Every year right about this time of year, Champagne Mangoes (the smaller, all yellow ones) go massively on sale at Whole Foods, often 5 for $5, and sometimes even cheaper. That was the impetus of this tart… mangoes are cheap, the weather is miserable and this would cheer up and otherwise dreary day (if nothing else, just the color!). It’s modeled after a Key Lime Pie, but not quite as tart. The coconut is actually a last minute addition, only because I had a package of shredded coconut in the house. All in all, not much of a joke on this April Foods Day.
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Pie
Stopping in quickly at this Friday lunchtime to share my little tart that I made this morning. I had some leftover bacon from something else that I didn’t miraculously just snack on, so I put together this little lunch. It’s like a quiche, yet not quite so eggy and more fillings. All in all, not a bad way to “use up bacon” (not that anyone ever has that problem). 🙂
Not quite over my Meyer Lemon kick yet, so I thought that I would make these tartlets. The addition of the pistachios is unique, but I had run out of other nuts (initial thought had been cashews) but these turned out ok in the end. If I were to make them again, maybe I’d up the butter quotient in the tartlets though, because they were very crumbly taking them out of the tart pans. The quick curd was lovely though.
Nothing says winter and comfort food quite like Chicken Pot Pie. Yummy. While I think that most recipes for Chicken Pot Pie take advantage of winter veggies, I thought that I would use some that seem to be even more common here in the northern climes — carrots (of course) but also cauliflower and broccoli. Add in the fact that I used a Whole Foods bought rotisserie chicken, the whole thing was on the table in about 90 minutes.
Here is my unsolicited piece of advice for fruit pie baking: cook the fillings separately. There are lots of reasons that this is a good idea, but most importantly, if you are baking a two crust pie (top and bottom), pies have a tendency to dome; that is, you fill them full of raw fruit and then when the fruit condenses in the baking process, you have a top crust that sits above (or collapses on to) the pie. If you cook the filling ahead of time, then you’ve already removed much of the water from the equation. Another bonus of cooking the filling separately is that you can do it up to a week in advance, so you aren’t pressed for time on the day of, or the day before, the holiday. Fair warning though, you will need double as much fruit than if you use raw in your pie. For example, this 9-inch pie used a full 14 medium sized apples (my non-pre-cook recipe uses about 8 apples).