Dan | Adventures in Thyme

Apple Tart with Goat Cheese and Honey

October 9, 2015 by Dan Leave a Comment

Apple tart by D Fenwick, http://dfenwickphotography.com

Apple tart with goat cheese and honey

Here in the U.S., Kurt Sutter’s The Bastard Executioner, a period drama on FX, is a few episodes into it’s 14th century epic. An apple tart, so simple to create, and with connections to medieval cookery seemed apropos.

Enjoy!

Pie Crust for 9 inch pie
3 large tart cooking Apples (I used Granny Smiths)
8 oz soft white Goat Cheese
4 tablespoons Honey
Cinnamon
1 Egg

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Lay out two pie crusts. Spread half of the goat cheese on each piece of pie dough, leaving a couple of inches at the edge uncovered. Peel, core and slice your apples. Lay the apple slices in a decorative pattern on top of the goat cheese, half on each tart. Drizzle 2 table spoons of honey on each tart. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Now, fold the uncovered edge up and over the tart, as pictured above. Beat your egg and brush over the piece dough.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Serve warm or cold.

Bread Pudding

September 14, 2015 by Dan Leave a Comment

Bread Pudding

Seemingly in the blink of an eye, Fall is upon us, it’s time to think about new recipes for the holidays. This week we tried bread pudding with peaches and a peach schnapps caramel sauce. OMG – yes!

Let’s get baking…

Bread Pudding

6 Eggs, beaten
2 cups unsweetened, vanilla Almond Milk
1 cup packed Brown Sugar
1/4 cup Maple Syrup
1 cup White Sugar
1 tablespoon Cinnamon
1 14.5 oz can unsweetened, sliced Peaches
2 pounds Bread, cut into cubes, slightly stale works best or dry in the oven for a little while (15 mins at 150 degrees F.)

Caramel Sauce

1 cup White Sugar
1 tablespoon Corn Syrup
1/4 cup Water
1/2 cup Almond Milk non-dairy Creamer
2 tablespoons Butter, unsalted
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup Peach Schnapps

To make the Bread pudding:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Combine the 6 beaten eggs, 2 cups of vanilla almond milk, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, 1/4 maple syrup and the cinnamon in a large bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves and everything is well mixed. Add your bread. I used two round loaves of white Italian bread. Any bread with some body will work fine. Don’t try to use white sandwich bread, it doesn’t have enough body to it.

Let the mixture stand for 10 to 15 minutes so the bread absorbs most of the custard. Pour the mixture into your greased 9 x 13 inch baking dish. It should fill it nicely.

Place on the center rack in your oven and back 35 to 45 minutes, or until the custard is set. Remove from the oven and let cool. (Note, it is best served warm with the caramel sauce, below, whipped cream or even a scoop of ice cream.)

To make the Caramel Sauce:

Combine the sugar, corn syrup and water in a medium sauce pan. Stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture begins to boil. Once it starts to boil, stop stirring and cover for a few minutes. (The condensation will dissolve any sugar stuck to the side of the pan.) Remove the lid and let boil until the mixture reaches a medium to dark amber color. Do not stir while it is boiling.

Remove from the heat and add the almond milk creamer slowly while stirring with a wooden spoon. This will bubble up a great deal, so be careful. Stir until smooth, scraping the bottom of the pot so nothing settles out. Add the butter and stir until dissolved. Add the vanilla and the peach schnapps. Return to the heat, bring to a bubble over medium heat, turn down to low and let simmer for a few minutes to boil off most of the alcohol. Remove from the heat and let cool. Stir periodically. Once cool, you can store this in the refrigerator. It is a thick liquid at room temperature.

Serve over the bread pudding above or over ice cream. Yummy!

Best in the West Rib Cook-off

September 14, 2015 by Dan Leave a Comment

Beef Ribs, Carson City BBQ

Baby back ribs, Carson City BBQ

We spent all too much time at the Best in the West Rib Cook-off, so we missed getting a post up.

The cook off, in late August/early September, marks the end of summer for us. Snow is already forecast for the higher peaks later this week! So heading to Victorian Avenue and indulging in lip-smacking ribs and fresh grilled corn is our summer-end’s pilgrimage. We just can’t say “No!”.

So, this week we’ll make up for that with two. First is some pictures of the ribs from Carson City BBQ, They are one of my favorite places to get ribs at the event. Always good food and friendly service.

