Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

by Samin Nosrat

  3 tablespoons sugar

  2 tablespoons (1 ounce) almond paste

  4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter at room temperature

  1 large egg

  1 teaspoon kosher salt or 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

  1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1/2 teaspoon almond extract

  For the Tart

  1 recipe Aaron’s Tart Dough, chilled

  Flour for rolling

  6 tart, crunchy apples such as Honeycrisp, Sierra Beauty, or Pink Lady

  Heavy cream

  Sugar for sprinkling

  To make the frangipane, place the almonds and sugar in a food processor and grind until very fine. Add the almond paste, butter, egg, salt, vanilla, and almond extract and mix until you have a smooth paste.

  Flip a rimmed baking sheet upside down and place a piece of parchment paper on top (it’ll be easier to shape and fold the tart without the rim of the pan getting in the way). Set aside.

  Before unwrapping the dough, roll the disk on its edge on the counter to form it into a uniform circle. Unwrap the dough and sprinkle the counter, the rolling pin, and the dough with flour to prevent sticking. Working quickly, roll the dough out into a 14-inch circle, to a thickness of about 1/8 inch.

  To roll the dough into a circle more easily, turn the dough a quarter turn with every roll. If the dough does begin to stick, lift it carefully from the counter and use more flour as needed.

  Roll the dough onto the rolling pin, and gingerly pick it up off the counter. Carefully unroll it onto the upside-down, parchment-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

  In the meantime, work on the fruit. Peel, core, and cut the apples into 1/4-inch slices. Taste a slice. If the apples are really tart, place them in a large bowl, sprinkle them with 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar, and toss to coat.

  Use a rubber or offset spatula to spread a 1/8-inch-thick layer of frangipane all over the surface of the chilled dough, leaving the outer 2 inches uncovered.

  Layer the apples onto the frangipane, making sure there is plenty of overlap. As the fruit cooks it will shrink and you don’t want to end up with any naked parts on your tart. To make a herringbone design, lay two rows of apple slices at a 45-degree angle (make sure they are all pointing the same way), then reverse the angle of the next two rows to 135 degrees. Continue the pattern until the dough is covered in fruit. Use two different colors of fruits for a particularly visually striking tart; here we used a variety of apples called Ruby Red, alternated with Sierra Beauty apples. Pink Pearl apples, with their cotton candy flesh, are also stunning. Green and purple plums, poached quince, or pears poached in red or white wine can also offer beautiful colors for you to work with. (If using more than one color, the pattern becomes 45 degrees color A, 45 degrees color B, 135 degrees color B, 135 degrees color A to achieve stripes.)

  To create a pleated crust, fold the outer dough up and over itself at 1 1/2-inch-ish intervals while rotating the tart. With each pleat, crimp the dough tightly and push it up against the outer circle of fruit. For a more rustic look, simply fold the dough over the fruit at regular intervals. Leaving it on the parchment paper, return the tart to the baking sheet, now on the top side, and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

  Preheat the oven to 425°F, and set a rack to the middle position of the oven. Just before baking, brush the crust generously with heavy cream and sprinkle generously with sugar. Sprinkle some sugar onto the fruit as well. (Brush savory tarts with a lightly whisked egg and omit the sugar. When working with very juicy fruits, such as rhubarb or apricots, bake the tart for 15 minutes before sprinkling the fruit with sugar, which will encourage osmosis and cause it to weep. Give the crust a head start so it can stand up to the fruit.)

  Bake on the middle rack of the oven at 425°F for 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 400°F for another 15 to 20 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 350 to 375°F (based on how dark the crust is) and cook until done, about another 20 minutes. Rotate the tart as it bakes to ensure even browning. If the crust browns too quickly, loosely place a piece of parchment paper over the tart and continue baking.

  The tart will be done when the fruit is tender, the crust is a deep, golden brown, and you can stick a paring knife under the tart and lift it off the pan with ease. The underside should also be golden-hued.

  Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for 45 minutes before slicing. Serve warm or cooled, with ice cream, Scented Cream, or crème fraîche (page 113).

