more than sometimes

I got home from work last night inspired by chard. Again. Though this time, a little less frenzied.

Like last time, I balanced my Diet Coke with a glass of Cabernet. I was craving something creamy and earthy and rich. I replaced the pasta and feta with polenta and provolone, added mushrooms to the chard, and doused the mix with some wine from my glass (and then refilled my glass). I called the vegetable mix a ragoût. Because I like how that sounds. Ragoooo. And because it’s French. It comes from the verb ragoûter – to restore the appetite, to stimulate, to stir up; goûter means to taste. I didn’t need my appetite restored, but I did need my appetite fed, and this did the trick.

Sitting on my kitchen counter is a little wooden sign that says

I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food. (W.C. Fields)

This statement is true. Very true. But I’d like my to add wine to the food more than sometimes.

Mushroom Chard Ragoût over Creamy Polenta

Make these two dishes at the same time. It takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. Scoop a nice mound of polenta in the center of a wide bowl and spoon the ragoût around the

Creamy Polenta

- 1C medium or coarse grind corn meal

- 4.5 C water

- salt

- 2 T butter

- 1/2 C provolone cheese, shredded

Add polenta and salt to cold water in a small pots. Whisk a few times and bring to boiling. Turn the heat to low and whisk every minute for the first 5 minutes. Continue to whisk every few minutes until all the water is absorbed, about 15-20 minutes for a total cooking time of 20-15 minutes. Add butter and shredded cheese and salt to taste.

Mushroom Chard Ragoût

- 1 T butter, 1 T olive oil

- 1 onion, chopped

- 2 cloves garlic, minced

- 3/4 lb mushrooms, sliced

- 1 big bunch of red chard

- 1/2 C red wine (I used a rich Cabernet)

Heat butter and oil in a wide skillet large enough to fit all the chard. Sauté onion and garlic until transparent. Add sliced chard ribs, cover, and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and stir for another ~8 minutes until mushrooms darken, release their fluid and then reabsorb it. Add chard leaves and cover for another 5 minutes to wilt. Add wine and heat until liquid reduces, another 5 mintues or so. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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from Russia (and other places), with love

I  bet you thought I was going to talk about Thanksgiving. Nope. Too predictable. Instead, I have a very special gift for you.

Today, I want to introduce you to Julie. She has been thinking about starting her own food blog, so help me encourage her with this baby step she’s making. Julie has actually been with me on my entire blogventure. We were in Paris together exactly 2 years ago when I met Clotilde Desoulier at a book signing and decided to start little cooking diary. We spent that night figuring out where we were going to spend the next 5 days and how to actually get there, with periodic breaks for me to gush about how excited I was to start a blog. We checked airlines, train schedules, and travel sites, finally formulating our plan at 3 am. We would take an overnight train from Paris to Berlin, spend the day and a night in Berlin, and then go to our main destination, Prague the next morning.

Arriving in Berlin, we toured around, drank some beer (I know, me, beer!), cancelled our hotel, and spent the night in a casino. We jumped on the early morning train, snoozed, and a few hours later, disembarked when we heard commotion in the aisle and the conductor shouting something in Czech (well, we assumed it was Czech). We found a taxi and showed the driver a printout of our hotel address. He loaded our luggage into his trunk and then started driving into a residential neighborhood in the mountains. We looked at each other in the back seat and shrugged; I mouthed to Julie, “I thought we were just a few minutes from downtown Prague.” Neither of us spoke Czech and our driver didn’t speak English (or Russian for that matter). The driver pulled up next to another car parked near the driveway of a house. A quick exchange of words with the driver of the parked car and our driver was gifted with a GPS. Again, Julie and I shrugged at each other. We started driving and driving and finally, from the back seat, we were able to inquire as to why this was taking so long. Turns out, we had managed to detrain right after we crossed the border into the Czech Republic, over an hour from Prague. Our driver returned us to the border station and refused our money. We took another train to the right stop this time.

Prague was freezing. We went to the castle, the opera, the Alte-Neu synagogue. We ate venison (first time ever for me) in a restaurant just a few blocks from our hotel. We took a mini-cruise along the Vltava River. 

