Roasted Rhubarb and Strawberry Tartlets

Every Monday I cook dinner for my entire Houston family.  It is our chance to take a moment away from our busy schedules, catch up, and take advantage of this time when we all live so close to each other.

This week I made a special dinner for my mom’s birthday.  I recreated that wonderful pasta and for dessert, baked these tartlets topped with the season’s first strawberries, roasted rhubarb, and a quick strawberry sauce.

Rhubarb and strawberries are one of my favorite combinations, but strawberries are often the star of the show.  This tart highlights the dueling sweetness and tartness of rhubarb with strawberries playing the supporting role; a great way to get to know rhubarb if you ask me.

Remember my reconciliation with tarts?  Well, our relationship is moving on quite nicely and tartlets, baby tarts, have also become dear to me.  What an elegant way to present a dessert and each of your guests gets their own!  I even made my niece a super-mini tartlet (see below), she gobbled it up.

Welcome Spring and Happy (belated) Birthday Mom!

Makes 6 5-inch tartlets

Sweet dough recipe from the Tartine cookbook

Inspired by the Gourmet Today cookbook

Note:  The recipe for the sweet dough will make more than you need for this recipe.  The extra dough can be frozen for 3 weeks or rolled and cut to make sugar cookies.

For the dough:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

For the tart filling and sauce:

1 1/2 pounds rhubarb stalks, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

10 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar

1 10-ounce package frozen strawberries

1/4 cup water 1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 cup creme fraiche

Fresh strawberries thinly sliced, approximately 6 per tartlet

Special equipment: 6 5-inch tart pans. If you don’t have these, you can make a regular 9-inch tart.  If you don’t have that…you need a tart pan!

Make tart dough:

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, sugar, and salt and mix on medium speed until smooth.  Mix in 1 egg.  Add the remaining egg and mix until smooth.  Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Add the flour all at once and mix on low speed just until incorporated.

On a lightly floured work surface, divide the dough into 4 equal balls and shape each ball into a disk 1/2 inch thick.  Wrap well in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours.

Roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thickness, rolling from the center toward the edge in all directions.  Lift and rotate the dough a quarter turn after every few strokes, dusting underneath as necessary.  Cut out a circle 2 inches larger than the pan.  Carefully transfer the circle to the pan, easing it into the bottom and sides and then pressing gently into place.  Do not stretch the dough.  Trim the dough level with the top of the pan with a sharp knife.  Dock the bottom of the tart with a fork.  Place the lined pan in the refrigerator while preparing filling and sauce. (Don’t forget to freeze your extra dough!)

Make filling and sauce:

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Lightly oil a baking sheet with sides.  Arrange the rhubarb in one layer on baking sheet.  Sift 5 tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar evenly over it.  Roast rhubarb until tender, 15-25 minutes.  Cool to room temperature.  Lower oven temperature to 325°F.

Place strawberries, 1/4 cup sugar, and water in a small saucepan and simmer until strawberries are thawed and sugar dissolves.  Puree strawberries in a food processor.  Force puree through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl; discard solids.

Sift remaining 5 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar over creme fraiche in a small bowl and whisk to combine.

Bake tartlets for 10-12 minutes, until light golden brown.  Cool completely.

Assemble tartlets:

Distribute sweetened creme fraiche evenly over tartlet shells.  Garnish decoratively with fresh strawberries and top each with an equal serving of the roasted rhubarb.  Drizzle with strawberry puree.

Happy Registered Dietitian Day & Vegan Beetroot Chocolate Cake

March is National Nutrition Month and Wednesday, March 9, is Registered Dietitian Day.

If you know a Registered Dietitian (RD) give them a hug or at least acknowledge that you even know what an RD is.

In my opinion, RD’s are some of the most undervalued, underpaid, and misunderstood members of the medical community.  Did you know that we too have to go through an internship? That we have to pass a national exam in order to be registered?  That we have a code of ethics?  That we have to take entirely too much chemistry?

Where can you find us?  Roaming the halls of hospitals making sure your loved ones get the food they like, that they are on the appropriate diet, and even determine the appropriate tube feeding and parenteral feedings for them.  We also run hospital kitchens and school/university dining programs making us responsible for understanding and executing hundreds of laws, state regulations, and ensuring that people get safe food on top of managing personal.  We work in community clinics with our nations poor, teaching them how to eat, take care of themselves, and raise healthy children.  We work in doctor’s offices begging reluctant people to manage their diabetes, loose weight, lower their cholesterol, remove gluten from their diet, or simply take a flight of stairs instead of the elevator.  We check on the elderly in nursing homes, children at Head Start, and work in prisons trying to juggle the impossible task of feeding inmates on $.50 or less a day.  Some gyms and grocery stores hire us to guide you to make better food, exercise, and lifestyle choices.

