced my love for yoga, but it is adding a nice new component to my fitness regimen.

Aside from yoga classes (which I adore), I've never been really big on fitness classes. I took one aerobics class as an undergrad and entertained the notion of teaching aerobics myself to make extra money for about five minutes, until I realized I am not peppy enough to be an aerobics instructor. Seriously, can you see me doing that? I don't think so. I'm more of an introvert when it comes to working out. It's my thinking time, my decompression time.

But I had talked about trying out some of the classes at the L-Town rec center a few times. Then Kid Sister and Conservative Mom started going to cardio kickboxing. And they loved it (even though it made them so sore they could hardly move for days after).

So I decided to tag along and give it a try a few weeks ago.

Lest you males in the crowd roll your eyes and think that's sissy work (ahem ... Conservative Hubby), I would like to tell you that there are a number of men who attend each class—some of whom are rather burly and probably could bench press two of me at one time if they so desired. And certain men have come to one class and never made it back again because it was too intense. Just so you know.

Each class is totally different, so it's hard to give you an exact description of what each one entails.

Basically, we start out by getting our heart rates up and our muscles loose. This may involve running around the room holding weights or running suicides or any other form of intense cardio for short bursts of time. There are plenty of different types of squats and lunges and jumps and kicks. Lots of push ups. Plenty of core work. Most of the class, we carry around weights and use them for myriad forms of personal torture. Then there's always a boxing portion, where we're kicking and punching at boxing bags with an intensity that undoubtedly makes people cower.

(Until now, my boxing has been rather weak as I've been doing it bare-handed. But today, I found a lovely pair of (pink!) boxing gloves on eBay. They're on their way, so boxing bags, you better watch out.)

I'm pretty dedicated about working out on my own—between yoga, cardio, and lifting weights, I stay relatively fit. But one of the things I like most about the cardio kickboxing class is there's someone there to push me. The instructor yells at us to get going, that we only have to do three more. And then she says just kidding, five more. And five more. And somehow, we groan and grunt and power through it.

The voice yelling at me in my own head to do one more set when I'm lifting or to run one more mile when I'm on the treadmill isn't nearly as loud and persuasive. Although I've noticed, since I started attending a cardio kickboxing class once or twice a week, that I've kicked up my own workouts a notch. Even when I'm not in the class, I'm motivated to work harder, to push my body to the limits.

That makes it worth it.

Photo: KWDesigns via Flickr

Crab and Shrimp Lasagna

Last Friday, I decided it was time to dig into another Colorado Classique recipe. The entree du jour, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, was Crab and Shrimp Lasagna.


Ooh la la.

Talk about a nice twist on the traditional lasagna (which happens to be one of my favorite meals, by the way). With crab, shrimp, white wine, milk, and four kinds of cheese (feta, cottage, mozzarella, and Parmesan), this dish is rich. Really rich. And incredibly tasty.

Wanna make it yourself? Yeah, I thought you might. So here goes, with one caveat. The recipe I'm going to walk you through serves 8. I halved it for Conservative Hubby and I, but I'll give you the full measurements rather than the amounts I used.

Begin by heating 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add 1 pound chopped mushrooms, 1 cup chopped onions, and 2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme. (Oops, forgot that, so I used dried.) Cook until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms soft.


Now add 2 cloves garlic and cook for one minute. Then add 1/4 cup white wine and bring to a boil. Cook for 1 1/2 minutes or until the liquid is almost evaporated.

Stir in 2 - 6 1/2-ounce cans lump crabmeat and set the pan aside.


Now it's time to peel and devein 1 pound raw large shrimp, reserving the shells. (Oops, failure number two: I thought I purchased raw shell-on shrimp but when I got home realized mine didn't have any shells. This led to some improvisation a bit later.)

Cut the shrimp in half lengthwise, cover, and refrigerate them.

Now combine the reserved shrimp shells, 2 cups water, 1 1/2 teaspoons celery salt, and 1 teaspoon fennel seeds in a small saucepan. (Since I had no shells, I tossed in a piece of shrimp. I figured that at least would infuse the mixture with a bit of shrimpiness.)

Bring to a boil and cook 15 minutes or until reduced to 1 1/2 cups.


Strain shrimp stock through a sieve and set aside. (Don't have a sieve? Neither did I. So I strained mine through the pan cover I have to keep bacon from splattering grease all over the place—don't worry, it was clean. And it worked.)

Now combine 4 ounces crumbled feta cheese, 1 cup reduced-fat cottage cheese, 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, and 1 garlic clove. Set aside.


Place 1/4 cup flour in a small saucepan. Gradually whisk in 1 cup 2 percent milk.


Stir in shrimp stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese.