The prior year, Julie and I had spent the days leading up to Thanksgiving together in Amsterdam and Brussels. It seems Thanksgiving has become a bit of a tradition for us. This year, we are both in Miami with our families. I’m hoping Julie and her parents will come over for dessert.

You know, I said this wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving post. But apparently it is. Thanks, Julie, for being a great friend and travel partner!

***

I was asked to write a guest blog a while back by my friend, Gayle, and I procrastinated because I really didn’t know which dish to write about.  I love food, and all cuisines—from the most complex and authentic to the simplest of dishes. Having a wide range of different dishes prepared by my mom, who is one of the best cooks I know, and by experiencing the cuisine of different countries through the travels I’ve done over the years, I’ve developed a special love for food.  And of course, if there is an idea about a dish in my head, I always try to make it at home. As I was deciding on the menu for the blog post, I really wanted to combine something old and traditional with something new and fresh that I could relate to my every day life.

Back in February, I was in Amsterdam for a friend’s wedding and was invited to one of the sheva brachot. The hostess informed everyone that she wasn’t going to be cooking much, just dunne pannekoeken, Dutch pancakes. I was very excited to try real traditional Dutch food. Finally, when she brought out a huge plate of what seemed to me a stock of typical Russian blini, I was pleasantly surprised to see a taste of home. “This is not Dutch,” I thought to myself, “these are Russian blini!” I grew up with blini, topped with caviar, lox, Nutella, jam or whatever other toppings you could think of.  After seeing 30 Dutch people eating their Dutch dunne pannekoeken and folding them a different way, I realized that food is what binds us together; we may come from different corners of the world but we all eat the same food. The only difference is that we call it our own, and by our own names: blini, blintzes, crepes, or dunne pannekoeken. It’s that comfort food that is universal and loved by the whole world.  This is the reason I chose to share the blini recipe with you, along with another episode from my life—that reminded me of my childhood—that would complement the Russian blinis.

 

Blini

<<note from Gayle: I made these and they came out so well that I ate the entire batch for breakfast. I used skim milk and it worked very well. I think I could have thinned out the batter a bit with more hot water to make the blini easier to spread in the pan. Julie recommended experimenting with the right “ladle size” to give you just enough batter to cover the bottom of your pan. I used ~1/3  cup of batter and made 10 blinis. Julie’s thinner batter made closer to 15 blinis. >>

- 1 cup of milk (or soy milk)

- 1 cup of flour

- 2 eggs

- 1/4 cup of oil

- pinch of baking powder

- pinch of salt

- 2 tablespoons of sugar

- 3 -4 tablespoons of hot water

Blend all the ingredients, except for hot water, with a hand blender until smooth; add the hot water, mix everything well; add more water if needed to get the right smooth consistency.  Heat up and grease a frying pan and pour a ladle full of batter into the center of the pan and quickly move the frying pan in a circular motion, so that the batter spreads evenly all around until it’s all set. Cook for a minute on each side or until brown.

 

Stack the ready blinis up one on top of the other until all the batter is used. If the first blin didn’t come out right, don’t get discouraged! There is a Russian saying that says that the first blin isn’t meant to come out right: “Pervi blin komom!”

Now that you have the recipe for authentic Russian blinis, I would like to share a recipe for home-made lox fillet that you can eat along with your blinis.  Recently, my mom’s friends were visiting from Canada and at one of the meals my mom served lox, one of the sisters said: “Why do you buy lox, it’s so much better to make it at home.” Huh?! Home-made lox? I thought lox was Scandinavian, and one of those foods that can only be bought, like canned tuna. And then I was quickly reminded that her father used to bring fresh and salted fish direct from the Caspian Sea and sell it in my hometown.  I didn’t realize that he was the one salting the lox. It’s almost as if I could still taste of delicious, fresh, and juicy lox in my mouth from when I was about 10 years old. The recipe sounded simple, so I decided to try it—and it was too easy to make and too delicious to not continue making again and again.