Homemade Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes

August 26, 2015 by Dan Leave a Comment

Tomato Balsamic Pasta

Each of us have a “Mt Everest” on our cooking bucket list. Maybe it’s proofing the perfect sourdough bread, or recreating Mom’s Chicken Curry. Tonight we are happy to proclaim that we have climbed our mountain and have made pasta. Great pasta too! And are addicted to it’s fresh homemade yumminess.

We’ll start by making the pasta.

2 cups all purpose Flour
3 Eggs
1/2 teaspoon Oil (I used olive oil)
1/2 teaspoon Salt
cold water

Make a mound of flour in the middle of a good sized cutting or pastry board. Make a nice hollow in the middle. Place your eggs, salt and oil in the hollow. Start blending with a fork, pulling flour in as you go. Once I had a good amount of the flour blended in, the fork didn’t work so well, so I went to using my fingers. If the dough is dry, add cold water a little at a time. I ended up adding about 1/4 cup of cold water. Once you have a nice dough, kneed with your hands for about 10 minutes, until it is nicely elastic. Wrap in food wrap and let rest for 20 minutes or so.

Divide the dough into quarters. (Keep the pieces you aren’t using wrapped up so they don’t dry out.) Flour your hands, a pasta board and either a rolling pin or pasta machine. On the floured board, press out one of the balls of dough into a flat circle or oval. Using a rolling pin or a pasta maker, roll out the dough as thin as you can get it. If using a rolling pin, be sure to move the dough around to be sure it isn’t sticking. Roll from the middle out. Lay the pasta sheets out on a cookie sheet and cover with a piece of food wrap. Leave a piece of the food wrap between each sheet. (At this point, you can refrigerate the dough for a day or two, just keep them covered.) Once they are all rolled out, cut into thin strips.

For the sun dried tomato and balsamic pasta, you will need

Pasta (the entire batch above will feed 4 to 6 adults)
2 oz. Pine Nuts
1/2 to 3/4 cup sliced Sun Dried Tomatoes
1/2 cup good Balsamic Vinegar
1/2 cup White Wine
1 cup grated Pecorino Cheese (You can also use Parmesan cheese)
reserved pasta water
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, be sure to salt it and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Add the pasta to the water and boil for about 5 minutes (at my altitude it took between 7 and 8 minutes for the pasta to cook.) Do not drain the pasta.

As you bring the water up to a boil, take a large skillet and place it on the stove at medium heat. Once the pan is hot, add the pine nuts. stir them around regularly to toast them evenly. They can burn quickly so keep watch and stir often. Add the sliced sun dried tomatoes and a tablespoon of olive oil (you can use the oil the tomatoes were packed in.) Stir to get the tomatoes hot and let them just begin to color. At this point your pasta should be ready, if not, remove this from the heat until the pasta is cooked. Add the balsamic vinegar and let it reduce a little, stirring for a minute or so. Add the pasta, straight from the pot. Stir to combine. Add the white wine and cook, stirring constantly. Once the wine is boiling nicely and everything is blended together, add the grated cheese and stir to combine. Add a ladle or so of the pasta water. Stir while it simmers for a couple minutes. The sauce should thicken a little and will coat all of the pasta.

Serve hot and top with a little more grated cheese. Salt and pepper to taste.

Strawberry Jell-O Pie

August 19, 2015 by Dan Leave a Comment

Strawberry Jell-o Pie

Here’s a pretty dessert that tastes as yummy as it looks!

1 pound fresh Strawberries
1 1/3 cups boiling water
1 6 oz. package Strawberry Jell-O
1/2 cup cold water
ice cubes
16 oz. Cool Whip
1 Graham Cracker crust (1-9 inch or 2-8 inch)

Stem and slice your strawberries. Set aside.

Add the boiling water to the Jell-O. Whisk for 2 minutes to be sure all the Jell-O is dissolved. Take 1/2 cup cold water and add enough ice cubes to make 1 cup. Stir into Jell-O. Stir until the ice cubes dissolve. Place into the refrigerator until the Jell-O begins to thicken. Remove from the refrigerator and whisk in the Cool Whip then whisk in the Strawberries. Place into the pie crust and mound up as high as you’d like. (This will make 2 8 inch pies or one 9 inch and some extra you can place in a bowl.) Refrigerate for several hours.

Serve cold.