Pan-Baked Lemon-Almond Tart

I have an interest in any recipe that includes lemon and the fact that this also includes eggs and almonds sweetens the deal. In the video for this recipe, Mark Bittman describes it more as an almond frittata than a "tart." It did make me wonder why it's called a tart. My best guess is that this does bear some similarities to tart filling as it combines cream and eggs and could turn out like a custard, but a better bet is that it'll get more page views as a "tart" than a "frittata."

Given the unusual nature of the recipe, I read through the comments carefully before making it. A lot of the people who tried it weren't particularly happy with the outcome. Some people complained that it tasted like scrambled eggs. Some said that it completely fell apart. Others said that it'd didn't set in the middle at all. No small number experienced it sticking to the pan. These were all concerns that didn't dissuade me so much as make me decide to alter the preparation a bit. I decided to take on each of these issues and alter the method to (hopefully) avoid the undesired outcome.

My initial inclination was to use a stainless steel pan, but the sticking issue made me reconsider and I went with an oven-safe non-stick pan instead. The comments about it being like scrambled eggs made me wonder if the ingredients weren't incorporated well enough in those cases or the ground almonds were too coarse. I got around this by using a blender to blend everything except the sliced almonds. I tossed everything in and then poured the mixture into a bowl then stirred in the sliced almonds at the end.

In terms of dealing with the failure to set, my best guess was that it was because of the high fat content of the cream making it too custard-like in the center so I used half and half instead of cream. Well, that's not precisely true. I used half and half because it is what I had on hand and I figured it could also, perhaps stop the problem with it not setting. Finally, though I kept all of the rest of the ingredients the same, I also added a teaspoon of vanilla as I've found it tends to round out strong lemon flavors in sweet dishes.

My dish set just fine and it smelled fantastic. This is what it looked like after the baking. I did not bother to put it under the broiler as it was brown enough for me already:

I decided another thing that I'd do to decrease the chances that it would fall apart was to allow it to cool a fair bit before removing it. When I put a plate on the top and un-molded it, all but a few little bits came out. It was happy that it came out so clean, but the pale bottom wasn't so appealing looking so I took another plate and flipped it over again. That was probably not a good idea as a few cracks formed in it as the top was wider than the bottom and it was too delicate to support the structure. I noted that even the picture on the Times recipe page shows a slice with a crack in it (though it is largely covered and obscured by angle and powdered sugar). I'm guessing this isn't easily going to stay together as a solid mass.

In terms of the experience of eating it, it's definitely interesting and generally in a good way. The interior of mine was a bit like cottage cheese married to custard. It has a thick, rough, pudding type of consistency. The taste was super lemony. In fact, the almonds largely contributed texture since the lemon flavor overwhelmed nearly everything else. If I were to make this again, I'd cut down on the lemon flavoring, double the vanilla essence, and maybe add some almond extract to boost the almond flavor more. It could also, I think benefit from a touch of salt.

It's not a bad dish at all, and I'm pleased that I overcame the textural problems that commenters experienced, but I do believe the flavors need to be tweaked. I think this could be an excellent breakfast dish with a few adjustments.

Update: This was better the next day. The texture and flavors seemed to have "settled" in a way that is more cohesive. The lemon is still quite potent, but not as overwhelming. I'm storing the remaining slices in the refrigerator and found the second slice was better than the first. I did microwave the second slice for 10 seconds to remove the hard, cold feeling from it and bring it closer to room temperature, but I don't think is as good served warm.

Next time I make this, I will leave out the sliced almonds as I think they actually detract from the texture and are adding little to the flavor. Instead, I'll add a teaspoon of both almond and vanilla extract to round out the flavor profile and leave a cleaner textural experience. 

Almond-Lemon Macaroons (Almendrados)

The men in my life (all two of them - my husband and a good friend) are great fans of all things lemon when their gaze turns to sweets. My tastes are more varied, but I'm all onboard with lemon as well and almonds are just the icing on the cake. This simple recipe for a cookie with only four ingredients was pretty irresistible, though the need to set the dough aside for at least twelve hours was at odds for the desire for immediate gratification.

Before I put this together, there was one thing that I knew I'd change and that was the amount of lemon flavor. It was beyond imagination that the scrawny zest of one lemon was going to impart enough flavor so I added in a teaspoon of natural lemon extract as well as a half teaspoon of vanilla extract. The vanilla is probably some sort of sacrilege for a Spanish cookie recipe, but I often feel it adds depth to lemon-based sweets and notice its absence when I omit it from other recipes.

