startatmillbrook's blog

Emergency Croutons

Feb 8, 2009
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Vox just ate my post about pot pie and so I thought I'd post pictures of my adventures in cooking with stale bread instead.

Last week, we got a baguette to have with Kelly's tomato soup, and, as always happens, the next day it was practically hard as a rock. I know there's some magic trick with a microwave and water that you can do to bring bread temporarily back to life, but I just needed something to have with my soup, and I didn't have a lot of time before I had to be at work. So, emergency croutons!

When in doubt, olive oil

There's no recipe to this: I heated a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, broke up the bread as best I could, and let it absorb the olive oil until it was heated through and gorgeously golden brown. And then I tossed it in the soup! Instant crouton-like things!

Semi-croutons in Kelly's amazing tomato soup

Grapefruit tart failure (the beautiful but bitter remix)

Feb 1, 2009
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The star ingredient

I got a lovely tart pan for Christmas and decided it was time to use it. I had only ever made tarts with some sort of cookie or graham cracker crust before, so it was high time I learned how to make a pâte sucrée. Several recipes include 1/2 or a 1/4 cup blanched almonds, but I wanted a nut-free crust this time around.

I used this recipe:

1 1/4 unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 3/4 all-purpose flour

I made the dough in my food processor, something I highly recommend, because it's pretty much all butter and won't mix as thoroughly or as finely with a pastry blender by hand, (which is how I make pie crusts.) Mix the butter in the food processor until it's just creamy; add the confectioners' sugar and blend well. Add the salt, vanilla; stir but don't whisk the egg before adding; process to blend. Add the flour and pulse to blend - stop when it just starts to form a ball.

Gather up the dough and form it into one or two discs and refrigerate - it will be very soft, so at the very least a half an hour. When you're ready, roll out the crust between plastic or wax paper. Again, it's all butter, so the more you work it and touch it, the more it melts. Butter the tart pan and place it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. You really don't want to put a tart pan in your oven without giving it something to sit (and potentially leak) on. Your oven thanks you.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line the crust with parchment paper and fill with dried beans or rice. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or just until very lightly colored. Transfer to a rack to cool.

blind baking the crust

I used Smitten Kitchen's whole-lemon tart as my inspiration for filling. (She also has a link to an excellent-looking tart crust recipe.) I substituted half a pink sweet grapefruit for the whole lemon and added some extra sugar to the blended mix since it seemed just a tad sour. It looked gorgeous.

tart filling

Finished grapefruit tart

The first slice

The problem was, it was bitter. Disgustingly bitter. Like all the parts of a grapefruit you aren't supposed to eat. It tasted like I had made grapefruit pith tart - there was none of the refreshing citrus complexity I had been expecting. It was just gross. The crust came out great, however, and we ended up eating our way around the tart, prying off the part of the crust that had not been tainted by the filling.

I'd try the recipe again, with all grapefruit flesh and no pith and peel, or maybe just a Shaker Lemon Pie filling with more custard to handle the whole citrus fruit. Maybe not, though - I may have ruined whole fruit recipes for myself for a little while. In the end, though, this was the most beautiful inedible thing I've ever made.

Tomato season breakfast

Oct 7, 2008
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tomato and cheese open-faced sandwich

This is what I did...

Oct 4, 2008
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This is what I did this morning:

Crafty kitty

yogurt and granola

Spicy pecans are a must

Oct 1, 2008
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Another picture from a little while ago. The last time I made my favorite beet tarts (also known as beet hearts, from a misunderstanding about what our friends told us what they were making for dinner - were they like artichoke hearts?) I had leftover beets and goat cheese, and so the only thing that was missing was spicy pecans. There's no real recipe: I toast the pecans for a few minutes until they're fragrant, and then add honey and oil (or corn syrup) and nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and lots of salt and sugar the end end so they crunch.

beet and goat cheese salad

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Sep 30, 2008
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This was from a few months ago, back when strawberries and rhubarb were in season. I used this recipe, with some editing: I used equal shortening and butter for the crust (and left out the salt.)

strawberry rhubarb pie

lazy lattice crust

Gingerbread muffins

Aug 20, 2008
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I made these a while back.They're gingerbread with a little more ginger and molasses, and ginger icing!

Ginger, ginger

This flower is saying yes

Aug 13, 2008
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From a random batch of garden visit photos:

oh, to be a flower

In the mirror

Aug 3, 2008
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I found this while loading the 100+ pictures from our two June vacations onto the computer. I don't remember when I took it, but I really love this picture - it's rare that I feel like I have a natural expression on my face when the camera's around. I also really like that you can see that I have a chat window up on my computer screen in the background. True to life.