  Cover and refrigerate unused frangipane for up to 1 week. Keep any uneaten tart wrapped at room temperature, for up to 1 day.

  Variations

  • When working with really juicy fruits, such as apricots, rhubarb, berries, peaches, or plums, sprinkle a little Magic Dust over the frangipane to help absorb the juices and prevent a soggy crust. To make the Magic Dust, simply combine 2 tablespoons each toasted almonds, sugar, and flour in a food processor and grind into a fine dust. Use 4 to 6 tablespoons Magic Dust per juicy tart.

  • For savory tarts, sprinkle about 2 tablespoons flour onto the rolled dough, and then spread on drained, cooled Caramelized Onions (page 254), or Parmesan, or both, to create a similar protective layer.

  • For tarts made with precooked ingredients, such as roasted potatoes, radicchio, or butternut squash, adjust the baking time to 20 minutes at 425°F, plus 15 minutes at 400°F. Then check the tart for doneness, and continue baking at 350°F if necessary until the crust is golden brown and you can stick a paring knife under the tart and lift it off the pan with ease.

  SWEETS

  Nekisia’s Olive Oil and Sea Salt Granola

  Makes about 8 cups

  * * *

  Until recently, I’d never been one to voluntarily eat granola for breakfast. Too honey sweet, too bland, or simply not toasted enough, there always seemed to be something wrong with it. But then a friend sent me a bag of Nekisia Davis’s Early Bird Granola and told me it’d change my life. As soon as I tore open the bag and tasted this nutty, darkly toasted, perfectly salted cereal, my opinion of granola changed forever.

  I had to know how it was made, so I tracked down Nekisia and begged her to share the recipe. The answer: Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat, of course. First, salt. She didn’t have to explain to me what a generous dose of flaky salt would do for the cereal. Next, by replacing the neutral-tasting oils used in most granola with extra-virgin olive oil, Nekisia worked powerful flavor into the ingredient list. She gave the granola’s sweetness a nice acid balance by using dark and robust grade A maple syrup, which is usually made at the end of sugaring season and is imbued with a light acidity. The slow, dark toast that comes with careful tending at low heat also offers another acidic counterpoint, as well as all the other complex flavors of caramelization and the Maillard reaction.

  Stir in a little dried fruit after baking, or sprinkle a handful of this granola over a bowl of yogurt, for an extra hit of acid. Breakfast will never be the same.

  3 cups (10 1/2 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats

  1 cup (4 1/2 ounces) hulled pumpkin seeds

  1 cup (5 ounces) hulled sunflower seeds

  1 cup (2 1/4 ounces) unsweetened coconut chips

  1 1/2 cups (5 1/4 ounces) halved pecans

  2/3 cup pure maple syrup, preferably dark and robust Grade A

  1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

  1/3 cup (2 3/4 ounces) packed brown sugar

  Sel gris or Maldon sea salt

  Optional: 1 cup (5 ounces) dried sour cherries or quartered dried apricots

  Preheat the oven to 300°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

  Place the oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, pecans, maple syrup, olive oil, brown sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt in a large bowl and mix until well combined. Spread granola mixture in an even layer on prepared baking sheet.

  Slide into the oven and bake, stirring with a metal spatula every 10 to 15 minutes, until granola is toasted and very crisp, about 45 to 50 minutes.


  Remove granola from oven and season with more salt to taste.

  Let cool completely. Stir in dried cherries or apricots if desired.

  Store in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

  Four Things to Do with Fruit

  Most of the time, the best thing to do with fruit is to find a perfectly ripe piece of it and enjoy it out of hand. The copious stains running down the front of practically every shirt I own attest to the fact that I put this view into practice all summer long with berries, nectarines, peaches, plums, melons, and anything else I can get my hands on. As kitchen scientist Harold McGee says, “all cooked food aspires to the condition of fruit.” Since I don’t think there’s much you can do to improve upon fruit, I suggest the next best thing, which is to do as little as possible to it. In addition to tarts and pies, these are my four go-to methods for showing off the glory of ripe fruit.

