It's the end of summer, and if you're gardening you have an excess of home-grown tomatoes still to use before they get mushy. Even if you don't have a garden, local tomatoes should be plentiful and cheap at you nearest farmer's market. If you also happen to have some all-butter puff pastry in the freezer, one of the easiest meals you can make is an easy French-style tomato tart.

Like some of my other recipes, this is more of a "kit", because there's really only two ingredients in this recipe that aren't substitutable: the homegrown tomatoes and the butter puff pastry. So, before we get to the instructions, let's go through some of the others:

Puff Pastry: You really want all-butter, or at least part-butter, puff pastry for this. We load up on the Trader Joe's frozen pastry during the winter holidays (the only time they have it); if you didn't, the rest of the year you pretty much need to grab the overpriced Dufour. You can make this with shortening-based puff pastry like Pepperidge Farms, but it won't taste quite as good, but it's still better than no tart at all. You could, of course, make your own but that changes this from a quick weeknight dinner to a major effort.

The Trader Joe's pastry comes conveniently in two 9oz squares, which makes for two nice square tarts. Dufour comes in a single 14oz rectangle, which could be either one really big tart, or cut into two for two more modest ones. For the Dufour, which is thicker and creased, you'll want to roll it out a bit.

Cheese: this recipe requires two cheeses, a soft cheese to put on the base, and a hard cheese to grate over the top. The soft cheese can be almost anything soft and mild, as long as it's not too wet: drained and blotted ricotta, chevre, farmer cheese, neufchatel, cresenza, or a mild camebert. For most cheeses, you want around 6oz per square foot of tart. You could also use a little creme fraiche, but spread it very thin since it's rather wet.

The hard cheese is easier; just 4oz of Comté, Gruyère, parmigiano, or similar cheeses, grated fine.

Tomatoes: This tart can be made either with large tomatoes, sliced 1/4" thick and shingled (photo above) or with cherry tomatoes, sliced in half and packed in, cut side down (photo below). Either works equally well, so use what you have the most of. The important thing is that the tomatoes be fresh and picked ripe.

Herbs: chives, parsley, thyme, or marjoram could all work with this tart, or a mixture. Use what you have access to -- as long as it's minced or cut fine.

In the tarts pictured, I used Black Sea Man sliced tomatoes, sungold cherry tomatoes, Don Froylan requesón cheese for the base, grated DOC Comté cheese, and minced fresh chives.

Now, on to the recipe.

Simple French-style Tomato Tart

• 14-20oz frozen puff pastry sheets
• Either 2-3lbs of large slicing tomatoes, or 2 baskets cherry tomatoes
• 6-9oz soft, but not wet, cheese (see above)
• 3-4oz hard grating cheese
• 2-3 tbs minced herbs
• Salt and pepper

A day before, put the puff pastry in the fridge to thaw.

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan.

Unroll or unfold the puff pastry. Use a rolling pin to gently roll it flat. If it's more than 1/4" thick, maybe roll it out a bit to stretch it. Place it on a baking sheet, and carefully cut a square or rectangle about 1/2" from the edge of the puff pastry, and only about 1/2 way through it (depth of about 1/8" inch). You should end up with a "frame" around the edge which will become your crust. Dock the center rectangle using a fork or a docker (if you have one).

Spread the soft cheese over the center rectangle, making a very thin coating -- thinner the wetter the cheese is. Sprinkle 1/2 of the herbs over the soft cheese, and grind a little pepper on it. If the cheese is unsalted (such as ricotta), sprinkle a little (1/4 tsp) salt as well.

Put it into the oven for 12-16 minutes, or until the frame/crust around the edge puffs up and gets browned on top. If doing two baking sheets because you have two pieces of puff pastry, then remember to swap positions on them after 5 min.

Take the cheesy pastry out of the oven and allow it to mostly cool, 10-15 minutes. Carefully cover the cheesy center with the tomatoes. Sprinkle them lightly with pepper, and then with the rest of the minced herbs. Finally cover the tomatoes with the grated hard cheese.

