This recipe came to me as I’d just made a few cups of fresh flour and wanted to try it in a tart – and the winds howling outside made a quick tart like this one, reminiscent of summer tomatoes but making the best of what can be found in winter, seem like a really good idea.  In addition, I had some sheep’s cheese left over from a Christmas party that needed using – and since I’d only used sheep’s cheese once before, wanted to try it in a tart instead of goat cheese.

Since the snow is once again blowing outside my window, this seems like a good time to share this with you so you can get yourself geared up for a day outside in the snow.

If you’re wondering where you can find sheep cheese, I found at a local ethnic market in Itäkeskus near the Intersport which serves Turkish and African immigrants mostly, and is full of wonderful food finds like fresh okra, pure pomegranate juice at a reasonable price, beautiful fresh dates, and store-made Baklava – along with rows and rows of things I don’t recognize by name or sight, foreign-language labels not-withstanding.  Nevertheless, the sheep cheese came in a can with a picture and a German label, and despite my rusty German, I knew what I was getting and had some fun ideas about how to use it.  Good grocery stores should carry it too, but I always feel like a visit to an ethnic grocery store is like a trip out of the country in a culinary sense, and love the experience.  This sheep cheese was stored in a salt brine, and has a flavor slightly more mild than goat’s cheese.  I think it’d be a great substitute whenever a recipe calls for using a hard goat’s cheese.

For Christmas, I used it on these Grilled Polenta Cakes with Carmelized Onions, Goat Cheese and Honey posted on Food52 by Arielle Clementine – my favorite from the day’s appetizers.  Absolutely lovely.  I made everything the day before, and pan fried the polenta just before serving.

But this time I rather than an appetizer, I made something that makes a lovely lunch or dinner, served up with a nice green salad.

A few notes:

1. I don’t have a tart pan with a removable bottom, and I really wanted to present this out of the pan.  I used a springform (cheesecake) pan which worked well enough; the tart pan is on my wish list.
2.  The tomatoes can be made in advance and stored in the fridge for up to a week, or frozen.  One tip is to leave the oven on when dinner is ready, shove the pan of tomatoes in at 200°C/400°F, and let them roast for 40 minutes while you enjoy dinner.  Pull them out and let them cool while you do the dishes, store them in a lidded plastic container in the fridge, and you are ready to whip up your tart the next day.
3.  Don’t use fresh cherry tomatoes for this:  the tomatoes will release their liquid and make the tart too wet.  They need to be roasted.

Roasted Cherry Tomato and Sheep Cheese Tart

Preheat oven to 225°C/425°F

Crust:
1 1/4 cup / 2 1/2 dl  flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil (vegetable oil or melted butter can be used instead)

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt with a fork in a medium-sized bowl and stir to combine.  Add the olive oil and stir again until the mixture comes together.  Using your fingers, press it into the bottom and slightly up the sides of a 9″ springform pan or tart pan with removable bottom.  Place the pan in the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and fill immediately with prepared filling.

Filling:
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups / 3 dl whole milk
1 cup / 2 dl diced sheep cheese, or substitute goat cheese if needed
1/4 cup fresh, chopped parsley
1/4 cup fresh, chopped basil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1/2 pound / 250g roasted cherry tomatoes; recipe here

Combine the eggs, milk, sheep cheese, parsley, basil and salt in a medium-sized bowl.  When the crust is baked and ready, remove from oven and immediately pour the egg mixture over the crust into the pan.  Arrange the roasted cherry tomatoes over the top.  Return the tart to the oven and bake until it is puffed on top and golden, 35-40 minutes.  Allow the tart to rest for 10 minutes to set.  Serve with a green salad

Serves 4.

Homemade Tahini

I love Hummus, and still remember my first taste of it made by Chef Mo on a homemade pita that was also his handiwork.

Back in my college days, I catered at Microsoft in order to earn enough cash to pay for tuition.  I worked the morning shift from 5:30 AM to 12:30 PM, and then headed out the door as fast as I could go, high-tailing it from the Eastside up over the bridge across Lake Washington and squealing into the Montlake parking lot in my white 1978 Dodge Plymouth Volare, hoping there would be a free parking space close to the pedestrian bridge so I could run quickly up to my 1:00 PM class, usually just a little bit late.

Catering was a great job for a college student:  I was always well-fed, and because I made friends with the chefs in the kitchen, they’d save a plate of some of the best outgoing meals for me, share tips and tricks and were a source of vast entertainment.  Not to mention – catering was a highly physical job, at least where I worked.  We’d load heavy 6-foot (2-meter) tables into big cargo vans, along with huge tubs of beverages and heavy Cambros full of hot food.  And then we’d get to wherever it was on the Redmond campus that we were going, and haul all of that stuff across the parking lot or lawn, and up into the freight elevators (if we were lucky) or carry them – up several flights of stairs in order to get the breakfast or lunch or special events done on time.  Good thing for all that exercise – I had little time for the gym with a full-time study schedule and a 30 – 35 hour work week.