Lox

Take a fresh salmon fillet with the skin on, wash it, pat dry it with a paper towel and put it in a glass dish. Cover the fish with salt all around about 2mm (or if you use kosher salt I use 1 layer of salt all around). Cover with a lid and keep it on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator for 16-22 hours. Wash off the salt, pat the fish dry with a paper towel, dip the towel in some olive oil and smear it all around the fish.  Slice fillet as you like and enjoy it with anything from a cracker to home-made blinis for Sunday brunch, or as a starter for Shabbat lunch. Enjoy!

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down on paper

As I write this, I am gobbling down the best thrown-together dinner that I’ve made in a long long time. I just had to get it down on paper before it went the way of many of my other creations scrambled together in a hunger-induced frenzy. No pictures tonight because there’s no natural light and I’ve got to get  packing for Thanksgiving.

After walking in the door, I had a glass of wine in my hand before I even set my keys down on my table. Keys down, I grabbed a Diet Coke too. I had swiss chard in the fridge and nothing on my mind other than the need to feed my hungry belly.

Hold, on. I need to go get seconds.

I trolled around the web and turned to some tried and true sites because I didn’t have the time or patience to get creative. I found a recipe for sautéed swiss chard and one for spaghetti and swiss chard. With enough inspiration I set to work.

I rough chopped a big bunch of chard and swirled it in a huge bowl of water a few times, rinsing until the water ran clear.  I sautéed a chopped onion and a heaping tablespoon of garlic (right from the jar…classy, no?) in a tablespoon or so of olive oil. I put a pot of water on to boil. I cut the red stems from the leaves and threw them (the stems) in with the onion and garlic. I added a few tablespoons of the soon-to-be pasta water, covered the pan with my cutting board, and let it cook until the pot of water behind it started to boil. I threw a big pinch of salt into the water and added 3 handfuls of macaroni. I removed my cutting  board cover from the pan, added the chard leaves to the stems and sprinkled on a few more tablespoons of the now pasta water. I covered the chard again. I checked my email. Nothing from my boss. That’s good. Two more minutes to go on the pasta and the chard is nice and wilted. I threw it in the same bowl I had washed it in, added  salt and pepper and a few tablespoons of crumbled feta and stirred. As it melted, the feta turned pink from the red stems. My pasta timer went off. I poured the macaroni into a strainer and then straight into the bowl of chard. A few slices of butter, a final stir, and dinner was ready.

Wow. My quickest post ever. 46 minutes flat.

The best part – I have lunch for tomorrow.

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catching up with summer over labor day

Last Monday was Labor Day (well, you probably knew that). It was also farmers’ market day in my neighborhood. And since I didn’t have to go to work, I spent a good hour wandering around fruit, vegetable, and bakery stands rather than rushing in 15 minutes before they close on the way home from work. The weather was glorious and I lingered at each vendor, tasting here and there, sniffing and thumping, making the perfect choices. Since I was having a friend over for dinner, I bought an abundance of summer produce – heirloom tomatoes, plums, zucchini, and eight cucumbers. Eight? Yes, I had an idea.

Last year at another nearby farmers’ market, a local chef, Chris Parsons, was sharing tastes of a recipe from his restaurant, Catch. I took a  few spoonfuls of the smooth light green concoction and immediately knew that I had found the perfect recipe to take advantage of the free Greek yogurt that Stonyfield Farms shared with me and my blog.  I was a quick convert to Greek yogurt and have never looked back. But back to that summer soup. I asked Chris for the recipe and he emailed me a few days later. But the weather turned cold, and warm soups beckoned.

And then all of a sudden, it was summer again. With work a little crazy and much weekend travel, my days of leisurely cooking have suffered. But I couldn’t let another summer pass without making that creamy cucumber soup that so enchanted me last year. Labor Day was the day to slave away in the kitchen with a cool breeze blowing through my open windows.  So I made a dinner of cucumber gazpacho followed by ceviche, and kept the oven off.

Cucumber Gazpacho

I made a few adjustments to Chris Parson’s recipe and have copied it verbatim at the end of this post. The soup is very simple, but the yellow curry topping gives an extra kick. And I like a little kick. I used nonfat yogurt instead of whole milk yogurt, and then added some full-fat labne to the garnish to thicken it up.