Place the tart back in the oven for 5-7 minutes, or until the hard cheese is melted and the crust finishes getting crisp and brown.

Allow to mostly cool before slicing. Enjoy with a French green salad.

It's now late summer, and if you have a vegetable garden like I do, you're festooned with a glut of tomatoes. Maybe you've already made gazpacho, fresh tomato sauce, Turkish salad, and more tomato things. The tomatoes keep coming in from the gardent.

It's time for something French: a tomato tart.

This recipe is pretty simple, but it does require some gourmet ingredients. It also requires you to be comfortable working with puff pastry. Since the ingredients are so critical here, some notes on them before the recipe.

This tart is really much better with all-butter puff pastry, which I realize is hard to find in the US. I used Trader Joe's, possibly the only butter puff pastry in the US that is both good and affordable, but is sadly only available seasonally (and not in summer). This recipe is sized for TJ's 18oz box of puff pastry (which comes in 2 squares). If you're using Dufour's 14oz box, or some other brand, you'll need to scale accordingly. And, if all you can get is palm-oil-based puff pastry, use it anyway -- or made your own rough puff.

The cheese I used was homemade, a Neufchâtel-style cheese I made from some raw milk a friend gave me. You won't have this, so use chèvre, ricotta, camebert (rind removed), or a similar soft cheese with mild flavor. The cheese needs to be very soft, but not too wet, so if you do use ricotta or farmer cheese make sure to drain it or press it dry.

This recipe also uses olive tapenade. French tapenade is generally very mild flavored and that's what you want here. If you can't get any, then just puree a cup of pitted ripe black olives (not canned). Another option is actually mustard; French tomato tarts often feature it instead of the tapenade.

French-style tomato tart

• 18oz fridge-temperature puff pastry
• 8-10 oz soft mild cheese (see blog post)
• 2-3 oz olive tapenade
• 6 to 8 medium tomatoes or 4 to 6 large tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tsp dried
• 1 oz finely grated Comte, Gruyere, or Parmigiano cheese
• Fresh ground pepper
• Olive oil for drizzling
• Baking sheet(s), sharp knife, baking parchment, pie weights, rolling pin, spreading spatula

Heat the oven to 375F with fan, or 400F if you don't have a fan. Spread out the puff pastry on top of baking parchment, using one sheet of parchment for each square if using the TJ's pastry. Flatten it out a bit using the rolling pin.

Using the point of a small, sharp knife, cut around 1/8" deep square/rectangle around 1/2" from the edges of the pastry. You're making a box for the filling, where the edge of the pastry will be the "crust". Use a fork or a dough docker to dock (make indents) all over the pastry inside the box. Cut some more parchment to fit the inside of the box, place it on the pastry and pile pie weights on it to keep the center of the pastry compressed.

Bake for 15 minutes. The edge portion should puff up and the pastry should be very lightly browned and dry. If the pastry is still "wet" and the parchment won't pull free, give it another 3-5 minutes. Let cool for at least 15 minutes.

Spread the center of the pastry with the cheese and the tapenade. Which order you spread them in depends on their relative softness; you want to spread the softer thing on top.

Slice the tomatoes around 1/4" thick and cover the cheese with the slices, slightly overlapping. Sprinkle the thyme leaves across the top, along with a little ground pepper. Evenly cover with the grated Comte or Gruyere, and drizzle with a little high-quality olive oil.

Put the tart back in the oven and bake for another 12-18 minutes. It's done when the pastry finishes browning, and the tomatoes soften just slightly. Do not overcook, as it will turn into tomato/cheese soup.

Remove from the oven, slide the tart onto a cooling rack, and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes. Slice into squares. The tart can be eaten warm, but is easier to handle at room temperature. It does not reheat or freeze well; allow left overs to come to room temperature and eat them that way.

Serves four as a light meal with a green salad, or 6-8 as a first course.

For the recent Cake Night Cookie Fight event, I made a "ReplicaSet" of pressed cookies decorated with the Kubernetes wheel. While I only placed 2nd thanks to Rin's amazing prowess with cake, they were super-tasty and I figured folks would want the recipe anyway.