A favorite snack:  Fresh Garlic Hummus and Carrot slices

We had a lot of fun – with a great team of smart people and a fair amount of autonomy once you were out in the field.  I rarely did dinners – unless they were of the special-order VIP sort –  I was the VIP caterer so on a regular basis I’d be in the back room setting up lunch while Bill Gates and his team discussed some strategy or the other, or doing a private dinner party at the home of one of the executives (tips were definitely best here).  One of my most amusing memories was from a private party in Medina near Bellevue, where Prince Andrew of England was the guest of honor.  It was a buffet dinner, and my guess is that these are few and far between in his normal life in England – he didn’t know what do or take first, but was gracious and game about it.  The guests were not at all relaxed around royalty – they all went through the buffet first at his request, and then stood, plates in hands behind their chairs, waiting until he arrived and asked them kindly in his lovely British accent to please sit and enjoy the meal.  Prince Andrew’s bodyguard needed no such invitation – he was already half-way through his meal by that time, good man.

The catering world introduced me to a new world of food – the beginnings of a global gastronomic education that living abroad later would continue.  We had chefs from many backgrounds – but culinary and cultural.  My favorite was Mo, who grew up in Egypt.  I never learned the full story of why Mo arrived in America to cook up amazing food for the employees of Microsoft, but I will say that Mo was a kind-hearted and amusing soul with a great talent for homemade pitas, Baba Ganoush and Hummus.

I’ve made Hummus before, and although I typically soak my dry chickpeas overnight and boil them up myself the next day, I had always used store bought Tahini, and didn’t/don’t like it all – though my Hummus always tasted just fine, the flavor of the Tahini itself never did.  I decided to make my own, following a recipe found on the web.  It was a disaster.  The recipe said to roast raw sesame seeds in the oven for 10-15 minutes with no mention of what oven temp to use – Bad Idea.  I wasted both the sesame seeds and the olive oil:  the seeds looked OK until I processed them with olive oil in the food processor and the whole thing turned the dark brown of a hazelnut shell and smelled decidedly burnt.

Chunky Garlic Hummus made with Homemade Tahini

Back to the drawing board:  I decided to change a few things:
1.  Toast the sesame seeds in a pot or pan on the stove, not in the oven.  You’ll have much better control, and it takes only a few minutes.  Shake the pan gently every 10-15 seconds to prevent any burning.  You’ll know the seeds are done when they start to hop and pop and begin to smoke a little.  Remove them from the heat and pour them immediately onto a clean dinner plate to cool
2.  Use an immersion blender (for smaller quantities) and a regular blender (for larger quantities) if you want a really smooth tahini.  I tried to get the burnt version to smooth out just to see if it were possible in the food processor with no luck.
3.  Add a little salt, to taste – the flavor is just better, in my opinion, but you can decide for yourself.
4.  Make a smaller batch.  I don’t use a lot of Tahini – at least not yet.  2 cups of this stuff in my fridge feels a bit wasteful to me, but feel free to double the batch if you use this a lot – in which case using a blender will work wonderfully for that.

The end result of this was lovely – definitely worth the trouble and quite tasty.

Homemade Tahini

1 cup / 2 dl raw sesame seeds (I prefer the un-hulled kind)
8 – 9 tablespoons of olive oil
salt to taste (I used a little less than 1/2 teaspoon)

1. Toast the sesame seeds in a pot or pan, on the stove, not in the oven.  Shake the pan gently every 10-15 seconds to prevent any burning.  You’ll know the seeds are done with they start to hop and pop and begin to smoke a little.  They won’t visibly change color much, if at all. Remove them from the heat and pour them immediately onto a clean dinner plate to cool.

2.  Once the sesame seeds are cool to touch, pour them in a glass measuring cup or the tall plastic cup immersion blenders usually come with (alternatively, use your blender for this).  Add 8 tablespoons of olive oil and blend until smooth and combined, moving the immersion blender up and down in the mixture or by pulsing the blender.  You want the Tahini to be runny and mostly smooth.  If it feels a little thick, add more olive oil.  Add a salt to taste and stir to combine.

Makes a scant 1 cup / 2 dl Tahini.

Store in the fridge and use within one month or store in the freezer for up to 4 months.

Next time I climb a mountain, I know what I am taking with me.  Who, on the other hand, may be a tougher question.  Any takers?

