Pesach dessert - Baroness Tapuzina

When I hear someone say “blood oranges”, I am immediately whisked away to my time in Lugano and my many trips over the border into Italy. They have a perfume like no other and I loved having a tall freshly squeezed glass of the beautiful blood red juice. As I drank the sweet and tangy glass of nectar, I thought about the blue waters of Sicily. So when I made my weekly trip to my local organic farm shop and saw a crate full of blood oranges, my heart burst with joy. “Where are these from?”, I asked the green grocer. “They are from a farmer in the Golan. They just arrived.”

Mr BT was returning from a business trip in a week, so I asked if they were going to be selling them for a while, and he said yes. So, a few days before Mr BT’s return, I bought enough for cocktails and for an idea I had for a Passover dessert. Initially, I was going to make an upside-down blood orange polenta cake which some Italian Jews serve for dessert on Passover, but the weather started getting warmer and I thought a nice simple tart with a creamy blood orange curd sounded more refreshing.

Until I cut into the orange, I was not sure what variety the oranges were, but as soon as I saw the dark red flesh, I knew they were the lovely Moro variety. The flavor is stronger and the perfume is more intense than a normal orange. It is more bitter than the other varieties, which is perfect for cocktails, marmalade, and creamy, luscious curd.

Mr BT and I have a history with blood orange juice: our guests were served a blood orange caipirinha when they arrived at the reception. The cocktail represented my Italian ancestry, payed homage to my Brazilian cousins, and reminded Mr BT that he was created from a beautiful love in Rome, the place where his parents married, lived, loved and made Mr BT.

The tart was made with simple ingredients, but delivered even more than I expected. It brought back beautiful memories of my time in Lugano and trips to Italy, my wedding, my in-laws’ grand love affair, and stirred the excitement of a early fall trip to one place neither one of us have been to: Sicily. We will be celebrating rather important, ahem, birthdays this year, and what better place to do so, than in beautiful Sicily?

Blood Orange Tart with Orange-Almond Crust

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Servings: 4 individual tarts or one 22cm (9-inch) tart tin or 4 individual tart tins or one 22cm (9-inch) tart

Author: Baroness Tapuzina

Ingredients

For the curd:

6 egg yolks
Zest of 2 blood oranges
125 milliliters (½ cup) blood orange juice
1-½ tablespoons lemon juice
165 grams (¾ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
70 grams (5 tbsp) cold butter, chopped

For the crust:

170 grams (6 ounces) whole almonds
1/4 cup caster (superfine) sugar
2 teaspoons blood orange zest
70 grams (5 tablespoons) butter, melted

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180C (350°F) and butter a 22cm (9-inch) tart tin or 4 individual tart tins with a removable bottom.

For the curd:

Place the egg yolks, orange juice, lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan over low heat and whisk to combine. Cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. Remove from the heat and gradually add the butter, stirring well after each addition. Pour into a bowl, press a sheet of plastic wrap onto the surface of the curd to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate for 1 hour or overnight. The curd should be thick.

For the crust:

In a food processor, grind the almonds with the sugar and orange zest until finely ground. Add the butter and pulse a few times, until the butter is evenly distributed. You may need to stir the mixture with a spatula before placing it in the tart tin. Pat almond mixture into the bottom and sides of tart tin. Bake for 10 minutes, until the nuts are lightly toasted, then remove to a rack to cool.

To assemble:

Fill the tart crusts with the curd. You can decorate it with a curl of blood orange peel or serve as is.

It is hard to get a chef to part with a special recipe and when you finally get the recipe out of them, they may leave out key ingredients so that when you try to make it at home, it doesn’t taste like you had at their restaurant. I can understand why they don’t want to give away all of their secrets because chefs, cookbook authors and some bloggers work very hard at perfecting their recipes, and they don’t want to give them away for free.

