Wholesome food, dirty oven- my take on a plum tart.

   While walking through a local produce store I found myself next to a bin of fruit. I reached my hand in, and plucked out a firm and lovely plum. It was obviously not ripe yet, but they were so lovely I ended up with 12 of them. I took them home with intention of family to eat them out of hand. Little girl on the other hand seemed to have the attention to complain about how awful plums are. I now had 10 plums and only I was going to be eating them. Without a doubt they would go bad before I had a chance to eat them, so it was time for a plan B. Plum tart!

I first started out with a recipe from Ina Garten

But as you know already, I can’t follow a recipe to save my life. Faster than I was able to chop almonds I had adapted this recipe into something entirely different. The end result was a rustic tart made with wheat flour, oats and almonds and sweetened with honey. All the favors worked well together, and the wholesomeness made it a dessert that isn't horrible for you.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

Crumb topping:

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup oats
2/3 cup almonds diced fine
2/3 cup honey
1 egg
1 stick cold unsalted butter cut into pea size pieces

 Combine flour, oats, almonds, honey and egg and mix either by hand or with a stand mixer. Gradually add butter a little bit at a time until mixture is just combined and has a slight crumble. Because of the use of honey instead of sugar this mixture will be damper then most dough for tarts and crumbles.

Press dough into a 9 ½ spring form pan, or into a well-greased tart pan. Reserve about 1/3 of the mixture for topping.

Filling:

About 7-8 Plums cut into 8ths

I was playing around a lot with how to cut a plum without mangling it beyond recognition and I found the easiest way for me was to cut all the way around the plum into 8ths, and then use my knife to pop the first little segments out. After that it was easier to cut away from the stone and get the plum pieces out intact.

Arrange plum wedges around pan starting on the outside and working your way in. Eventually it will look like a pretty flower, or at least tidy. Then cover up your masterpiece with more dough evenly spread over the plum mixture like you are rolling over the Mona Lisa with a paint roller.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes. This oven is a little bit off on temperature being that it was manufactured by General Motors somewhere around 1950 so a good way to tell if your tart is done is if the plums are bubbling, the crust is golden and your house gives off that fresh from the oven baked good smell.

Photo of very old, very dirty oven baking tart above in the event you didn't believe an oven that old could still exist and work. The clock is always set to 5 past 7 although the second hand still ticks around the clock face, the time never changes, and you can tell how small it is by the fact that the pan you are looking at is a 9 1/2 inch spring form pan! But there is an even smaller oven below this one so I don't find I miss the cooking space very often.

Enchilada sauce adventures!

Let’s face it, life is busy! And because of it I’ve been spending a lot of time and money on convenience food and take-out meals recently to feed my family. It’s not only expensive, but it’s also a lot of frankenfood I am not exactly proud to put on my table. So to combat this issue I’ve turned to freezer meals as a simple solution to get real food on the table on nights that are too busy to cook. Recently I’ve made 10 pans of lasagna, and today made 10 pans of cheese enchiladas with brown rice. I was surprised by the sheer mass of food it takes to fill 10 pans of food! Huge portions of onions, 4 of cheese and an entire bag of Costco tortillas, but what amazed me the most was how inexpensive it was to make my own enchilada sauce. While calculating the cost of each unit of enchiladas I decided it was not economical to buy pre-made sauce. It would raise my cost per pan by more then I was willing to pay, and included more artificial ingredients then I was willing to eat. Instead I made this simple enchilada sauce below that I ended up very pleased with. Keep in mind this makes a lot of sauce! It will make about 6qts of sauce, but this sauce freezes well, or you can make 10 pans of enchiladas and still have about 16 oz. of sauce left over for another meal as you can see below.

It starts with a puree of chilies. The pepper used here is Chili Negro and can be found in most supermarkets, or Hispanic markets.  

1 table spoon olive oil
2 large white onion
4 gloves garlic
2 bags chili negro
2 cups water

In a large Dutch oven add olive oil and onions; cook until onions are slightly translucent. Add garlic and continue to cook. Seed chilies and put into pot. Add hot water and cook until chilies are soft and re hydrated.

After chilies are cooled pour into blender and blend until smooth.

To make the rest of the sauce:

Chile paste above
2 large cans tomato sauce
1 large tomato can filled with water
1 cup vinegar
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp California chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Simmer until flavors are well combined.

This sauce was rich and dark. The pepper adds an almost raisin flavor with a slight sweetness and a mild heat. The seasoning adds earthiness and the tomato and vinegar add bright slightly tart vibrancy. I’m really pleased with this sauce and will use it again and again. The best part of it is though is the price! My sauce works out to be about 0.02 cents an ounce, whereas this Old El Paso sauce is .13 cents an ounce if purchased at amazon. It might not seem like a lot of savings when looking at it oz by oz but when you make 192oz of sauce this is $24.96 vs $4.41 (not including shipping of 12.57) and this is where our savings are! We are talking just a hair shy of 25.00 on savings just by making our own sauce- and the best part is, it tastes better!

I hope you enjoy. If you end up making your own sauce I would love to hear about it. Drop me a line and let me know.