Every bite of food should be a sweet bite
Ok, I know that I’m not re-inventing the wheel here. If you Google Asparagus tart, you will probably get a gazillion hits on recipes – because there is A LOT of ways to eat asparagus.
So, why not contribute one more to the bunch.
I came up with this recipe by opening the refrigerator and taking stuff out on the fly. Let me show you a bit of my internal though process during the twenty minutes my refrigerator was open:
Tom’s little man is half Filipino. His mother’s family all come from that wonderful country consisting of a group of 7,107 islands off the mainland of Asia. Did you know that the area occupied by the Philippines is slightly larger than the state of Arizona?
Wonderful what you can learn in geography class right?
Before I meet Tom my exposure to the Filipino culture was zero.
I knew a little of the history of the country, which is pretty fascinating once you really take a look - Nestle between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean this cluster of island was an ideal point for migrating people all over the world. As a result the country is made up of a range of ethnic groups.
So its no accident with so many outside influences during its history, the Philippine cuisine is a fascinating blend of Malay, Spanish and Chinese cultures. To the Filipinos, food is very important and integral part of local art and culture as well as communal existence.
So, when I was invited to the little man’s birthday party, I saw first hand how food brought them together as one single unit.
After last weeks difficulties with the Empanadas, I was a bit worried going in with the Gutsy Cook menu. First it involved making another dough for the tarts, Hollandaise sauce (A first for me) and my cooking schedule this past weekend sort of exploded all over the place, up till late saturday I was not even sure I was going to be able to make them at all.
But, once I’m committed to something, its hard for me to say no.
So, I started with a bit of research about dough that gets used for the tartles and found that the recipe in the Kitchen Bible is pretty standard to everything that is out there. In fact it was the same recipe in 5 different cookbooks that I use to cross-reference.
Relief flow through me. This was going to be a piece of cake.
And it was.
The dough is pretty easy, if you use your handy food processor, which forever and ever will be my go to for making pie crust, tart dough and anything that involves the words “until it resembles coarse bread crumbs”. Because, I’m sorry, but I don’t think making this by hand I will get to the point of feeling it resemble coarse nothing.
So, into the food processor it went and 3 minutes later it was in the refrigerator taking a chill. The dough was a complete success, rolling it out and placing in the tart baking shells went smoothly and no swearing was heard from the kitchen.
I was crossing my finger that this was going to be the theme - EASY.