use real butter

Recipe: apple roses and spiced brown butter tart

Daylight Saving may have come to an end, but Neva isn’t buying it. She tucked her furry nose under my chin Sunday morning at 5:30, probably wondering why I was 30 minutes late taking her outside and feeding her dinner (breakfast). By 5:30 in the evening, she was sitting politely in the great room, staring at the empty space next to her water dish where her dinner is typically served 30 minutes later. I’m not sure if Neva cues off the light of day or her little doggy tummy, but Mountain Standard Time apparently has no bearing on her feeding schedule. It sure FEELS like fall with the shortening days, but we aren’t getting the snow necessary for things like skiing, ski season, ski resorts, and did I mention SKIING?! But alas, if I can’t ski, I can most certainly bake. I made the most of our lack of snow when I received two packages in the mail a few weeks ago: a review copy of Irvin Lin’s first book, Marbled, Swirled, and Layered, and two dozen beautiful Pink Lady and Piñata apples from Stemilt Growers.

irvin’s beautiful baking book

pink ladies ready for some dessert-making

Marbled, Swirled, and Layered is packed with gorgeous and exciting recipes. Irvin is a truly skilled baker with a great eye for aesthetics as well as a creative flare for fun and refreshing flavor combinations. He walks you through each baked creation with clear instructions, but all of them involve multiple components made from scratch – an ideal book for people who love to bake and those wanting to take their baking to the next level. It was tough deciding which recipe to make from Irvin’s book. I dog-eared a couple dozen, but I was ultimately drawn to the apple brown butter tart. Believe it or not, I had been recipe testing some apple brown butter tarts when the book and the apples arrived, but Irvin’s version was adorned with lovely apple roses and the brown butter filling was spiced with all manner of warm autumn flavors. Let’s start with the crust.

flour, whole wheat flour, butter, rum, egg yolks, salt, sugar

whisk the dry ingredients together

add the cold butter and toss to coat

squeeze the butter cubes into butter flakes

The crust recipe is pretty straightforward and not terribly messy as long as your work area is cool and your hands are cool or cold. Once things warm up, it’s harder to handle the butter and the dough will become sticky. I found the dough easy to work with and rolled it out between two sheets of plastic wrap. I do this because it’s easy to transfer the dough to the tart pan and because my hands usually warm up after I use the rolling pin, so it keeps the butter in the dough from melting and sticking to me.

whisk egg yolks and rum

drizzle over the flour and butter mixture

fold the dough together

form into a disk and chill

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: fennel slaw

If only Colorado could pick a season and stick with it, I’d feel a little less discombobulated as to how to get my daily exercise. For most of the winter, it has toggled between true winter and pseudo spring. We’ll get a nice dump of snow and then Mother Nature cranks up the heat and everyone is wearing shorts for the next week or two. For some, this is merely an issue of donning a jacket versus donning sandals. And you might think that translates into skiing one day and hiking the next. But it doesn’t quite work that way. Yes, we ski the snow when it’s fresh. But if more snow doesn’t come along and our daytime high temperatures are flirting in the 60s, it doesn’t take long to render trails icy slicks, slushy messes, snirt (snow and dirt), or any miserable combination of the three. That’s hard to ski, but it’s also a pain to trail run. While I would like to have winter in winter, I’d be okay with “spring” in winter if it would just stay that way, you know? Okay, I’ll shut up about that… for now. We still know where to go to get our ski fixes.

backcountry ski with my little companion

skating the nordic center trails where the snow keeps well in shade

Jeremy and I spent the weekend working, staying away from the crowds on the slopes and the trails. When we weren’t working, we took Neva to the soccer field to chase tennis balls in the diminishing snow. We also started training Neva to return to the front door on her own after she does her business in the yard. She’s always on leash outside, because she will probably run off after a scent and because she doesn’t understand the dangers that cars can present (other than when she’s IN a car). Right now, Jeremy will take her out on leash and when she’s done doing her thing in the yard, he’ll unleash her and tell her to find me at the front door where I wait with a treat. She caught on quickly, so that’s progress.

i think she thinks these are for her

My appetite follows my cooking which follows the weather. This warmer weather of late has me craving more fruits, salads, and grilled things rather than my typical February fare of stews, soups, and wonderful foods that emerge from the oven. The nice thing about this fennel slaw we’ve been enjoying is that it feels summery while incorporating crunchy winter vegetables.

fennel, cabbage, red onion, lemon, carrot, red wine vinegar, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, fennel seeds, anise seeds

I’ve never been a fan of black licorice, but I do enjoy anise and fennel. These were tastes that I acquired as an adult as I sampled and learned about them over the years. The first step to making the slaw is toasting the anise and fennel seeds. I just popped mine onto a skillet over medium heat and stirred them around until they became fragrant and golden. Let the seeds cool before giving them a quick zip in a spice grinder. Add the spices to the rest of the dressing ingredients and mix it all together. I started with the original recipe’s one-third cup of mayonnaise, and the dressing was just too runny and watery for my purposes, so I doubled it to two-thirds of a cup. This also helps to cut the sharpness of the vinegar. I think you can go anywhere from a half cup to a whole cup of mayonnaise depending on your preferences.

toast the spices

place the toasted seeds in a spice grinder

mix the dressing

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: fried apple pies

It was bound to happen sooner or later, but honestly, I was hoping it would get here later rather than sooner. The winds have arrived. The other day we got a nice quick inch of snow and then we watched the winds carry those beautiful little flakes horizontally to the east. Snow and Blow. That’s what we call it here in Nederland. Even so, it makes for interesting cloud formations above which turn into pretty visuals for a few brief minutes at sunrise or sunset.

sunset

That window of comfortable weather and mild breezes may be coming to a close. I say this because Neva has really been enjoying her deck time while I’m working. I enjoy it too, since I’m not constantly telling her to get her nose out of the compost bucket in the kitchen. From our deck, Neva can watch three sets of dogs in three different yards/decks, and it’s just all so fascinating for her little puppy self. But when it’s really blowing or the snow is pelting her in the face, I’ll insist that she come inside. On the chilly days, she’ll curl up at my feet in her dog bed or invite herself (oops!) onto the couch. But given her druthers, she’d be outside romping through the snow. Her doggy day care person is on vacation for a couple of weeks, so Neva is now getting playtime with Dioji, our favorite neighbors’ pup. So far, so good. Dioji has the patience of a saint.

what a goofball

all four off the floor!

Autumn has been around for over a month now and we’re supposed to fall back an hour this coming weekend. I used to feel indifferent about the time change, but I must confess that I am really looking forward to it this year. Being woken up a few hours before sunrise each morning by a fully energized puppy is a little weird, because you didn’t get quite enough sleep, but you could conceivably get out of bed and get a jump start on the morning. Instead, it’s usually some drowsy disrupted half-sleep that we settle for which satisfies neither the sleep deprivation nor the hopes for greater productivity. I realized last week that I hadn’t touched any apples or pumpkins so far this season, although I have been happily stuffing my face with persimmons and pomegranates. And that got me thinking about pies. So I made pumpkin pie. And then I made these apple pies. Little apple pies. Little fried apple pies. Heaven help us.

apples, ice water, shortening, flour, cinnamon, sugar, salt

cut the shortening into the flour and salt

toss with ice water a tablespoon at a time

wrap up the dough and chill

**Jump for more butter**