Just Dessert

My sister-in-law Therese has assigned me dessert as my contribution for this years’ family Christmas Eve dinner. Actually I suppose I volunteered, mainly because I was tired of making my usual corn pudding, which is a whole other story.

I do like making and especially eating desserts but as I (we) have gotten older I tend to stay away from them because then I always have leftovers. How could this be a bad thing? Well, if it’s something that tempted me enough to cut a recipe out and then make in the first place, how can I not eat it until it’s gone? So for the most part I try not to collect dessert recipes no matter how appealing they look. I’m not always successful however, because there occasionally are circumstances where a good-tasting and pretty recipe is needed – family dinners for example.

You would think that most desserts would do – after all, it’s dessert! Not necessarily. Some years ago Steve and I had an amazing and unfamiliar to us, dessert in La Jolla at Trattoria Aqua. It was an outstanding conclusion to what had already been a great and fun meal which had started out with the then less familiar but no less delicious garlicky hummus which was served with the bread and probably enhanced by a nice bottle of wine. Semifreddo is a frozen confection that is very rich, having a lot of good things in it like cream and nuts and sugar. We liked it well enough that we looked for it other places but never saw it again on anyone’s menu. So we decided to learn to make it. We found a recipe and even bought a special pan for it and while a lot of the ingredients were easily obtainable, cream for example, some of the stuff, like dried citron, we had to hunt for. We teamed up and together went through all the detailed steps, creaming, chopping and toasting and such. It was a lot of effort but we thought it turned out brilliant. So acknowledging how distinctive it was but also how much trouble it was to make, we figured it was a special day dessert. The next event that came up fitting that description was Christmas Eve dinner, so we volunteered to bring the dessert. Putting our heart and soul (as well as lots of ingredients) into it, we did what we thought was an excellent interpretation of what we had enjoyed at the restaurant and presented it to the family as the dessert course. It was a beautiful creation and when served each slice was colorful and chunky with fruit and nuts. It also was, we found, a tactical mistake. Even though we got lots of comments, some of them appreciative, all things considered it seemed most would have preferred pie.

So this year when I take dessert I am keeping that in mind. With an opportunity to make something really special, I first thought of English trifle and other extravagant types of arrangements, but had settled on something more restrained. Something I thought to be simple, colorful and delicious. A cranberry upside down cake. Then I rethought it because even though it’s a delicious dessert, the presentation is not really as attractive as I thought a Christmas Eve dessert should be. So instead I have settled on my own style of pie – a galette or rustic tart. I floated the second choice idea to Steve (it is his family after all) who so heartily concurred I realized that he wasn’t really enthused about my first choice. Which is okay, I like galette and there is the added advantage of it being easy to make because the pastry dough can be made ahead of time, making it just an assembly and baking process.


Merry Christmas!

Rustic Cranberry and Apple Tart

Filling
2 large apples, peeled, cored, cut into
1/2-inch-thick wedges
2 cups cranberries, picked over
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 basic galette crust

Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix sugar, grated lemon peel and
ground cinnamon in small bowl.
Toss half of sugar mixture with apples and cranberries.
Sprinkle remaining sugar mixture over fruit.
Pile onto the crust leaving a 1 ½ in border. Fold border
over the fruit, crimping and pushing it against the fruit.
This border must act as a dam, preventing juices from
escaping while cooking. Dot the filling and crust with
1 1/2 tablespoons butter.
Bake until crust is brown and filling bubbles, about 1 hour.
Cool on rack.
Serve tart warm or at room temperature with crème fraiche/
whipped cream mix (1/3 to 2/3)

Serves 6.



Galette Dough

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces and chilled
about 2/3 cup ice water
How to make: In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the chilled butter using a stand mixer, a food processor, or a pastry blender until the butter is evenly distributed but still in large, visible pieces. Add the ice water all at once to the flour and butter. Mix the dough just until it begins to come together (if using a stand mixer or a food processor, be especially careful not to overmix the dough). Gather the dough with your hands -- don't worry if you see streaks of butter -- and shape it into two disks. Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Makes about 20 oz dough, enough for 2 open galettes or tarts.