We specialize in nutrition support, diabetes, fitness, bariatrics, dialysis, oncology, breastfeeding, and even culinary arts.

Each and every one of us has had a conversation like this.

To boil it down, I think every dietitian out there would wish, on this day, that all of you just consider the benefit of fruits and veggies, a 30 minute walk, or skipping that third helping at dinner.  Believe me, I have never met bigger food lovers and dessert freaks than dietitians, but we are also ridiculously obsessed with vegetables.  So, even just for one day, join us in loving food of all kinds, treat your bodies well, and amuse this dietitian by making this healthy cake, because you can have your cake and eat your veggies too.

Vegan Beetroot Chocolate Cake

Makes 1 bundt cake

Adapted from The Vegan Table Epicurious June 2009

Note:  I’m not gonna lie, you can taste the beets in this cake, but if you are a beet lover like me, that is definitely a good thing.  Even my husband who hates beets liked this cake!

1/2 cup canola oil

1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar

2 cups beet puree from 3-4 beets that were steamed or roated

1/2 cup nondairy chocolate chips (or regular chocolate chips if you aren’t vegan), melted and cooled slightly

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 375°F and lightly oil a Bundt pan.

In a mixing bowl, cream together oil and brown sugar. Add beets, melted chocolate chips, vanilla, and almond extract and mix well.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt. Add to wet beet mixture, and stir until just combined.

Pour into prepared Bundt pan, and bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Cool in pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Cool completely. Before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Lemon Blueberry Breakfast Cornbread

Most days, the first thing that the mixer guys I work with have to accomplish is to bake a rack of cornbread.  We sell our cornbread in individual pans and typically, by the end of the day we are sold out.

What may shock some of you, is that despite working in a bakery and handling hundreds of pounds of sugar everyday, the guys I work with aren’t in love with desserts; you won’t see them sneaking a taste of one of the pastries and if they are sampling a new dessert, they will take the most microscopic bite you have ever seen.

You don’t have to ask them twice to dig into the cornbread though.  After the cornbread comes out of the oven (oh…it makes the kitchen smell like home…), they will reserve themselves a pan.  Most of the time they will just dig right into the hot bread, steam billowing from their mouths, enjoying a moment’s break in their busy days.  Other times, they will scramble an egg on the stove and then have a little feast during their break.  In their words, “You have to have your cornbread and leche.”

If I am not too busy, sometimes I will join them in their cornbread ritual.  One coworker will grab me a cup of coffee and in that hasty moment, nothing tastes better than hot coffee and hot cornbread.

My sweet tooth is still intact and I wanted to add my twist to the cornbread tradition on my Saturday off.

Growing up, every time my mom made cornbread, she would eat her’s topped with maple syrup.  Because of my raving sweet tooth, I quickly followed suit and now every time I smell cornbread baking in the oven, I can’t help but hope there is some maple syrup near by.

For this version of cornbread, I added maple syrup to the batter along with lemon zest and frozen blueberries making a perfect breakfast, snack, or pick-me-up with some leche (or coffee).

Makes one 8-by-8-inch pan or fills an 8-inch cast-iron skillet

Inspired by two favorite cornbread recipes in The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Note:  I have written this recipe for using a cast-iron skillet which makes a wonderful crust on the edges and bottom of this bread, but if you do not have one (go..get..one…now!), you can use a 8-by-8-inch baking dish.  This is another great use for buttermilk!

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup yellow cornmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 heaping teaspoon lemon zest

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed

1/3 cup pure maple syrup

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon lemon juice

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup frozen blueberries, not thawed (tossed with 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 400°F and add cast-iron skillet to oven to heat as well.

Meanwhile, whisk the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and lemon zest together in a medium bowl until combined.  Process the buttermilk, thawed corn, and maple syrup in a food processor until well combined.  Add the eggs and lemon juice and continue to process until well combined (it’s okay if come lumps remain).

Fold the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture with a rubber spatula.  Fold in the melted butter until just incorporated and then gently fold in flour coated blueberries until just combined.

Remove hot skillet from oven (be cautious).  Brush bottom and sides with ALL the vegetable oil and then scrape batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top.  Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 25-30 minutes.

Let cool for five minutes, then gently flip out onto a wire rack.  Serve warm topped with additional maple syrup!