The first step is to make yourself a cookie press. I made a design using TinkerCAD and 3D printed it the day before. The mold comes in two pieces, you superglue the handle to the press. And then you need to spray the inside of the mold with food grade silicone spray (or it will not release your pressed cookies) and leave it overnight to dry.

After that, you can make a fairly simple shortbread and press it into the molds. To make it more exciting -- and to go better with bourbon -- I made a garam masala seasoned shortbread.

garam masala shortbread

Dough:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp garam masala
• 2 1/4 cups AP flour
• 2 to 6 tsp cold water

Sugar coating:

• 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp garam masala

Colored icing:

• 3 tsp milk
• 2 Tbs, or more, powdered sugar
• 3 drops liquid blue food coloring

First, two hours before making the cookies, take the butter out of the fridge so that it can soften completely.

Cut the butter into chunks, and cream it in a mixer on low, or with a spatula and a lot of elbow grease. When completely smooshed, add the brown sugar. Cream until the sugar completely dissolves into the butter.

Sift the flour and the garam masala together, and then add to the butter, one third at a time, stopping when no more dry flour is visible. Now, judge how crumbly it is; it should be somewhat crumbly, but easily hold together if you pinch a small amount of it. If it's doing fairly well, add just 2 tsp water and mix it one last time. If it seems dry and won't hold, add more water, all the way up to 2 Tbs, if required. You don't want it sticky though, you want it to just barely hold together.

Cover and place in the fridge for 25 to 45 minutes. Do not press it into a ball or anything; you want a bowl full of loose crumbles of dough. You also do not want to leave it overnight; if you need to leave it for more than 45min, then you'll want to let it warm on the counter for a bit before using.

While it's in there, put the white sugar and the second 1.5 tsp of garam masala into a small flat bowl and mix them together. Then, make the icing by putting the milk in a small bowl, and mixing in enough sifted powdered sugar until it has a thick, gluey texture ... probably around 2Tbs. Add the 3 drops of food coloring and mix until fully blended. Finally, put a little flour in another small flat bowl for coating the cookie press.

Turn the oven on to 350F to heat, and arrange the oven racks so that you can put two cookie sheets in.

Take the dough out of the fridge, and start pressing cookies. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone. Flour the cookie press. Take around 1.5 Tbs of dough out of the bowl and roll it into a ball; it should be between 1" and 1.25" in diameter. Drop the ball into the granulated sugar mixture, and flatten it into a small disk, turning it so that it's coated on all sides.

Place the small disk of dough on the corner of the cookie sheet, and press the cookie press down on it. Carefully lift it off, starting from one side, and be prepared to pry the cookie out gently if required. Repeat this until the cookie sheet is full; this will take a fair while.

When one cookie sheet is full, put it in the oven and set a timer for 6 minutes. Start on the second cookie sheet.

After it's been baking for 6 minutes, turn the sheet around for even cooking. Set a timer for 4 more minutes. After that time, check the cookies. If they are showing a thin rim of dark brown on the bottom edges, they're done, take them out. Otherwise bake them for 1-3 minutes longer, until they do.

Place cookies on a rack to cool. Put the 2nd sheet of cookies in the oven, and repeat.

After 20 minutes or so, when all cookies are cool, paint the raised design with the blue icing using a small paintbrush. The icing will take another 15 minutes to dry. Serve, or put in a sealed container and store at room temperature. Makes around 32 cookies.

The decline of the Food Network into "reality" programming doesn't mean you have to stop watching good cooking video. It just means you need to go elsewhere to get it, particularly YouTube! There's a bunch of really good, regular cooking shows these days on YouTube covering all kinds of aspects of cooking. Here's our favorites:

Hot Thai Kitchen is the video series that got us started on watching YouTube cooking videos. It stars Pailin Chongchitnant, a super-charming Thai chef from Vancouver. She demystifies a lot of Thai recipes without dumbing them down, and a few of her recipes, such as Pad Macaroni, have become household favorites. She also has a cookbook.

