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sarandsaffitz · 3 years
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Salty Nut Tart with Rosemary, p. 87, Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz
Made on 1/21/22
I’ve been working on this one for the past couple weeks and I’m happy to have finally made it out of the nuttart (pronounced nu’tart, as Matt has been saying any time we talk about it) mindset that I’ve been stuck in. This thing is a trust fall and then once I tasted it… I couldn’t say it felt entirely worth all my effort, but I’m glad to have made it because it does look impressive.
First: Make the Sweet Tart Dough, p. 338
I made the dough two times (the above pictures are from the second batch) because the dough calls for 4 teaspoons of water and one egg yolk … we’re vegan over here. I first tried weighing my flax egg to be equivalent to the egg yolk weight and then adding all the water, but the dough was way too wet. Flax eggs are mostly water, so I decided on my next batch to just use the whole flax egg and add one teaspoon of water. I might even say don’t add any more water, but it worked just fine with one teaspoon added.
Parbake the crust (partially bake the crust) and use leftover scraps of dough to fill in cracks. And OMG there were so many huge cracks. I was seriously contemplating starting over a third time, but I went for it and filled EVERY crack I saw (real or imagined) and you know what, it didn’t leak so I’m glad I spent an hour staring at a tart case.
Finally: Make the Nu’tart
Make it vegan!
I swapped honey for agave nectar and heavy cream for coconut cream (you can find coconut cream where you find coconut milk in a can).
So, I used pine nuts and walnuts, as suggested in the book, but I found I didn’t really care for the pine nut flavor. Perhaps this is because I didn’t have Italian pine nuts like Claire suggests (I may have had Chinese pine nuts, but I bought these from the bulk bins and they made no declaration of their origins). If I were to make this again, I might try a different, less expensive nut, like a cashew or an almond, or even just a ton of walnuts.
I also did not have fresh rosemary. By the time I got to this part of the recipe, I remembered my original plan to go for a walk in my neighborhood and clip some free stuff off a neighbor’s lawn, but it was 9pm and that was just not going to happen. We had old, dry rosemary left, so that’s what I used. If you make this, please, GET FRESH ROSEMARY. I think it would have tasted a lot more interesting if I had remembered this step. As it was, it tasted… meh.
Honestly, the most fun part of this was making the sugar mixture, which turns into a caramel in the oven. Just remember, you’re not supposed to stir anymore once the sugar melts, you’re just supposed to swirl it gently.
All in all, Matt rated this a 2 out of 5 and I have to agree, at least for flavor. Maybe it was the pine nuts, or maybe the lack of fresh rosemary, or maybe I should have put more flaky salt on top. Not sure it was entirely the recipe’s fault as far as flavor goes. This was a good challenge and fun to make when I finally decided to chance it on the tart case.
Last but not least! You may have noticed the little piece of vegan cheddar cheese on my plate. Claire says that this nu’tart is great with cheese, so I went down to Vtopia, a vegan cheese shop and restaurant, and bought myself a little hunk of cheese to pair with the tart. I actually really like their cheddar! It had that tang that you get from it’s dairy counterpart, which I find to be lacking in most vegan cheeses you can buy in the store. Thanks Vtopia! Make sure to give them a follow on Instagram @ vtopiashop
UPDATE: When I brought the rest of this nut tart as party favors for Matt's birthday, everyone said they really liked it. Either they're just being nice, or some people really would like this a lot. So, don't take my overly critical word for it and just try it yourself :)
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twistednuns · 5 years
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December 2019
Maxim calling out of the blue, inviting me to the Mine concert later that month.
Stumbling upon great inspiration for plant-based buddha bowls.
@shitgothssay memes.
Zotter salted caramel chocolate.
Finding out about the fact that you can just add the letter A to some words to transform them into adjectives. Like aglitter or aglow and aglisten.
Ayurvedic Kapha tea with some black tea, honey and milk. Sonnentor Gute Laune tea. Green tea with toasted coconut.
Isana shower oil. Works wonders for dry skin. Such a smooth and creamy texture. Great for shaving, too.
