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recipes

Olivia’s Kitchen: End of Heirloom Season Tart

By Filed Under: Olivia’s Kitchen Tagged With: , ,

The end of the heirloom tomato season goes quite late into the fall and often provides delicious, but maybe not as pretty tomatoes. This super easy tart is an elegant and simple way to make use of those juicy, maybe a little over ripe, maybe a little banged up beauties.

Purchase an all butter frozen puff pastry like Dufour brand. Let it warm up a little from frozen, but not too soft.

Open the rectangle of dough and pull outward and up on the edges to create a little bit of a lip on the edge. Poke the inner part of the dough (not the lip) with a fork.

Slice the tomatoes thinly and layer them over the surface of the dough in a fish scale type pattern. Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and sprinkle some fresh herbs over the top such as basil or thyme.

Place into a 450 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

Another tasty addition to this is to add fresh goat cheese either before cooking, or serve with a slice after. Serve with some nicely dressed fresh greens.

Olivia’s Kitchen: The Best Strawberry Shortcake

By Filed Under: Eat Local Tagged With: ,

I have no memory of where I got this recipe in the first place but I scribbled it on a piece of Japanese stationary at least 12 years ago and have tweaked it over the years to work perfectly for sweet shortcakes. Every time I look at that greasy beat up piece of paper I think “I gotta write that down somewhere where it can’t get lost”. So, now I am…

 

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup flour

4 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons cold butter

3/4 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon Vanilla

 

Fresh strawberries

Lemon

Sugar

 

Cream

Vanilla

Sugar

 

 

Recipe

In a bowl mix together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Then cut in the cold butter, cut in to small pieces, either quickly with your fingers or a pastry cutter until it’s a course meal texture. In a measuring cup measure out the heavy cream and the add in the vanilla. Pout that mixture over the flour mix and quickly, with as few strokes and possible, combine the wet and dry ingredients. Using your hands at the end bring it all together in a ball and the flatten it out to about 1 1/2 inches thick. Cut into squares. 4 for very large cakes, 6 for medium, 8 small. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, sprinkle a little more sugar on top and place in a 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. They should be golden brown on top. Slice up strawberries, squeeze a little lemon on them and add some sugar to taste for the filling. Make vanilla whipped cream. Once the shortcakes cool split them in half and put some strawberries inside and top with a healthy amount of whipped cream the replace the top. The dough part of this recipe also makes a phenomenal cobbler. Just mix cut up fruit with a couple tablespoons of corn star, sugar and a couple tablespoons of melted butter. Put in in a baking no dish and the crumble the dough over top. Bake at 400 for 1/2 hour or until the fruit mixture is bubbling and the dough is golden brown.