Joshua John Russell of Man About Cake creates crazy, fanciful layer cakes on screen. While you're unlikely to ever make anything like them yourself (unless you're a professional baker), they're way fun to watch, especially the choctopus cake. The best part of his show is the banter between him and the camera crew, so turn the sound up.

If you fondly remember the Frugal Gourmet before the scandals, Food Wishes will appeal to you. Chef John has videos for almost every dish you can think of, with a strong emphasis on making recipes easier to follow and easier to make. We just used his super-simple recipe for Persian rice at Christmas.

Historical food buffs will enjoy Townsend's, a vendor of historical recreation equipment who have some five or six years of cooking videos. His focus is on the 18th and early 19th century, and he interprets recipes from multiple historical sources and then demonstrates making them in a historical open-hearth kitchen. Some of the recipes are actually useful, too; we made the 18th Century Milk Pancakes for one breakfast. Plus you can get into the debate about the portable soup!

For more historically accurate cooking, the English Heritage channel has quite a few cooking videos. The best are the ones staring a woman playing Mrs. Crocombe, the head cook on an English country estate, and making recipes from her diary. Maybe you could make a gin punch for your next party.

Alex French Guy's main appeal lies in his frantic, relentless energy. Whether he's making his own wine, chopping onions, or just cooking, he's fun just to watch. Plus, French food!

PBS's The Art Assignment is mostly about art, but they have five episodes about food. These cover some historically interesting recipes, combined with fascinating stories about the artists they came from (such as Georgia O'Keefe). Even if you don't watch any of the others, you need to see the Modernist Tower Of Meat.

Gavin Webber, Australian home cheesemaker, pretty much makes every kind of cheese there is. You need to be really into cheesemaking, though, because many of his videos are twenty minutes to an hour long. Try some of his shorter videos like Paneer or Mysost to see how much you like him.

"Cowboy" Kent Rollins, who's had a little Food Channel fame, has a YouTube channel and a cookbook. Aside from the highly amusing poor cowboy act (Kent is also an award-winning storyteller), this is a good channel for rustic American basics and learning how to take care of your cast iron.

America's Test Kitchen has put their cooking equipment reviews online, and they're quite watchable and interesting even if you've read the articles.

Sadly, Bon Appetit's YouTube videos aren't so good. They could stand to spend a bit more on production; what might otherwise be useful videos are obscured by poor lighting and camera angles, and weak sound.

There aren't a lot of foods specific to Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year), but one of the critical ones is a big round challah bread. Of course, I planned to bake. Between one thing and another, though, we ended up getting home on erev Rosh Hashana at 4pm. Could I get a challah on the table for a 6:30 dinner starting at 4:15?

My first thought was to run out and buy, but as you can imagine by 4pm everyone was sold out. So baking it is. But our family challah recipe takes 1 1/2 hours just for the first rising. We were looking at a challahless Yom Tov.

Then I remembered a recipe which my sweetie had made, for lagniappe rolls which due to editing errors had much too much yeast (2 Tbs instead of 2 tsp). Those rolls rose really fast, in like 20 minutes, and actually still tasted OK. Could I do something similar, maybe more controlled, with the challah recipe?

My first step was to double the usual amount of yeast, from 2 tsp to 4 tsp. I use high-quality active dry yeast, refrigerated, from Red Star, so it's more potent than supermarket yeast in any case; if you're using Fleishmann's, you may need to triple it. I then dissolved 3 1/2 Tbs honey in a cup of 95F water, and then proofed the yeast in it while I mixed the dry ingredients, really getting it going.

Once the dough was together, I put it in a plastic dough bucket (for some reason, dough rises faster in plastic than metal). I heated the oven, turning it off when it reached 120F and put the dough bucket inside. This cut the initial rising to 25 minutes.

With the shorter rises, I was able to make the 6:30 dinnertime with five minutes to spare. 20 minutes mixing, 25 for first rise, 10 minutes braiding, 15 for second rise, 30 minutes baking, and 15 to cool. Surprisingly, the challah didn't even taste yeasty. Rosh Hashana dinner was saved!