Seriously now, let’s be honest.  When was the last time you finished off a granola bar, Power Bar, Clif Bar, Luna Bar, Läräbar (look here for an awesome Läräbar alternative by Jen at Use Real Butter), Whatever Bar – and thought “Ah, now that was delicious.”  I’m guessing it’s either “never” or “rarely”.  The truth is, most of the handy-dandy packaged bars you buy in the store whether it be for day on the mountain or a day in the shopping mall (hey – everybody has their own form of strenuous activity, and I’ve done both!) are bad.  Really bad.

Now I’ll admit that the Clif Bar guys made a vast improvement over Power Bar – but by the time I’d eaten my fifth one while climbing Mt Rainier, I was ready to chuck it down the nearest crevasse.  For my Kilimanjaro trek, the village full of porters made life easy – I filled my pack with a bag of nuts and M&Ms – and they carried the rest (I know, I know! Not exactly hard-core).  But still, after 2 weeks, the flavor in a bag of nuts starts to wear on you, and that’s when it would be nice to have something else.

I was reading through Good to the Grain and came across Kim Boyce’s recipe for Granola Bars.  And by the way, if you haven’t bought this book yet, you really need to click on that link back there and order yours on Amazon because this book will change the way you think about flours and grains.  It really is excellent.

But minor digressions aside…I’d made Pomegranate Molasses a few days ago.  Twice actually, because the recipe I used didn’t mention temperature or methods for determining when it would be done except “you’ll have about 1 cup left” – which is way too vague for me.  So digression #2 (sorry – so soon!) – if I’m confusing you like that when I write recipes, please let me know!  There is nothing more annoying than spending good time and money on a recipe that sounds and looks great, only to have it flop and you waste ingredients.  It’s the second time in a row with the same blog:  beautiful sounding recipes that don’t turn out at all when I try them, leaving me a bit grumpy.  Pomegranate Molasses version #1 turned out to be more like teeth-removing caramel than pourable molasses, and I wasn’t sure what’d I’d do with it.  Until I saw the granola bars recipe and my wheels started turning.  This recipe is quite a bit different from Kim Boyce‘s recipe, I thank her for the inspiration.  And you don’t need overcooked Pomegranate Molasses to make this work:  you just need to boil the syrup for a while to make it nice and sticky, as I’ll note in the recipe below.

I won’t be blogging a recipe for Pomegranate Molasses because it’s been done so many times before, and well (the first recipe I used was an unfortunate exception).  Click on the link to get you started, and definitely start to test it for thickness at the 50 minute mark, as mine was ready in between 50-60 minutes the second time around. The best way to test it is to put a few spoons on a plate in the freezer while you cook it.  When you think it’s getting ready, you’ll notice the bubbles change and start to be really small and even, covering the entire surface.  Pour a little onto your frozen spoon, tuck it back in the freezer for 1 minute, pull it out.  If it’s the consistency of molasses, stop.  You are ready to go.

You can also find it in the grocery stores and specialty stores that sell food products for recipes from the Mediterranean region.  Just make sure, if you make it yourself, you use 100% Pomegranate juice, not the stuff mixed with apple, grape and who knows what else.

So next time you packing your backpack for a trek to the hills, make these.  I’m even planning on stashing them in my gym bag from now on!  Oh – and a word about Pomegranate Molasses:  according to the Livestrong Foundation, you get all the nutrition and anti-oxidant goodness from Pomegranate Molasses as you do from Pomegranate Juice – good stuff like Vitamins B1, B3, B5, B6 stay in there, helping your muscles, cardiovascular system and nervous system.  Not to mention, dear mountain climbing friends, it helps maintain the health of red blood cells that carry oxygen to your body.  See, I told you these would make you smile!  That, and I bet you’re not hauling a bottle of POM up the mountain!  Just think of this as the counter-effect to all that sun exposure and high-altitude sickness risks.

Pomegranate Blueberry Granola Bars

Preheat the oven to 175°C / 350°F.   Butter a 9″ square pan and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine:

2 cups / 4 dl oatmeal, preferably large flakes
1/2 cup / 1 dl ground flaxseed
1/2 cup / 1 dl hulled raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup / 1 dl roasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped 
1 cup / 2 dl dried blueberries
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

In a small pot over medium-high heat, combine:

3/4 cup pomegranate molasses
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

Bring the mixture to a bowl and bowl, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat and pour over the oat mixture.  Combine completely so all of the dry mixture is well-coated with all of the wet mixture.  It will be very sticky.

Pour the granola mixture into your prepared 9″ square pan, and press it down with the back of the spatula so the top is even.  Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and allow the granola bars to cool in the pan for 20 minutes.

Invert onto a cutting board, and cut the granola bars into 32 pieces.

Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week or in the freezer up to one month.   Or in your backpack for one long hiking weekend or a post-workout snack.

Enjoy!