Skip to main content

Tartlet Alphonse

By
It may be late winter in the US but this time of year marks the beginning of the Mango season in India and the 'Alphonso' is the reigning king of the hundreds of varieties that sequentially make their appearance.
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/travel/10mumbailetter.html
Although the canned variety is never as good as the real thing, the uniformity in sweetness & texture renders it useful for baking purposes. I tried to recreate the taste of a refreshing mango punch ( referred to as 'aam ka panna' in hindi) made with ginger, mango pulp & a hint of cardamom.
The tart pastry recipe is from Carole Walter's book 'Great pies & tarts, p. 104, with minor substitutions (ghee instead of vegetable shortening and equal parts of All purpose flour & pastry flour)
Makes 9-10
Tart Pastry:
  • 3/4 cups All purpose flour
    •
  • 3/4 cups pastry flour
    •
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
    •
  • 1/3 cup frozen butter diced
    •
  • 2 tablespoons Ghee partially frozen
    •
  • 1/2 cup iced water
    •
  • 1/3 teaspoon Salt
Alphonso mango filling:
  • 1 cup Canned Alphonso mango cut into strips
    •
  • 1/8 cup extract from fresh ginger root
    •
  • 3 tablespoons confectioners sugar
    •
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
    •
  • 1.5 tablespoons cornstarch
    •
  • 4 pods, cardamom seeds, crushed fine
    •
  • 10-12 unsalted pistachios, slivered
    •
  • 9-10 Candied kumquat peels, chopped fine (optional)
  1. Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor. Process for 5 seconds till the ingredients are combined.
  2. Add half the butter & ghee and pulse 4-5 times before processing for a further 5 seconds. Add the remaining butter & ghee & repeat the process. The texture of the flour should be similar to cream of wheat with pea sized pellets of butter.
  3. Transfer the mixture into a large mixing bowl.
  4. Using a kitchen fork to push the mix towards the center of the bowl, add the chilled water, a tablespoon at a time. The mix will begin clumping into dough with each addition of the water.
  5. To test if the mixture has enough water, gather the dough & press against the side of the bowl to see if it holds up & does not crumble. If the mix is crumbly keep adding water in smaller increments till the dough holds up.
  6. Using floured hands,press the dough against the side of the bowl and flatten into a disk. Liberally dust with flour and cover the disk in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until needed.
  7. Heat oven to 325 F.
  8. For fresh ginger extract, peel a 2 -3 inch piece of the fresh root and grate it using the fine shredder of a box grater. Squeeze out the juice from the shredded ginger. leave to settle for ~ 5 minutes before decanting the brownish extract from the top. Discard the white starchy sediment settled in the bottom.
  9. In a saucepan, combine the orange juice, confectioners sugar, ginger extract, cardamom & the cornstarch and stir continuously on low heat till the mixture resembles a thick custard like paste. Add the candied Kumquat peel at this point if you wish.
  10. Add the mango strips & combine well. remove from stove & set aside.
  11. Remove the pastry dough from the freezer and roll into a 1/16 inch thickness ( I use those measuring bands at the end of the rolling pin).
  12. Cut out 4 in circles using a biscuit cutter & fit into the cups of a muffin pan ( confession: I have yet to invest in a proper tart pan). You will have some pastry dough left over. Simply re-wrap & freeze for future use.
  13. Drop about 1 tablespoon of the mango mixture into the centre of the tartlet shells.
  14. Bake at 325 F for about 15-20 minute or until the bottom & outer sides of the tartlets are golden brown.
  15. Allow to cool, garnish with slivered pistachios & serve with a steaming hot cup of Masala Chai.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear feedback from you, your thoughts, ideas and suggestions.

Popular posts from this blog

Unusual Ingredients - Unripe Blueberry Achar

By
T'was just another Summer afternoon, The kids were home for the summer holidays, getting bored, there's only so much summer reading you can force them to do, and the Indian mommy in me could no longer caution them against going out in the afternoon  (I've solemnly refused to use that horrid excuse of 'You'll get a dark tan if you stay out in the mid day sun'), and so we decided to head out to Terhune orchards for the blueberry picking. The kids never say no to outings to the orchard, they LOVE the trip there, the cute yellow dogs and the cats,  the chocolate crinkle and Snickerdoodle cookies, and they positively trip over grabbing buckets and heading joyfully towards the berry bushes... ... And there it ends, the younger one loses herself in her delightful imaginary worlds where she probably thinks she's hacking her way through virgin Amazon jungle, sighing at every branch that brushes against her legs, picks 2 or 3 berries as if they were a new as
6 comments
Read more

Sputtering back....

By
I seriously feel like this scene from the movie 3 idiots .. remember this one? The way I kept racking up drafts and eventually stopped doing that as well. Lulled into complacence by the quick high from Instagram posts. Recipe measurements hastily scribbled into a Moleskine notebook faithfully depending upon my moods. The truth is that I keep over thinking the backstories needed to make the post more interesting while in reality the truth is that ideas and inspirations just occur spontaneously (like little itches , sneezes or twitches) whenever the opportunity happens to strike. Some really cool ideas that scare the beejeezus out of me and yet prove to be utterly delightful and simple in the end. Others, that seem so trivial that I feel it wouldn't be worth crowing about -- even if there are enough other recipes in that genre that get so much publicity simply because the author happens to have the right marketing knack. So in the past 4 years that I've been
3 comments
Read more

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

By
 One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things  culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30  minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their
14 comments
Read more