Winning the pub quiz - again! I played with Maggie, Dennis, Daniel and Steffen (Team name: Three geese in a trenchcoat) and we won 178€. However, the best thing about this was when I finally solved the anagram after thinking about it for 10 minutes. It was Greta Thunberg! Winning is lovely, of course, but solving the anagram is already a personal win for me each time.
Tuesdays. Coming home early, sleeping it off.
Being super rested after a nap, cooking a huge pot of veggie stew and my ratatouille signature recipe, even preparing a batch of butter bean hummus and salad dressing. Listening to folk music, singing along, even dancing at some point. Standing there, peeling the potatos… Happy moment.
Signature manicure. Always. This time: bluish iridescent lilac with the obligatory black dot.
A personal realisation. I’ve been massively out of touch with myself. I’ve stopped journaling, stopped doing things for myself because they’re beneficial and not because they’re convenient and numb everything. And why is that a good thing? Well, only being at this point and realising what’s wrong with me makes it possible to do something against it. To come up a self-care plan. To make myself feel better.
Semi-deleting Facebook.
Spending time with Manu for the first time in three months. Watching a documentary about black holes and a cheesy Christmas movie. Ordering south Indian food, cuddling up in bed. Sometimes I don’t know why I keep isolation myself. Being around people can be really lovely and soothing if you can be yourself around them. It’s just that I often feel the presence of other living beings drains my energy.
The best massage I ever had. From now on I’ll always request Yaya as my massage therapist. She is SICK. Strong, merciless, forces me into weird poses and makes my back crack.
Also: the chocolate-filled mint hard candy they hand out at the massage studio. I used to hate mint-infused chocolate but somehow I think these are delicious. Perfect after-torture-treat.
Persimmons. Obsessed.
My eye colour in artificial light. A dark moss green with caramel-coloured speckles and a dark rim.
The National playing a 2-hour-long concert and including some of my favourite songs from the High Violet album. Fangirling with Anika.
The smell of cold. You know, that whiff of cool air you get when you’re sniffing a jacket that’s been hanging on the balcony for a few hours to air out.
Learning more about Claire Saffitz from this article - she likes arts and crafts, is a homebody and has degrees in history and literature! She basically enrolled in culinary school because she was bored after graduation. She’s an enigma of a quirky kind. Not brilliant and scattered, but determined and aimless. Not brave and rebellious, but anxious and creative. She hates change yet pursues it, wants order but trades in chaos. She’s loved because she hates stuff; performs well because she can’t perform. And above all, she’s aggressively regular—and something about this makes the crowd go wild.
Fresh laundry smell on my blankets and pillows. And my new gravity blanket. It weighs 11kg which feels crazy heavy when you carry it but the weight evenly distributes over the body when you’re lying down. Apparently the pressure triggers the release of stress hormones. So far I’m sleeping like a baby and I don’t seem to wake up or move much at night.
Stephanie Madewell. I love everything she writes, her blog is such a godsend of beautiful, important, eclectic ideas. One thing I especially like are her imaginary outfits.
Princess Margaret’s limerick contest with President Lyndon B. Johnson in The Crown. Pure comedy. “There was a young lady from Dallas / who used a dynamite stick as a phallus / they found her vagina in North Carolina / and her asshole in Buckingham Palace.”
Little pieces of string in the corners of a duvet cover. It’s the first time I’ve seen those. So practical for big blankets!
Mental health days. I needed this. So much. Mornings in bed, reading for hours. Drinking a whole pot of tea.
Partner yoga. Chanting the closing mantra together.
Making vegan energy balls for my brother. I adapted the recipe and made my own versions so I ended up with a batch of pistachio/cherry and mango/sesame.
Freaking out whenever I see a cute cat. Damn, I really need to spend more time with animals. My highlight: breakfast in bed, watching a video of an adorable cat giving birth. I cried. Yup.
Going swimming for the first time in, man, I don’t even know. Forever. I didn’t swim for a long time, maybe half an hour, but muscle memory kicked in immediately. Water is totally my element. And, as if it had been destiny: I chose the day they cut the hanging plants in the main hall and the guy gave me a variety of five different cuttings to take home!! He made me a very happy girl.
The ink blue sky right after sunset. / The morning after the full moon in Gemini (the moon still bright and huge, visible in the bluish-grey Western sky). / When the sun suddenly comes out after a very dark and gloomy morning.