  Precisely because these recipes are so simple, they do require that you start with the tastiest fruit you can get. Use ripe fruit at the height of its season (or, for the Granita, frozen fruit, which is frozen at its peak). You won’t regret the extra effort.

  Juice It and Make Granita

  * * *

  Granita is Sicilian shaved ice, one of my favorite refreshing desserts, in part because it’s so simple to make. Since it’s frozen with intermittent rather than constant stirring, the ice crystals that form are much larger and flakier than those you find in ice cream or gelato. They half melt, half crunch away on the tongue.

  Squeeze your own citrus juice (or for a shortcut, buy freshly squeezed juice that comes out of one of those mesmerizing mechanized juicers at the grocery store). Or juice any ripe or frozen fruit (my favorites are cherry, strawberry, raspberry, and melon) by blending it with a little water in a food processor or blender, and then straining out the solids. Make sure to squeeze every last bit of liquid out by pressing hard with a rubber spatula or the back of a ladle. Almond milk, coconut milk, root beer, coffee, espresso, or red wine will also make delicious Granita when you don’t have fruit on hand.

  Once you’ve got the juice, sweeten it and balance the acid with lemon or lime juice—whichever is more appropriate. Keeping in mind that everything tastes less sweet when it’s frozen, add a little more sugar than you think it needs.

  To get you started, here are a couple of basic recipes. Both make enough Granita to serve 4 people.

  Orange Granita

  2 cups orange juice

  1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) sugar

  6 tablespoons lemon juice

  Pinch of salt

  Coffee Granita

  2 cups strongly brewed coffee

  1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) sugar

  Pinch of salt

  Pour either mixture above—or one of your own devising—into a nonreactive (i.e., stainless steel, glass, or ceramic) dish or bowl. The mixture should be at least an inch deep in the dish. Place in the freezer. After about an hour, begin stirring every once in a while with a fork as time allows. When you stir, make sure to mix up the more frozen edges and top layer really well with the slushier center. The more diligently you stir, the finer and more even in texture (less icy) the finished Granita will be. Freeze the Granita until frozen throughout, about 8 hours. Stir things up a minimum of three times throughout the freezing process, then give the Granita a thorough final scrape right before serving until it’s the texture of shaved ice. Serve with ice cream or a dollop of Scented Cream, if desired. Store, covered, in the freezer for up to a week.

  Poach It in Wine

  * * *

  Peel, halve, seed or pit, and poach peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, apples, pears, or quince in wine until tender (resist combining different fruits in a single pot, as they’ll cook at different rates). Use red or white wine, sweet or dry, as your menu and tastes guide you. For every 2 pounds of fruit, combine 4 cups of wine, 1 1/3 cups (9 1/2 ounces) sugar, a 1 by 3-inch strip of lemon zest, half a scraped vanilla bean and its seeds, and a generous pinch of salt in a heavy, nonreactive pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cover the fruit with a round piece of parchment paper with a 2-inch hole cut in the center. Simmer until the fruit is tender when pricked with a paring knife—this can take as little as 3 minutes for apricots, and as much as 2 1/2 hours for quince. When the fruit is tender, remove it from the liquid and let it cool on a plate. If the poaching liquid is watery, rather than syrupy, reduce it over high heat until it’s the consistency of maple syrup. Cool the syrup to room temperature and return the fruit to it. Serve the fruit warm or at room temperature, drizzled with some of its syrup, alongside mascarpone, crème fraîche (page 113), lightly sweetened ricotta, Greek yogurt, vanilla ice cream, or Scented Cream.

  For a visually striking dessert, poach half of the pears or quince in red wine and the other half in white wine, and alternate slices of each on the plate. In the winter months, add half a cinnamon stick, two cloves, and a few zips of nutmeg to the wine for a kick of warm spices.

  For more poaching cues, refer back to page 405.

  Roast It on a Bed of Fig Leaves

  * * *

  Line a small ceramic or glass roasting dish with fig leaves, which will lend a heavenly nutty aroma to the fruit (alternatively, use a few bay leaves or sprigs of thyme). Fill the dish with a single layer of fist-size bunches of grapes on the stem, or halved apricots, nectarines, peaches, or plums, with the cut side up. Sprinkle generously with sugar. Roast in a 425°F oven until tender within, and golden brown on the surface, about 15 minutes for smaller fruit and 30 minutes for larger fruit. Serve warm or at room temperature, with Scented Cream or vanilla ice cream, or alongside Buttermilk Panna Cotta.