Berkus Family Challah (fast rise version)

• 1 cup water at 90F to 100F
• 3 ½ tablespoons honey
• 4 generous teaspoons active dry yeast (2+ packets)
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons salt (1 if using salted butter)
• ¼ cup melted butter (or margarine)
• 2 large eggs + 1 yolk, beaten
• Oil sprayer
• 1 egg white beaten with 2 tbs water or milk for an egg wash
• Large bowl, dough rising bucket, dough scraper, bread board, cookie sheet, baking parchment, plastic wrap pastry brush.

Mix the honey into the warm water. Add the yeast.

While the yeast proofs, mix the salt and flour in a large bowl. Melt the butter, and beat the eggs plus yolk, reserving the white.

Turn your oven on to its lowest temperature setting. You're going to turn it off when it reaches between 100F and 120F, so if you can't set that, keep an eye on it.

Pour first the yeast mixture, then the butter, then the eggs, into the flour bowl. Mix until everything is incorporated into a sticky mass. Knead briefly (maybe 3 minutes); kneading in the bowl is fine. Shape into a large ball.

Spray the sides and bottom of the dough bucket with oil. Put the dough in, spray it, and then put the lid on the bucket. Put the bucket in the oven and close the door. Let rise until more than doubled in size, 20 to 30 minutes.

Dump the dough out on a bread board. Cut into 3 to 6 portions depending on what kind of challah you're making. Braid. Place on parchment on the cookie sheet, and cover loosely with oiled plastic wrap. Put in a warm, draft-free place for a 2nd rise, 15-20 minutes. While it's rising, heat the oven to 375F.

Remove the plastic wrap. Whisk the reserved egg white with water and paint the egg wash on the top of the challah with a pastry brush. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes. You'll know it's done when the tops of the braids are dark brown, the bottom is light brown, and the cracks between braids are no longer "doughy".

Cool 10-15 minutes, then serve. With apples and honey, of course!

Makes a 2lbs loaf.

L'shana Tovah!

Pi Day comes at a bad time for making pies; apples are out of season and over the hill, and neither berries nor summer fruit have come in yet. This means that you pretty much need to make your Pi Day Pie of something which is available year-round, such as Oatmeal Pie, or in my case: Key Lime Pie.

Now, I first had key lime pie on Key West itself (in the 70's), and for the four years of childhood I spent in Florida it was my preferred "birthday dessert" for my mother to make. So to say that I am "finicky" and "traditional" where Key Lime Pie is concerned would be understating the case; "passionate" and "fanatical" would be more like it.

In fact, I didn't start making Key Lime Pie in California until growers started producing proper Key Limes in Southern California and Mexico so I could buy the real stuff. Now, there's lots of folks who think it's perfectly OK to make Key Lime Pie using regular Persian limes, and you'll find recipes on the interwebs covering that. Not from me though. Also, a properly-made Key Lime Pie is not green; it's a pale yellow with just a hint of chartruse.

Before you start, please look at the ingredient and equipment list at the bottom of this post, and make sure you have everything there. Also, you have two important decisions to make: (1) whip cream or not? and (2) do you expect leftovers after tonight?

Now, Key Lime Pie is classic Florida colonial cuisine, dating back before the Seven Mile Bridge was constructed, when staples came to the Florida Keys by boat from Charleston or New Orleans. Ingredients came in two varieties: tinned and locally grown. Also, you didn't want to spend any longer in front of an oven than you had to in the tropical heat (which is why baked meringue is not part of the traditional recipe). Key Lime Pie exemplifies all of these requirements, making it perhaps the quinessential Florida dish.

First step is to start making the crust. First, grind up the graham crackers. You're looking for about 1 1/2 cups of cracker crumbs, which with Honey Maids requires most of two packets (2/3 of a box) of crackers. Don't be tempted to substitute healthier, 100% whole wheat graham crackers in this recipe, they won't work right for the crust. Mix 1/4 cup white sugar into the crumbs, and then melt 7 tablespoons (1 stick, less 1 Tbs) butter and pour it in. Integrate it using a fork, until the crumbs have an even sticky consistency.