Spread 1/2 cup sauce on the bottom of a 13x9x2-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. (Remember, I halved the recipe, so you're seeing a much smaller pink Pyrex dish instead.)


Arrange 4 noodles over sauce. Top with one-third goat cheese mixture, one-third crabmeat mixture, one-third of shrimp, 2/3 cup sauce, and 2/3 cup mozzarella.


Repeat layers twice, ending with mozzarella.


Bake for 40 minutes or until golden. Let stand 15 minutes. (I know it's hard, but it's much better if you let it set up first.)


Sprinkle with parsley and serve. According to the wine pairing advice in the cookbook, "the lush ripe pear and apple flavors of Chardonnay would be well-suited to the fullness of crab and shrimp."

Or just, you know, pour some Merlot from the box in the cupboard. That works too.

Letting Butter Talk

Julie, can you please help me?


I'd really like to chew on my bone for a while. It's so delicious. I could chew on it all day. But it's too far away.

I just ... can't ... reach ... it.


I've had a rough day. I had to get up at 7 a.m. and get groomed and eat and wait for the mailman to come and take a noon walk with Conservative Boy and eat again and it's so exhausting being me. Won't you please help?


GAH. I give up. I don't want the stinkin' bone anyw—


—wait a second. What is that? An intruder?


Nope, false alarm. But don't worry, Julie. I got your back, babe.

Risotto with Artichoke Hearts

Here's a tasty little side dish for your weekend dining pleasure, courtesy of Colorado Classique. For some reason, the combo of artichoke hearts, peas, and lemon makes me think spring.


(Warning: This makes six big portions. If you're cooking for two, I highly recommend cutting this recipe in half, unless you want to eat risotto until it comes out your ears.)

Saute 3 cloves chopped garlic and 1/2 chopped yellow onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter until softened.

Add 2 cups dry Arborio rice and saute until translucent.

Add enough chicken broth to cover rice. Simmer over medium heat until broth is almost completely absorbed.

Continue to add broth, about 1 cup at a time (you'll use about 6 cups total for the recipe), and simmer until broth is absorbed and rice is tender.

Add 2 14-ounce cans artichoke hearts, drained and quartered; 2 cups frozen peas (thawed); 2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill; and the zest of one lemon. Cook until heated through.

Mix in 1 cup Parmesan cheese and serve.

Greeting Spring

Technically it's not spring yet. That doesn't happen until a week from Saturday, if you listen to the folks in charge of the calendar.


But don't tell that to my favorite spring flowers, who abide by a calendar all their own. The daffodils (above) and tulips (below) began peeking up from beneath the mud last week.


And don't tell that to the other pretty green things making their appearance.


I checked back on last year's first flower post, and it looks like we're just a few days behind last year's progress. (The lovely 65-degree weather was a few days later too. But rejoice—now it's here!)


So consider this your notice: The flower posts are beginning. And spring has sprung!

Sharing My Favorite Cupboard

I just looked back at my blog archives and discovered that it has been roughly 5 months since I have shown you any photos of Pyrex, aside from a few glimpses with my cooking posts here and there.

This is an abomination if ever I saw one.

Lucky for you, I happened to snap a few pictures of my Pyrex the other day. Not individual pieces mind you, but a whole cupboard full.


That's because, after some kitchen purging and reorganizing, I actually made space to store most of my Pyrex dishes together in one spot. I still have one dish on display atop the fridge and a set of bowls that I use regularly for baking in a different cupboard, but otherwise all of my treasured vintage dishes are in one place. (Though you can't see some of the smaller ones that are nesting in bigger bowls.)

And oh boy, aren't they lovely? And colorful?


Now don't you see why I've been yearning for open shelves on which to display them? It's retro heaven, I tell you. Retro heaven.

Shrimp and Basil Sauce with Bowtie Pasta

Remember how I mentioned the great cookbook Colorado Classique the other day?

Well, I've decided I would eat pretty much every recipe in the whole darn book. So I figured if I was going to make it through all 250-some pages of recipes, I'd better get moving.

(I probably won't really make every single recipe, but I sure hope to try quite a few. Eventually I know I'll get distracted by other pretty food photos in other books and magazines. It happens often.)

So last week, at the same time I was making those darn tasty peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, I made Shrimp and Basil Sauce with Bowtie Pasta for dinner.


I began by processing 1/2 cup melted butter, 1 cup chopped fresh basil (well, it was supposed to be fresh, but I used basil I froze last summer, and it worked well), 6 cloves garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 2 teaspoons lemon pepper in a food processor until blended.


This food processor is a new addition to our kitchen. I love it very much. I have already used it for a number of processing tasks, and once the basil starts growing again outside, I expect I'll burn the motor out making more pesto than I can possibly eat.

But anyhow. I got sidetracked there. Back to dinner.