  Make Compote

  * * *

  Use fresh, ripe fruit to make compote, which is simply fruit tossed with a little bit of sugar and allowed to sit, or macerate. If necessary, balance out excess sweetness with a few drops of lemon juice, wine, or vinegar. If you’re unsure of what adding sugar to taste might look like, start with a generous sprinkle, let it be absorbed, then taste and add more as needed.

  For a simple dessert, serve compote with cookies, or alongside Scented Cream, vanilla ice cream, mascarpone, sweetened ricotta, Greek yogurt or crème fraîche (page 113). Or use it as a garnish for other desserts such as Buttermilk Panna Cotta, Lori’s Chocolate Midnight Cake, Fresh Ginger and Molasses Cake, Almond and Cardamom Tea Cake, or Pavlova (page 421).

  Use any of the fruits from the list below, either on their own or in combination. Add sugar and fresh lemon juice to taste, then let sit for about 30 minutes to macerate:

  Sliced strawberries

  Apricot, nectarine, peach, or plum slices

  Blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, or boysenberries

  Mango slices

  Pineapple slices

  Pitted, halved cherries

  Segmented oranges, mandarins, or grapefruit

  Thinly sliced, seeded kumquats

  Pomegranate seeds

  Variations

  • For Peach and Vanilla Bean Compote, add the scraped seeds of 1/2 of a vanilla bean along with the sugar for every 6 peaches. Balance with lemon juice.

  • For Apricot and Almond Compote, add 1/2 teaspoon almond extract and 1/4 cup (3/4 ounce) toasted sliced almonds along with the sugar to every 2 pounds of apricots. Balance with lemon juice.

  • For Rose-Scented Berries, add 2 teaspoons rosewater to each pint-size basket of berries along with the sugar. Balance with lemon juice.

  Two Favorite Oil Cakes

  Lori’s Chocolate Midnight Cake

  Makes two 8-inch cakes

  * * *

  Here’s the recipe for the cake I mentioned in Fat—the one that changed everything for me. By age twenty, I’d given up on the idea that I’d ever encounter a chocolate cake recipe that yielded the flavorful bite I’d always dreamed of. After all, I came of age in the 1990s, the golden age of flourless chocolate cake. But all I’d ever wanted was a recipe for a cake that rivaled the moistness
of cake mix cakes, yet offered that fancy-bakery flavor. A few months after I began bussing tables at Chez Panisse, my friend Lori Podraza brought in a Midnight Cake, topped with Vanilla Cream, to celebrate another cook’s birthday. Though I’d given up on ever finding my ideal cake, I still took a slice. Who was I to turn down chocolate cake? One bite and I was sunk. I didn’t know why it was so much better than any cake I’d ever tasted, nor did I care. Only months later did I realize that the cake is so moist because it’s made with oil, rather than butter—just like the cake mix cakes I’d always loved!

  1/2 cup (2 ounces) Dutch-process cocoa powder, preferably Valrhona

  1 1/2 cups (10 1/2 ounces) sugar

  2 teaspoons kosher salt or 1 teaspoon fine sea salt

  1 3/4 cups (9 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  1/2 cup neutral-tasting oil

  1 1/2 cups boiling water or freshly brewed strong coffee

  2 large eggs at room temperature, lightly whisked

  2 cups Vanilla Cream (page 423)

  Preheat the oven to 350°F. Set a rack in the upper third of the oven.

  Grease two 8-inch cake pans, then line with parchment paper. Grease and sprinkle generously with flour, tap out the excess, and set aside.

  In a medium bowl, whisk together the cocoa, sugar, salt, flour, and baking soda, then sift into a large bowl.

  In a medium bowl, stir the vanilla and oil together. Bring the water to a boil or brew the coffee. Add it to the oil-vanilla mixture.