Soup

- 8 cucumbers

- 1/4 C extra virgin olive oil

- 1/4 C red wine vinegar vinegar

- 1.5 Torn day old bread

- 1 C Greek nonfat yogurt

- Kosher salt and white pepper to taste

Prep. Peel half the cucumbers. Split all and removed seeds. Roughly chop.

Mix. Toss the cucumbers, oil, vinegar, bread, and yogurt into a big ziplock bag (none of my bowls could fit all the ingredients with enough room to mix). Shake and allow the liquid to soak into the bread for ~10 minutes.

Blend. Throw the mix into a blender and liquefy in two batches. Add salt and pepper to taste. I didn’t bother to strain the soup because I liked the flecks of green (and I couldn’t find my strainer).

Chill. The soup is a little bit thinner than the one I tried because I used nonfat yogurt. Once you chill it for a few hours, it thickens up a bit and also gives the flavors some time to develop. (I found the soup better the next day).

Garnish

- 1/2 C nonfat Greek yogurt

- 1/2 C 1% milk

- 1/4 C labne

- 1 t yellow curry powder

- 1 t ground cumin

- kosher salt and white pepper to taste

Whisk together all the ingredients. Refrigerate.

Serve soup in bowls with a swirl of yellow garnish across the top.

***

CUCUMBER GAZPACHO
Chris Parsons, Catch

8 each Cucumber, 4 of them peeled, Split and seed all. Rough chop.
1/4 C Evoo
1/4 C Sherry Vinegar
1 C Torn day old bread
1 C Greek Whole Milk Yogurt
Kosher Salt and White Pepper to Taste

Toss in a bowl like a salad, blend in blender and strain. Adjust seasoning.

Greek yogurt Bubbles
1/2 C Greek Yogurt
1/2 C Whole Milk
1 t Yellow Curry Powder
1 t Toasted Ground Cumin
Kosher Salt and White Pepper to Taste

Wisk together. Buzz w/ hand blender to froth.

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home, sick

I was home a few weeks ago with a summer cold. Yes, a summer cold. With little energy to work, let alone cook, but a few deadlines that could not be missed, I soldiered on, fighting battles in my pajamas with my laptop balancing precariously on bent knees.

Every once in a while, I would stumble to the kitchen for a fortifying meal. Cereal. Tea. Feeling adventurous? How about some toast?

And finally, I had an appetite but barely more than a few scraps in the fridge. I pulled together all my creativity and threw together something fabulous.

Wow. I didn’t know I had it in me.

Arugula pesto

- 1.5 – 2 handfuls baby arugula

- 4 garlic scapes (or you could use 2 cloves roasted garlic)

- 2 T olive oil

- juice of 1/2 lemon

- 2 pinches salt (or to taste)

- a nice wedge of gruyère (1-2 T)

- chopped tomato

Throw arugula and roughly chopped scapes (or roasted garlic) into a food processor and pulse a few times. Slowly add olive oil and continue to process until a paste forms. Add lemon juice and salt to taste. Add cheese and continue to process until you have a slightly chunky pesto.

Make pasta (I used orzo) according to the package directions. I like mine al dente. Drain but don’t rinse. Toss with the pesto and chopped tomato while still warm.

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the drive back

On the way back from the Berkshires last weekend, Rachela and I almost ran out of gas. And when you’re looking for a gas station, you inevitably can’t find one. And then the gas light goes off and says you have another 30 miles to go before you should panic. And then you drive another 5 miles. And you’re told you should really panic in 7 miles. And those extra 12 safety miles? They disappeared. Of course, when you finally find someone fixing his tractor at the side of the road and inquire about a station, he points you to the top of the hill where you can see a Gulf sign peeking out behind a church.