Buying a new phone. The old one was broken beyond repair. I even got a nice cork protective case. How could I ever live without an uncracked screen? The battery now actually lasts for more than a day. Nice.
Odd bits of knowledge: A galanthophile is an enthusiastic collector and identifier of snowdrop (Galanthus) species and cultivars. (Wikipedia) // Scientists theorize the Universe might have cracks in it: long thin boundaries that formed as space cooled after the Big Bang. 95 billion lightyears long and a few femtometers thin, these wrinkles in space-time would hold enough energy to bend light and destroy entire planets. (PHD comics) // the word to bloviate (German meaning: schwafeln, langatmig vortragen) // In Japan we have three rituals: HANAMI, TSUKIMI, and YUKIMI. HANAMI is watching the flowers. TSUKIMI is watching the moon, YUKIMI is watching the snow. It’s a beautiful tradition when you invite people to watch with you. I remember them all. (Yoko Ono) // In linguistics, prosody is concerned with those elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm. Such elements are known as suprasegmentals. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus. It may otherwise reflect other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by choice of vocabulary. (Wikipedia) //
I know I mention this a lot but the first olfactory whiff of a freshly cut open passion fruit is one of the best smells I know.
When my breakfast tastes like a candy bar. Which it immediately does whenever I add almond butter and cocoa nibs to porridge.
Yoga at home on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I’m often too lazy to get out my yoga mat but whenever I do afterwards I’m always so glad I practiced. Also: going to yoga class despite being extremely stressed out. It actually helped me silence some of these tormenting thoughts in my head.
Cutting my own hair. It’s kinda ridiculous and layered but I love the new bounce.
Michael Nyman - Musique à grande vitesse x // feels like it makes my pulse quicker, it’s urging and forceful.
My adventures in psychedelia - an article about the therapeutic effect of psychoactive drugs. I’m going to get Michael Pollan’s book about the topic from the library next week. So interesting.
People who are still writing letters.
My pupils. I realised that some of them have become very fine people. Open, compassionate, motivated, interested, bright, polite. Like the students who attended our first school magazine meeting in their spare time - on the last school day before the Christmas holidays - and had all these amazing ideas. Victor, being able to hold a conversation like an adult. Marks cuddling that dog in front of the supermarket. My tenth-graders being really reasonable, managable, easy to talk to.
Liza Weil’s role as Shy Baldwin’s bass player in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. It took me three episodes to recognize her.
A little embroidery set. I love keeping my hands busy when I’m watching movies.
Making vegan walnut lebkuchen and a very good batch of crisp bread in one go.
Roast apples with candied almonds and marzipan for Christmas dinner. Some buckwheat chocolate cookies. Actually helping out my mum in the kitchen.
Sitting at the piano with my brother, singing tunes from our childhood series, Disney songs, pop songs… We both had sore throats afterwards.
Visiting Sash’s parents over Christmas. Her mum cooked a pretty great lunch and we played board games.
Learning how to make a monkey fist knot.
Finding a new spot I like in my apartment. The chair right next to the window at the kitchen table. It’s nice and warm because you can sit beside the heater and while you have breakfast or browse through a cookbook you can see what’s going on outside.
Seeing the incredible gobelins at Kunsthalle / Fäden der Moderne exhibition. I loved the Le Corbusier ones.
Visiting Manu at his parents' place. Playing board games together, his mum feeding me with parsley potatoes and a weird _bird's milk_ dessert. Lying on the sofa, watching old movies. It's weirdly nice to be part of a normal family dynamic once in a while.
Andre saving my New Year’s Eve at the very last minute. Out of the blue he suggested a trip to Czech Republic right after midnight the day before. I was like… okay, let’s do this! So I met up with him and three people I had never met before in Regensburg and we drove to Český Krumlov, checked into our fancy hotel and walked down to the city centre. Czech food for dinner, a band playing at the city square. We climbed up to the castle for the turn of the year. This must have been the first year that started out with a proper New Year’s kiss. Afterwards we went to a weird music bar and - apparently - one of the best clubs in the country. I had a lot of fun. Even though getting Andre home was quite a challenge.
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