Eat Drink Laugh Love

Due to a new flex time schedule at my job, I have every other Monday off.  It is one of the best things that has happened in my professional career.  Everyone else goes to work and I don’t have to!  Because for that one day I can pretend I’m a “stay at home wife”, I always try to make a nice dinner.  This past Monday I thought I would tackle this recipe I saw in this months Bon Appetit. 

After reading through the recipe, I realized I need to get started on this around 2:00pm in order to have it ready for dinner.  I made the leek confit, and then started on my dough.

I am not a born baker. I can make a pretty good pie crust, though, thanks to my nana and my mom.  So, I made the dough, let it sit, and rolled it out. I had a little left over so I made myself a little mini cinnamon roll.  The instructions called for the dough to bake for about 30 minutes and then an additional 20-30 to turn golden.  This is where I ran into a bit of trouble.  After the first 30 minutes, I took off the aluminum foil and beans, and took out my mini roll.  The dough was looking awesome and already a bit golden.  Instead of thinking that I probably didn’t need to bake this for an additional 20 minutes, I followed the recipe.  Bad idea jeans.  As I was eating my mini roll (it was awesome, by the way. One day, I’m just going to make a large cinnamon pie crust roll), I was thinking about it was so flaky and soft, with a bit of a crisp and how lovely the crust was going to be.  I didn’t even check on it – until the timer went off. What I saw almost made me cry.  It was a really dark brown!  It wasn’t golden, it wasn’t flaky, it was minutes away from being burned!  I was so freakin’ mad at myself. Why didn’t I think a bit of what was going to happen rather than assume the recipe was correct. I would never do that with cooking. 

Needless to say, the wind was knocked out a my sails. I finished making the tart.  I toasted some walnuts and made a salad of mixed greens, goat cheese, granny smith apple, and walnuts with a balsamic vinegar dressing.  Of course, I had to cook the tart for another 40 minutes and I thought for sure that crust was just going to get worse.

You know what?  It actually came out OK.  The crust wasn’t really too overdone. I definitely would have preferred it to be a little less cooked, but I think the color was really due to the fact that there was a stick of butter in it.  The filling was great.  Making a confit of the leek really let the flavors mellow.

I now know that I need to be a little bit more careful with my forays into baking. Thankfully I don’t do it all that often!  If you ever decide to make this, don’t cook the crust for the entire recommended time.

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