The only other alteration other than one and a half teaspoons of extra moisture in the form of those extracts that I made was to use almond flour instead of making the almond meal myself. The conversion that I made and have confirmed with web sources is that one cup of almonds yields 2/3 cup of almond meal/flour. I prefer recipes that work by weight rather than volume because of the imprecision brought to the mix, but this recipe only gave volume measurements. This may have been why my cookies ended up looking like little pancakes instead of the nice, rounded mounds in the picture on the recipe page:

I allowed my dough to rest for 22 hours and, when I formed balls, they came together very well, but I imagine the only reason that these flattened out was that I didn't use enough almond flour relative to what would have happened with a cup of almonds that I ground up fresh. It's also possible that I pushed down too hard when I stuck an almond in the top and flattened the little dough balls too much (or a combination of both). I'm certain I cooked them for the proper length of time though give that the recipe says they should be baked very little and just to the point of having some color (which you can see by the cookie that I flipped over was the case). I baked them for 9 minutes.

Regardless of how they look, they tasted amazing. There is a perfect combination of flavors and the texture is a mixture of a crispy exterior and a tender, chewy interior. It is hard not to gobble down a large number of these little cookies (mine made 27) at one sitting. I will definitely make these again, though I'm certain to increase the almond flour volume to 1 1/2 cups next time and I probably will just skip the almond on the top completely and just bake the little dough balls as is. The almond on the top adds one bit of crunch and salt in my case as I used salted Spanish Marcona almonds, but I don't think it does that much for the experience overall. Next time I try these, I'll do an update with a new picture to see if the changes make a difference in taste, texture, and appearance.

Pasta with Fried Lemon and Chili Flakes

The page with this recipe for Pasta with Fried Lemon and Chili Flakes shows an incredibly artful shot of pasta with pretty curls of cheese, artfully situated bits of parsley and celery leaves, and three fried lemon rinds sitting on the side. My pasta looked like most of what ends up on your plate at home; it was a writhing mass of spaghetti coated in spices with what looks like lemon wedges trying to make an escape:

I had my eye on this recipe for quite some time, but was waiting for the right ingredients to make it. With such a short list, I wanted to make sure that I was working with good cheese in particular and used freshly grated Parmesaino-Regianno cheese. I did not obtain celery leaves because it was optional, but my guess is that they would not add that much to the dish.

I followed the recipe pretty faithfully except for using garlic salt instead of regular salt and adding a little more pasta water to the sauce as it seemed insufficient to cover it all (and there was no liquid in the pan after I mixed it up so it was nowhere near overly wet). Some of the comments seemed to say the dish was lacking in flavor and I didn't want to create an enormous mess and have a bland result. I also was very careful about how I cooked the lemons because it was clear (again from comments) that that would make or break the dish. I blanched and dried them faithfully and carmelized them until they looked on the brink of burning.

The little blurb next to the picture states that blanching them eliminates the bitterness in the pith. The little blurb is a big, fat lie. I even blanched for slightly longer than required (another 30 seconds) to make sure the temperature drop from tossing in a bunch of cool onion slices didn't harm the de-bittering impact of blanching. Since a commenter mentioned "crunchy bits of lemon", I carmelized them slowly and thoroughly only to see a lot of the brown bits washed off when I did the sauce portion. If my rinds look less fried than those in the picture, that is why. They used to browner.

My guess is that the original recipe included more fat than indicated and they were closer to deep fried than "fried". That is the only way I could see them actually getting crunchy. My rinds were chewy and bitter despite my care in how I prepared them. It's possible that the type of lemon or the age mattered a lot, but neither of these were points made in the recipe.

The basic pasta is actually pretty good. The lemon flavor, cheese, chili flakes, pepper, etc. work well. Using the pasta water to thicken and coat worked well. My husband tried this dish and said he liked it until he hit a lemon rind, but that was a deal breaker for him. It just spoils it when it's supposed to be the star of the show.

I'm guessing that it is possible for this dish to work with the fried lemons, but it's just too fussy and the pasta works so well without them. This was definite the nadir of my Time's recipe efforts so far and I wasn't sufficiently inspired by its potential to try and perfect it. I'll make the pasta with chili flakes part again, but no fried lemon.

