A screed against the cassarole; a recipe for a chocolate caramel tart
It seems like I know an inordinate number of people who are sick, or otherwise laid up at the moment. I hate this, obviously. But it's gotten me thinking—what is the thing that I can give them. Food, obviously, but of what sort?
The conventional wisdom says that people who are sick, or whatever, should get a cassarole, or something else that is sustaining, and practical. Something that they can reheat when they get desperate—that sort of food. This is, of course, conventional wisdom for a reason, people don't always want to cook for themselves, whatever. I cannot bring myself to get excited about this prospect. Of course, if someone said to me "hey, I'd really appreciate it if you brought me some sort of healthy pasta dish that keeps well and I can heat from frozen" I'd do it. I'd bring this sheet pan kale pasta gratin. I loved this dish back when my body didn't hate milk, it has kale so it's sort of wholesome, but it's really just fancy mac and cheese.
Despite the compelling arguments in favor of practicality, and substance, there's an argument to be made for frivolity. We can sustain our bodies in many ways, there's a lot of ways to eat beans and rice, or to order take out, or to get like, frozen food that we stick in the oven. All of this food provides nutrients and makes us less hungry. I think it is important for us to remember that even when a friend is sick, or injured, that their body is not just something that needs fuel, their body, their life, is still also a vehicle for pleasure, and joy, and fun.
This weird small chair with a corn cob sitting on it is a squirrel feeder. My friend I was visiting had it on her back porch, and said she loved it because the squirrels kind of had to sit in the chair to eat it.
I eat a lot of food that's just pure sustenance. I ate a quinoa salad for lunch every day last week because I didn't want to have to buy lunch. This salad, while... fine (I mean I wasn't mad that I was eating it, but it's a quinoa salad, come on) didn't provide me with anything beyond the protein and carbohydrates necessary to finish my day at work, and then go to therapy, and then go to night class for three hours. The thing that made the time between therapy and night class bearable was the chocolate donut I bought before class.
After my dad was killed, someone brought us a platter of cold cuts and sliced cheese. People brought us soups, and cassaroles, and probably some quinoa salads. We got bread, and groceries. We were certainly given the food that we needed, but at a certain point, chicken soup tastes like sickness, and a cassarole feels like despair.
I think that, by and large, we can trust our friends to feed themselves what they need (unless they ask for help! This is not an argument for not giving people what they ask for!) but we often forget that food, and feeding people, who are sick, or incapacitated in some way, can, and perhaps should, be about more than just keeping people going. We can give people something that is not required, but is desired.
So I made my friend a very luxe chocolate tart. It's chocolate and caramel, it's absolutely frivolous, but it was really good. And she already had a cassarole in her freezer, she didn't need one from me. A cassarole, to me, kind of says "you are a burden, and if I give you this, I can quit worrying about you" but a frivolous food, a tart, some cookies, whatever, say "I want you to be happy."
***
This tart was a really novel experience for me. I had one that was similar to it probably seven or eight years ago with my dad at a farmer's market in Atlanta, it is called a chocolate caramel tart, but unlike most chocolate caramel tarts it is not a layer of caramel and a layer of ganache. It is, instead, a dark caramel that is blessed by the addition of chocolate and flour and eggs and some other stuff. This is a lot of work! If you have a sick friend, or a friend who is sad, or otherwise needs sweets, I recommend a good chocolate chip cookie recipe that can sit in the freezer for a few months, thus allowing them to bake off individual cookies as their whims take them. This is an iconic cookie, I cannot recommend it highly enough. But, if you are going to visit someone, and you want it to be more of an event, this is a really and truly divine tart. I was so glad that I made it, and I am now sharing my recipe with you, dear reader.
The scholarly corner:
I'm back in school now, and I'm taking a terrific class about young adult literature and literacy. We were discussing book packagers last week (have you heard of them? I'd never heard of them before it's a fascinating field) and I found this article from the New Yorker, published in 2009, called "The Gossip Mill"
the whole article is great, but here's a spectacular quote from the lede. The article opens around the time Ted Kennedy died
...at the Manhattan offices of Alloy Entertainment, which produces books and creates other properties for the preteen and teen-age markets, an editorial group was holding a development meeting in a windowless office, pondering the relevance of the Teddy Kennedy story for younger readers. The question under consideration: Could you do Chappaquiddick for kids?
If you've seen Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, or The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or read the books that they're based on, you've experienced something made by a book packager. It's a fascinating article, I highly recommend reading it.
Anyway, on to the recipes!
These are both David Leibowitz recipes, and they are sensational. I ate this tart the day after baking it, and the texture was, perhaps, even more delightful than it was the first day. Make this tart! It's a great weekend project, although, to be honest, it probably only took two hours or so to get the whole thing put together, but you do have to make a caramel for it, and I know that a lot of people don't feel really comfortable with caramel. I use the technique that Leibowitz uses (I've been making his style of caramel for years) and while I DID have... a good bit that adhered completely to my sautee pan, it did not crystalize, and the texture was great. I cannot stress this enough: if your caramel is stuck in some parts, don't sweat it. Unless the whole thing seizes or becomes crystalized, just keep at it.
A few notes about the recipes (I'm just going to link them here, I'm not going to paste them, because like, they work as written) I used this recipe for french tart dough
I will advise you: pay better attention to the recipe than Idid. I had to throw out three ounces of butter because I added the flour before putting it in the oven, and then tried to wash the flour off the butter, and then realized that was a stupid thing to do and threw the whole mess away and started over.
Here is a picture of my first dough attempt. This is not what you put in the oven! Do NOT do this!
If you have had difficulties with tarts in the past, this dough is probably the easiest I've made. I am a longtime devotee of the Chez Panisse tart (more on that in a later letter) but this is a completely new technique. You bake the butter first. Let me say that again: you bake the butter before you add the flour. It is a hot tart dough! It makes a wonderfully thin and crisp dough that is really easy to press out. I really, really liked it.
I used this recipe for the chocolate caramel filling
I followed this recipe as written (I used the rum instead of the vanilla, it does not cook off, just so you are aware)
Yes, it did stick to my in its cold spots (around the edge). I didn't find this to have a really negative effect on the overall tart, I still got most of the caramel to mix with the chocolate, so I am happy with how it turned out. If you make this, and then have caramel forming a superglue like mass on the bottom of your sautee pan, before you curse the day I was born: boil some water and pour it in the pan, and then you'll have no more sticky situation.
Here it is! This is a really, really good tart!
Please, I beg you, make this tart! Let me know what you're cooking.
I made this Smitten Kitchen breakfast slab pie on Saturday, and have been cutting off wedges of it and sticking it in the oven since, it is so incredibly good. It's also the first time I made pie dough since...... like, 2013? And it's really, really good.
I'm back to school, and have been reading a lot (I mean just buckets) of young adult novels for one of my classes. I don't know what else to write about, do you want to read reviews of YA books? If so I could do the Very Trendy Scythe or the less trendy I Believe in a Thing Called Love.