After we filled the tank, we began our search for farmers markets. We had seen loads of them throughout the weekend, but didn’t want to buy anything to have it sit in our room or the car in the sweltering heat. So when we were finally ready to load up the car with fresh fruits and vegetables, none were to be found. We drove by a wigwam. And an Indian circle dance. When I read the word dance, I jumped out of the car, ready to join in. Until I saw a half-dozen pot-bellied men in loin cloths and feather headdresses stomping their feet around a bonfire. We were back in the car and on the road fast. Really fast. So fast that we had to do a quick U-turn after we passed a sign for fresh-picked corn. U-turn accomplished, we rolled into the driveway and found a makeshift table set with ears of corn, plastic bags, a metal box and a sign stating,

Corn.

Picked this morning.

$6 a dozen or $0.50 each.

Please leave money in the box.

We promptly picked a pair of ears each, deposited our dollars in the box, and waved at the proprietress as she stepped onto her front porch to shuck.

We then passed a larger farmers stand with a greater variety of produce. I grabbed a few tomatoes, a handful of small cukes, and several large zucchinis.

And they sat in my fridge for almost a week while I toiled away in the office, ordering dinner in to sustain me during my late working hours. And then, only this weekend, did the vegetables come out to play. An Israeli salad. Corn roasted in the husk, eaten over the sink. And simple roasted zucchini with Mediterranean spices.

Roasted Zucchini

Adapted from a recipe for Roasted Zucchini with Ricotta and Mint from this August’s Food & Wine. 

Additional note 7/10/12: after salting the zucchini, make sure to rinse off all the salt. You can always add more salt to taste, but it’s pretty hard to remove it! 

Preheat oven to 450ºF. Dice 2 large zucchini into a medium-sized dice (1/3 – 1/2 inch). Salt generously and let sit in colander for 5-10 minutes until some of the zucchini’s liquid is released. Rinse zucchini and dry well. (The salting helps prevent the zucchini from getting soggy.) Toss with 1T olive oil, salt, and pepper. Shake onto a baking dish and roast for 25-30 minutes until zucchini starts to brown. Add 2 t cumin and a few pinches of crushed red pepper and roast for another 2-5 minutes until the spices are fragrant. Scoop into a bowl and sprinkle with the juice of half a lemon. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a few mint leaves and a scoop of labane (or leave off the labane for a non-dairy option).

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this is America

Last year, I spent the Fourth in Panama (yes, yes, I know that I owe you more chronicles…they are in the works, I promise).

This year, I was back on US soil and my friend Rachela and I drove out to Berkshires for the long weekend. It was a colorful weekend on so many levels, so please bear with me as I test out my new camera to capture it all. Our adventure started with berries plucked straight from the bushes. It ended with the most non-PC gentleman you could even imagine pointing us towards the nearest gas station. In between: farm animals, a swimming hole (yes, a swimming hole), the local Independence Day parade complete with the Chesterfield Chicken and the town mime, dance, fireworks and a long line of traffic, art, a lake, and the largest popovers I have ever seen.

And just when I thought I was a little out of my comfort zone, the Israeli photographer we shared breakfast with reminded me that “this is America.”

Remember those black raspberries? Did I tell you they were picked from the bushes behind our B&B? Or that when we met the proprietor his hands were stained from his collection? Or that they starred in the muffins that made up part of our multi-course breakfast? Or that I snagged the recipe to share with you? Yes, I may be slowing down on the recipe front, but this one is well worth the wait.

Black Raspberry Muffins

Generously shared by Denise at Seven Hearths. Makes 12 muffins. You will eat them all.

- 2 C flour

- 1 T baking powder

- 1/2 t salt

- 2/3 C sugar

- 1 egg, beaten

- 1/3 C sweet butter, melted

- 1/2 C milk, warm

- 1/2 C sour cream

- 1 1/2+ C black raspberries

Pre-heat oven to 400.

Mix. Mix all dry ingredients. Add remaining ingredients except fruit and stir until just blended. DO NOT OVERSTIR. Fold fruit in lightly.

Bake. Scoop batter in lined or greased muffin tins. Bake approximately 20 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for 7-10 minutes and then remove.

Variation: you can substitute 1 1/2 C other fruit, but adjust the sugar (and other ingredients) accordingly:

Blackberry: 1 C sugar
Raspberry: 2/3 C sugar
Blueberry: 1/2 C sugar, 2 t lemon juice, 1 t grated lemon rind
Bing Cherry:  2/3 C sugar, 2 t grated lemon peel
Nectarine: 1/2 C sugar
Peach: 1/2 C sugar, 1 t vanilla

And it’s been a while since I shared some dance videos with you, so here are excerpts from the performance we saw.