Now, you'll need to press the crumbs into the pie pan. You can do this entirely using your fingers, but I recommend getting two pie plates which nest and using them to create a nice even crust. After that, you need to "blind bake" the crust at 325F for 15 minutes, or 22 minutes if you didn't preheat the oven. This sets the crust and gives it some moisture resistance and caramel flavor. Set the baked crust aside to cool for at least 15 minutes.

While the crust is blind baking, it's time to put together the filling. This requires you to answer the first question, which is "do I want whip cream or not?" If you want to top the pie with a nice thick layer of lightly sweetened whip cream (traditional to the 1855 recipe), then you'll want slightly less filling. If you only plan to have some dollops of whip cream, then you'll want the greater amount of filling. Yes, I know this means using half a can of condensed milk; it can't be helped.

Combine the egg yolks and condensed milk. Zest three or four of the key limes into the bowl; this should be a couple teaspoons of zest. Beat the mixture together.

Now comes the hard part: juicing all of those little limes. You'll need to juice 18 to 25 of them to get 1/2 to 3/4 cup of juice, so don't even try this recipe unless you have a good squeeze juicer or reamer.

That's a lot of tiny limes!

Next, to paraphrase Ben Grimm: "It's clabberin' time!"

Strain the lime juice: it has lots of tiny seeds, and don't make the mistake I did once but instead use a plastic strainer since lime juice is very hard on steel. Then pour it into the bowl and whisk together. What you're creating here is a "clabber", where the lime juice, milk and eggs will chemically react togehter to form a stiff gel, even without baking. You can imagine how this was an attractive idea in the South Florida heat. So just set aside the clabber in the bowl to thicken for 30 minutes.

You need to make your second decision now. If you expect to serve out the entire pie tonight and have one slice or less left over, you don't need your oven again. The pie will gel in the fridge and be servable as-is. However, if you plan to serve it the next day or later, or you expect leftover slices through the week, or if you're just nervous about raw egg yolks, you need to par-bake the pie to make the clabber hold when saved. Otherwise, the pie will start to "weep" when it's only a day or two old, and by the end of the week will be a mushy, sticky mess.

Either way, pour the filling into the cooled pie crust, and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. If you're not baking it, you're done; wrap it in plastic and put it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. If you're baking it, put it back in the 325F oven for 16 minutes. Then take it out, let it cool, and put it in the fridge.

If you're doing the whip cream thing (I usually don't), you'll whip the cream with a little sugar, and then add a thick layer of whip cream, or just a bunch of fat dollops, to the top of the pie when you take it out of the fridge for cutting. Add a little cornstarch before whipping if you want to stablize the cream for it to hold for up to a week in the fridge. Either way, slice and serve cold.

And happy Pi Day!

Key Lime pie

crust

1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs (from around 12 graham crackers)
1/4 cup sugar
7 Tbs melted butter

filling (with whip cream)

Grated lime zest from 3 key limes, about 2 tsp
1/2 cup strained lime juice from around 18 key limes
4 egg yolks
1 can (14oz) sweetened condensed milk

filling (no whip cream)

Grated lime zest from 4 key limes, around 2 1/2 tsp
3/4 cup strained lime juice from around 25 key limes
6 egg yolks
1 1/2 cans (21oz) sweetened condensed milk

whip cream

2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tsp sugar, pref. confectioner's
1 tsp cornstarch (optional)

equipment

9" deep pie pan
food processor or food grinder
zester or fine grater
citrus squeezer or reamer
fine-mesh plastic strainer
bowls, measuring cups, spoons, spatula

Combine crust ingredients. Press into pie pan, bake for 15min at 325F. Cool.

Whip filling ingredients together; set aside to thicken for 30 minutes.

Pour filling into crust. Bake at 325F for 15 minutes. Cool, then chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

If serving with whip cream, whip the cream into soft peaks, then sprinkle with sugar. Whip for another 30 seconds. Top pie with the whip cream.