Microwave Saffron Turkish Delight

One of my friends went to Istanbul earlier this year and brought me back a box of varied sweets. Each cube was a firm jelly either lightly dusted with a white powder or studded with nuts. They were dark in color for the most part, favoring deep reds and greens, and quite tasty. My favorite was the one that tasted like cherry, though I enjoyed them all. There was a cloudy white one that seemed to be coconut as well as a few that were obviously pistachio and walnut; the nuts peppering the edges were a dead giveaway. There were also some that were difficult to reach conclusions about the flavors as they clearly were not common in America, but I can say that I'm certain not one of those delights were saffron-flavored.

Saffron isn't a flavor one usually associates with sweets and my main experience with it is sparingly using those expensive threads with paella that I make for my husband. I have a tiny bottle at present that was given to me as a souvenir of his father's and sister's visit to relatives in Spain a few years ago. When it runs out, I know I'll have to reluctantly pay more per ounce for this spice than I'd pay for gold.

Because of the high price of saffron, and the intensity of the flavor, I was stunned that the New York Times recipe for microwave saffron Turkish delight included a teaspoon of it. That seemed like an enormous quantity by any standard, but then I guess the Times food editors and writers make more money than my family does. As I scanned the recipe, I decided to reduce the amount of saffron and increase the amount of lemon to suit my tastes. I also substituted vanilla extract for vanilla bean because I didn't have any on hand and they are also very expensive. This was a substitution I regretted, and that I'm pretty sure lowered the quality of flavor of the final outcome, but I was already investing enough by using my precious saffron and I didn't want to splash out for a vanilla bean on a recipe that may flop. I've tried to make candy very few times in my life and have rarely experienced success.

You can follow the link above to the Times version of the recipe with instructions (which I followed as they appear), but my ingredients list was as follows:

• 1 1/4 cups cornstarch (plus more as needed for dusting)
• 3 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup corn syrup
• 1/3 teaspoons saffron threads
• 3 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Though this is a microwave recipe, it is still labor intensive. The use of a microwave over a conventional stove-top cooking method is likely meant to reduce the chances that the candy will burn, not speed up the process. You need to stop at frequent intervals and stir. I used a glass bowl much bigger than required and a silicon spatula. Heed the warning on the instructions to handle the bowl with oven mitts as it will get hot over the long cooking process. The larger bowl makes stirring the thick molten liquid much less dangerous.

Since I rarely make candy and all of my previous attempts were pretty disastrous, I erred on the side of over-cooking rather than under-cooking. I followed the instruction to smear a bit of the mixture on the side of a cold plate, but I found that that it never quite solidified into a soft solid as I expected. I know the plate was cold enough because I kept it in the freezer between tests. After cooking for one more cycle than the maximum amount of time (24 minutes), I concluded that I'd better stop.

When I spread the gel-like mixture into my well-greased pan, it started to solidify pretty rapidly and became impossible to spread evenly. I ended up with an uneven topography of yellow goo. After cooling and freezing, cutting was an adventure as it was extremely tough to get the semi-frozen mixture to pull apart. I was very concerned that the candy was going to end up like ancient gummy bears texture-wise and would pull out my fillings when chewing.

The picture on the New York Times page for the recipe shows bright yellow candy with brilliant threads of red saffron topped by a snowy white dusting. Mine looked like this:

The instructions tell you to store the candy in a a shallow container filled with a mixture of half powdered sugar and half cornstarch. This is the wise way to store them and leaves you with the snowy-looking specimens above. They are not photogenic, but they also aren't sticky. If you attempt to package or display your candy as the Times photo does, it'll stick terribly to the sides of the plastic bag that you artfully place it into.

While the reality isn't pretty, it is extremely tasty. The textural issues that were concerning me did not come to fruition. After the candy had warmed to room temperature, it turned into a pliable, but manageable jelly candy. The texture is, for lack of a better word, delightful. The flavor, despite my reducing the saffron, had plenty of that spice present. If anything, I'd recommend reducing the saffron down to an even smaller amount (1/4 teaspoon, perhaps) and keeping the increased lemon juice amount. The lemon flavor isn't particularly potent and I think that it keeps the candy from being too sweet. The flavors definitely come together to produce something akin to honey without the cloying sweetness or stickiness.

This is a fantastic candy recipe and I would definitely make it again. I'd consider also changing it up with other flavors (such as orange or even anise). However, I wouldn't make it often because it's an enormous amount of work. I think it'd make an excellent holiday recipe or as a special treat for someone who loves jelly candies or Turkish delight.