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taken away and given back

When I was in high school (yes, that all-girls’ school with the honor code), one of my teachers told us never to raise a hand and start a question or a comment with an apology. But I’m going to break that rule just this once, and apologize for having neglected you quite a bit of late. Here’s the scoop. I started a new job. I get home and flop on my sofa. I eat a whole head of roasted broccoli for dinner. Or a bowl of cereal. Or maybe a salad. Then fall asleep and wake up only to start all over again.

About a month ago, I went to a 2 1/2 hour dance class (!) on a Sunday morning and ended up in the ER with a torn meniscus. Not that I knew that at the time. All I knew at that point was that I wasn’t going to make it to the Idan Raichel concert that evening. Fast forward past weeks on end taking taxis to work every day (that is, when I was able to get to work rather than working from home), limping and limping and limping some more, trying out knee brace after knee brace (the one the ER gave me kept falling off) to Good Friday when I was in the OR for arthroscopic knee repaired.

Lucky for me, some friends took me in for the next few days — practically the entire Chol Ha’moed (the intermediate days of Passover), making sure I was well-fed (recipes to follow, don’t you worry) and -rested and didn’t need to worry about anything other than sitting in the sun that graced us over the weekend.

Now that Passover is behind us, every time I eat bread, I feel a little jolt of happiness that I can eat whatever I want. And each day as I can walk a little farther and straighten and bend my knee just a little bit more, I remember how good it feels to be healthy. It’s one of those things that I rarely think about until a little bit is taken away from me.

So, with this in mind, and now that I can stand long enough to be in kitchen, I figured I’d bake you an apology cake.

Almond Yogurt Cake

Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini’s Gateau au Yaourt and Raspberry Yogurt Cake. I upped the almond content using both ground almonds and almond oil. This cake is not too sweet and the taste of the orange flower water (which I love with almonds) is present without being overpowering.

- 1 C lowfat plain yogurt

- 1 C sugar

- 2 eggs

- 1/3 C vegetable oil (or 1/2 vegetable oil, 1/2 almond oil for a really almond-y flavor)

- 1 t orange flower water

- 1 2/3 C sifted flour

- 1/3 C finely ground almonds

- 1 1/2 t baking powder

- 1/2 t baking soda

Preheat oven to 350°

Mix. Mix together the yogurt, sugar, eggs, oil(s), and orange flower water. Add flour, ground almonds, baking powder, and baking soda.

Bake. Slip greased pan (I used an 8X12 glass rectangle) into oven and bake for ~45 minutes.

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denial (or, is it really almost Passover?)

Wow, the month of March has snuck up on me. Between starting a new job and the less-than-ideal weather, time has flown and it’s hard to believe that spring is (theoretically) almost upon us. Like last year, I want to share with you some of the recent recipes on my blog that are Passover friendly. Here goes…

Main Courses:

- Moroccan brisket with olives and preserved lemons (just make it without couscous)- Anna Sortun’s Spoon Lamb

- Tomato and Onion Braised Brisket- Pomegranate Chicken

Soups:

- Onion soup – make it without the bread (try matzah instead), with or without cheese

Sides and Salads:

- Asparagus avocado salad

- Mediterranean quinoa salad

- Eggplant spread with tomatoes (it looks gross, but tastes great)

- Marinated zucchini

- Spinach salad with beets and grapefruit

- Kibbutz herb salad

- Vic’s salad- Feta watermelon salad

- Yellow (or green) beans with hazelnuts – just use whatever oil you have if you can’t find hazelnut

- Quinoa with persimmon, pomegranate, and walnuts – use the dressing and try other available fruits

Desserts:

- Grapefruit mint sorbet

- Sangria sorbet

- Amaretti (almond) cookies; Gianduia (chocolate hazelnut) cookies

http://koshercamembert.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/passover-friendly-recipes/

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confession

I went to a high school with an honor code. Our teachers would leave the room during exams, trusting that since we had signed the honor code, there would be “no lying, stealing, cheating, or plagiarism.” We sometimes even chatted with one another during exams, knowing that whatever topics we discussed would not be related to the test we were taking.