This story rings true with Mr. BT’s haroset recipe. This recipe was a closely guarded secret of my husband’s and I have been trying for years to get his permission to post his recipe, but he has always refused. But this year, he finally gave in and is letting me post, well…..most of the real recipe. This version will still taste good, but he just couldn’t part with a few secret ingredients.

I introduced Mr. BT to Venetian-style haroset when we first met and he loved it at first taste. He decided to try making his own version, which he has perfected over the years, and it is the best I have ever had. It is not for the weary and some people will be shocked by its powerful punch.

Faye Levy’s Passover article on Haroset in the LA Times contains five delicious recipes, but the one that I had to try was the Haroset Bars. I had been searching for something new to make for the seder and this was perfect since we always have leftover haroset. I adapted her recipe because Mr BT’s haroset is already sweet enough and packed with dried fruit. I also substituted walnut meal for matza meal. I do not usually bake with matza meal.

My recipe produced a very moist bar and some of my relatives used a fork to eat them instead of using their hands, but that is probably because we are a little too European 🙂 to eat dessert with our hands. I grew up eating fruit with a knife and fork, but I have learned to eat it with my hands. It took me years to eat fried chicken with my hands.

I think the marriage of haroset and chocolate was meant to be. This is definitely a recipe I will make again and again.

I hope that you and your family had a lovely Passover holiday.

Chag Sameach!

"Fudgy" Haroset Brownies

Adapted recipe by Faye Levy

Servings: 24 small bars, 16 large

Ingredients

1/2 cup ground walnuts or almond flour
1/4 cup potato starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
113 g 1 stick unsalted margarine or butter, soft, cut in small pieces
3 tablespoons mild olive oil
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar about 2.4 ounces
1-1/2 cup packed haroset with Mr. BT's World Famous Thermonuclear Haroset (see below) or Faye's haroset
2 large eggs
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Lightly butter an 8-inch square baking pan. Line the pan with foil and butter the foil.
In a medium bowl, mix the ground walnuts, potato starch and salt.
In a large mixing bowl using a hand-held mixer, or in a stand mixer, beat the butter until it is smooth. Add the oil and the brown sugar; beat until the mixture is smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs, one by one, beating thoroughly on high speed after each one. Add 4 tablespoons of the ground walnut mixture and beat over low speed. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the remaining ground walnut mixture. Stir in the haroset and chocolate pieces.
Transfer the batter to the pan and spread it in an even layer. Sprinkle the chopped walnuts and pat them lightly so they adhere to the batter. Bake until the top browns lightly and a wooden pick inserted into the center comes out nearly clean, 18 to 22 minutes; if the wooden pick comes out chocolaty, test again. Cool the brownies in the pan on a rack.
Turn the brownies out gently onto a plate, then onto another plate or a cutting board so that the walnuts are on top. Using a sharp knife, cut it carefully into 16 bars. Serve at room temperature.

Mr. BT's World Famous Thermonuclear Haroset

Servings: 6 cups

Ingredients

4 large Granny Smith apples cored, but unpeeled and cut to 1/2 cm (1/4-inch, but really 1/5th) dice
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
150 g 6 ounces chopped walnuts
150 g 6 ounces chopped almonds
150 g 6 ounces dried Mediterranean apricots, cut into eighths
12 dried figs stems removed, cut into twelfths
12 large Madjhool dates pitted, quartered along its length, cut into fifths
12 pitted prunes cut into eighths
150 g 6 ounces golden raisins
150 g 6 ounces dark raisins
1 cup sweet kosher wine
1/4 cup brandy
1/2 cup date honey Silan
3/4 cup sweet chestnut paste
Grated rind and juice of one orange
1/2 knob about 1-inch fresh ginger, peeled and grated on a micro-plane
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice

Instructions

Place the apples in a large bowl and add the lemon juice. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Add more spices and sweet wine to taste.

Tag: Pesach dessert

Blood Orange Tart with Orange-Almond Crust

“Fudgy” Haroset Brownies