Faux Pasta: A Sister Cooking Blog

Gorgonzola-Butternut Squash Tart

This tart dough! You won’t believe how easy and surprisingly successful it is. No food processor, no ice-cold butter, no chilling the dough. It turned out delightfully flakey and the best part of this gorgonzola butternut squash tart. Now, I like blue cheese. But if you’re going to bring this to a potluck (as I did), I’d honestly use gruyere or goat cheese or something mild instead. Apparently not everybody is into moldy stank in their dinners? Who knew?

This recipe is infinitely flexible since I totally made it up and by the Grace of Our Lord In heaven it somehow turned out totally delicious. This is your town, kittycat, and ain’t nobody gonna declaw you so you tweak away. I surreptitiously snuck home the leftovers, which might be terrible potluck etiquette.

French Tart Dough Recipe (from David Lebovitz)

• 6 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1- 1½ cups of flour

Toss the sugar, salt, butter, oil, and water in a big glass bowl and place it in the oven at 400º. Set a timer for about fifteen minutes and pull it out once the butter starts to brown around the edges. Being careful to hold the bowl with a heat-proof towel, dump in about a cup of flour and mix it with a wooden spoon until it becomes a ball that pulls away from the sides. I needed about another half cup to get it to the right texture - pliable but not a total oil-bomb.

When it’s cool enough to handle, press it into a 9” tart shell and use your fingers to press it into the sides. Reserve a little bit of the dough, about a ‘raspberry,’ David suggests, for cracks - though I didn’t have any. Prick the dough with a fork a few times and slide it back in the oven for another 10 minutes, until golden brown.

Gorgonzola and Butternut Squash Filling

• 1 small butternut squash
• oil, salt, and pepper

Peel that squash and cube it into lil cubes. I know, it sucks, just do it, it’s full of vitamin A and you only grow when you challenge yourself. Toss it with some olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast it (perhaps when you’re melting your butter for the tart shell?) at 400º for 20 minutes, until caramelized on the edges. You’ll have extra to throw in your salads, deal with it. 

• ½ cup cottage cheese
• ¼ greek yogurt or sour cream or, whatever, Yoplait Whips Key Lime Pie, just feel it out, let the spirit guide you
• 4 oz cheese of your choosing, such as gorgonzola, feta, grated gruyere, Whipped Philadelphia Lite Cream Cheese with Savory Under the Tuscan Sun Herbs 
• 1 egg
• 1-2 tbsp of water (maybe!)

Food processor the dickens out of all that business, adding a little bit of water if it’s too thick. You don’t want it sludgy but you don’t want it runny; angle for a medium-pourin’ custard.

Pour it into your pre-cooked tart shell as high up as the edges go, and drop in your roasted butternut squash in a single layer. Or maybe two if you can swing it! Why not. And for the love of all that is good don’t forget to handle your tart shell by the sides so the ring doesn’t fall down and burn your arm or spill the innards! Bake it all at 350º for 40 minutes and let it cool completely before handling. 

-Paulina

I usually approach Bon Appetit with slight trepidation, having been burned by a few unreliable recipes. But whaaaat! These pea pancakes from the Canal House column were divine, little pop-rocks of sweet peas (and girlfriend you know I used frozen) exploding in your mouth as a foil to the salty, perfectly textured pancake batter. I found myself pulling one more out of the Tupperware and eating it ham-fisted and cold from the fridge and still being wildly impressed.

All about green things lately: green curry (go get you some Mae Ploy paste in the bag in the tub, full fat coconut milk, potatoes, chicken, green beans, extra ginger and garlic, last minute spinach addition) and blistered Japanese peppers that are fake Padrons. Last night was a traditional Dutch dish of mashed potatoes, kale, green garlic, and spicy sausage. Starting to get back into my cooking groove, finally!
- Nellie

We wanted so badly to love Salt and Straw. Everybody loves Salt and Straw! It’s the ice cream darling of Portland and full of mugs festooned with little animal drawings, lesbians scooping ice cream, a garbage can informing you that “We compost everything here.” (Of course you do.)

But honestly? It was icy and tasted like it was made with skim milk. This isn’t Yogurtland, mama needs dat CREAM.

-Paulina

When you peel $8 of baby artichokes in 46 minutes, you really don’t want to do what I do. I slopped their burnt sloppy hearts all over a giant white platter, and grinned beatifically at my romantic roommate, shiftily announcing, “it’s artichoke season!” When he asks you if there is anything else for dinner, it is also best not to whip up some week old ricotta with dried Italian spices and olive oil, the chalkiness of which will only serve to juxtapose against the mushiness of your artichoke disaster. Brb, gonna go cover myself in pea tendrils and cry.
- Nellie

Foodie roommates are ze best: I came home to a beautiful hunk of bo ssam last night, not to mention thin-sliced iberico ham and a jar full of foie. My roommate successfully executed step 2 of the recipe (here) in the Crock-Pot, so don’t let the six hour roasting time deter you. 

Also, they are not kidding around about that ginger-scallion sauce. I’m reposting it here because that’s the best way to honor the magic nectar I troweled on crispy hunks of sweeeeet pork. UNF.

Ginger-Scallion Sauce

In a bowl, mix together the following:

• 2½ cups thinly sliced scallions, both green and white parts
• ½ cup peeled, minced fresh ginger
• ¼ cup neutral oil (like grapeseed)
• 1½ teaspoons light soy sauce
• 1 scant teaspoon sherry vinegar
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

-Paulina

Artichoke Basille pizza, I was all set to love you but you’re just $4.50 of artichoke snot on a brick of bread. (I’d even pick Two Brothers over you.)

-Paulina

Vanessa’s Dumplings is kind of a junk bond with a high return on investment, ‘cause it’s so hard to say no to a $2.50 duck pancake “sandwiche.” 

-Paulina