So, I come to you today, my head hung low, to confess that I sometimes — no I often — cheat in the kitchen. I use pre-minced garlic. I use margarine a lot (for parve desserts). My biggest shortcut though is that I sometimes use lemon juice instead of fresh lemons.  Even when a recipe has this citrus component as its main ingredient. A little squirt in a stir-fry when a lemon is not to be found– not such a big deal. But, I have done it for lemon bars. Yes, lemon bars. Where the main flavoring is lemon.

And, here I present to you my latest and greatest cheat – a bastardization of a beautiful recipe for lemon mascarpone blondies with a few modifications, including the use of bottled lemon juice in lieu of freshly squeezed lemons and their zest. But, I have to tell you, this must be one kick-ass recipe because despite my cheating, it rocked.

This lemon mascarpone “tart” tastes like a lemon bar whose lemony top and cookie bottom merge into one. It is rich and decadent without being overly sweet. That being said, it was not overly citrusy either — perhaps the downside to cheating with jarred lemon juice. I imagine one could play up the tart part of it a bit more by making a chocolate crust of sorts, even using a thin layer of brownie base if you like the combination of lemon, made rich with mascarpone, and chocolate.

Cheating Lemon Mascarpone Tart

I found this wonderful recipe for Lemon Mascarpone Blondies developed by Garret McCord and posted on Simply Recipes. Rather than using lemons, I was going to use limes because I had brought back some key limes from my recent trip to Miami, but having made some “caiparina mojitos” with them at a picnic last week, I didn’t think I could bear to juice the 2 dozen I would probably need to get 2 T of juice. But I did have some Goya lemon juice in my fridge. I didn’t have an 8X8 pan to bake the blondies in, but my 10-inch solid bottom tart pan worked nicely and made the blondies look fancy though a bit flat.

I made the batter by hand because my Kitchen Aid is parve, and this is very easy to make the “old-fashioned way.” It took less than 15 minutes to make the batter. This could be a great holiday recipe for those who are observant during the upcoming Rosh Hashanah.

Serves 8-10 and best eaten chilled.

- 1/2 C butter, melted
- 1 cup of tightly packed dark brown sugar
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 1/4 t vanilla
- 8 ounces mascarpone cheese (I used Vermont Butter & Cheese brand – Kof-K)
- 2 T Lemon juice (I used Goya brand lemon juice in a bottle; original recipe calls for 2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice)
- 2 1/2 t lemon zest (I left this out)
- 1/2 t baking powder
- 1/8 t of baking soda
- Pinch salt (omit if using salted butter)
- 1 C all-purpose flour

Bring mascarpone to room temperature for ~15 minutes while preparing other ingredients so it will be easier to work with later on.

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and lightly flour pan (8X8 pan or 10-inch solid bottom tart pan).

Melt butter in saucepan or microwave. As someone who often substitutes margarine, I have to tell you that the smell of the melting butter was absolutely heavenly. I might be converted to a more frequent butter user.

Pour melted butter into large mixing bowl and mix in sugar with whisk. Then add egg and vanilla and continue to whisk. Add mascarpone, juice (and zest if using) and switch to a spatula for mixing. Finally add in baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour, continuing to use spatula for final mixing.

When all ingredients are incorporated, the batter will be pretty pourable. Pour into prepared pan and spread evenly.

Bake in pre-heated oven for 20-30 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean and without clinging crumbs, and the blondies start to pull away from the edge of the pan. In my oven, this took a full 30 minutes even though my tart was a bit thinner than an 8X8 square would be.

I suggest chilling before serving. It makes the tart easier to slice, less crumbly, and more dense.

(I tried to candy a few thin lime slices to decorate the top, but unfortunately they didn’t taste very good (thought they looked pretty). This wasn’t worth the effort and I wouldn’t do it next time.)

I had to take a small taste before bringing to my friends

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