I poured this basil-y mixture over 2 pounds of medium shrimp, peeled and deveined and resting quietly in a shallow dish. Then I covered the dish and placed it in the refrigerator, where the shrimp marinated for about an hour.


Meanwhile, I cooked 9 ounces of dry bowtie pasta until al dente and drained it. Then, once the shrimp had marinated, I drained the marinade from the dish and set it aside. The shrimp went in a skillet with 2 tablespoons of butter, and I sauteed them until pink.


Then I removed the shrimp using a slotted spoon and in their place added 3/4 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, and the rest of the marinade to the skillet. I cooked all these fine ingredients over medium heat until they were heated through, stirring occasionally.


Next those darn shrimp went back into the pan. (They really get around, don't they?) I stirred them in and seasoned with salt and pepper.


Then it was time to serve the shrimp and sauce over the pasta, with a tasy side of asparagus and some homemade (er ... sort of ... I had a box mix to help me out) focaccia bread.


Yum.

(Oops. Don't beat me up over this, but I realized I just lied about the whole darn thing. This makes six servings, and I didn't want to make six, so I cut the whole recipe in half. But it's still the same deal as above, so I'm not going back to change my measurements. I'm sure you passed your elementary school math classes so you can figure out how to modify the recipe if you need to. That is all.)

A Peek in the Hallway

At first glance, our hallway is just like any other. It has off-white walls (stucco is the official hue, if you must know) and tan carpet and a few of our favorite wedding photos hanging in new frames.

But look a little closer, and you'll realize this hallway doesn't really belong to Conservative Hubby or me. It's Butter's hallway. His official domain.


Although Butter also rules the big picture window in the living room, both the upstairs and downstairs couches, the backyard, and essentially every other place in between he wishes to frequent, he regularly returns to his hallway.

If you stand facing the hallway, you'll notice that no matter how frequently I vacuum the carpet, the fibers at the entrance to the hallway on the left side are permanently matted down. This is often where Butter reclines in the afternoons, when he snoozes while I work. It's also where he dreams each night after he tires of resting on the floor next to my side of the bed.

And it's where he sits dutifully, waiting for our return if he happens to get penned in the hallway when we leave. (This happens less frequently now, but naughty behavior or muddy paws or the impending arrival of the mailman mean he's relegated to his hall rather than left roaming.)


Yet that matted patch of carpet isn't the only sign of Butter's presence.

There are the dirty, worn spots on the wall where Butter likes to lean. There are the corners missing their paint because we recklessly clank the gate against them too frequently. There are the millions of dog hairs that accumulate in the place where the carpet meets the baseboard. There's the black gunk stuck on the ceiling, an unfortunate side effect of Butter's ear problems causing constant head-shaking.

Speaking of that ear gunk, someone taller than me really should scrape that off. It's gross.

And, unfortunately, there are the bright red spots on the carpet, signifying those times when Butter's stomach was upset and he couldn't help but ridding his belly of whatever was causing the problem. (This happens infrequently, fortunately, but somehow only after he has eaten something colorful.)

Apparently the tile bathroom floor just steps away isn't nearly as inviting when he's not feeling well.

And so this is Butter's hall. The place where he can wait patiently for his family to return when we leave him behind and listen with one ear cocked to the sound of my typing in the office and keep watch on the world while we sleep.


And for this reason I can handle the dingy, dinged walls and the matted carpet.

Besides, as long as we leave the hall light off, it doesn't look too bad.

Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Newsflash: If you make cookies with whole wheat and natural peanut butter, they are healthy. If you make cookies with whole wheat and natural peanut butter, it's OK to eat them for breakfast. And if they include semisweet chocolate chips, they are even healthier, as chocolate is very good for you.

OK, I made that up. But I think it's very solid reasoning, don't you?

The reason I came to this conclusion is because I tried a new cookie recipe last week that includes all of these delightful ingredients. It's from the cookbook Colorado Classique, which was an absolutely wonderful wedding gift from Conservative Hubby's Colorado auntie and uncle.

All you do is beat 1/2 cup unsalted, softened butter with 1 egg in a bowl. Then add 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 1/2 cup natural crunchy peanut butter.


Continue mixing until all ingredients are incorporated. Then, mix in 3/4 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt.


Slowly add 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour on low speed and mix until the dough is just moist.


Mix in 3/4 cup high quality chocolate chips (or whatever chips you happen to have in the cupboard, regardless of quality) using your hands or a large wooden spoon.


Form the dough into 1- to 1 1/2-inch diameter balls and roll in sugar. Place balls on a baking sheet and bake in a 400-degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes. (Or 6 minutes, at which point they will be too dark on the bottom, if you're using my finicky oven.)


Isn't healthy eating easy when you follow my diet advice?