Salmon Smoked Tart for a Crowd

[bryan]

    Time1 hour 30 minutes
    Yield 4 tarts, each serving 2 to 4 people.

This is an easy but elegant cocktail snack to serve year round, but it’s especially nice during the holiday season as a reward for bearing up with frigid
winter weather.   Essentially, it’s a large buttery cracker, garnished with smoked salmon and cut up like a pizza.   The pastry rounds may be baked ahead and
left at room temperature.   Assembling one tart at a time is the best way to keep everything looking and tasting freshly made.   The recipe makes four 8-inch
tarts; if you need less, consider making a half batch or freezing some of the dough for future use.
NY Times
Featured in: The French Know How To Feed Party Guests.

Creme Fraiche, Smoked Salmon, Trout Roe, French
Ingredients:
    2 cups/310 grams all-purpose flour
    ½ teaspoon baking powder
    Kosher salt
    4 ounces/1 stick/120 grams unsalted butter, cold and cut in half-inch chunks
    2 egg yolks, beaten with enough ice water to make 1/2 cup
    8 ounces/1 cup/240 milliliters crème fraîche
    3 tablespoons freshly grated horseradish, or more to taste
    1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
    Zest of 1 lemon
    Coarsely ground black pepper
    1 small sweet onion, very thinly sliced
    1 teaspoon olive oil
    ¼ pound/4 ounces/125 grams sliced smoked salmon
    2 ounces/60 grams trout roe or wild salmon caviar (optional)
    1 tablespoon snipped chives
    1 teaspoon roughly chopped tarragon, or torn leaves

Preparation
Make the pastry:
Put flour, baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt in the bowl of a food processor.   
Pulse briefly, then add butter all at once and whir until mixture resembles wet sand.   
Add egg and continue just until dough comes together. (Alternatively, cut butter into dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix by hand.)  
Knead dough lightly on counter-top, then divide into four pieces and form each into a ball.    
Wrap with plastic film and flatten to 1-inch-thick disks.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Make the horseradish cream:
Mix together crème fraîche, horseradish, mustard and lemon zest.   
Season generously with salt and pepper, then keep cool. (If cream firms upon standing, beat with a fork.)
Heat oven to 400*.  
Put onion in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper.   
Add olive oil and mix to coat.
Roll out each piece of dough to an 8-inch-diameter circle.   
Place the pastry disks on parchment-lined baking sheets.   
Sprinkle onion slices over each round.
Bake tart rounds for 6 to 7 minutes, until pastry is lightly browned and puffed, and onions are starting to brown.   
(Turn pans halfway through for even browning.)   
Let cool for a minute or two.

Assemble the tart:
Put pastry on a cutting board.   
Cut into 6 or 8 wedges.   
Spoon some horseradish cream onto each wedge.   
Tear salmon slices into wide ribbons and lay them over the cream.   
(Use 1 ounce salmon per tart.)   
Top each wedge with a tiny spoonful of roe, if using, and sprinkle with chives and tarragon.   
Serve directly from the board.
 

Salmon Tart.doc

[CeramicChef]

OH!  This could be very tasty for this old altar boy and current day Mackerel Snapper!  

 

Thanks!

[bryan]

More than welcome.

If you just happen to post pic's it will make Dennis happy. I don't know how.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017049-smoked-salmon-tart-for-a-crowd

I'm sure your pic will look better.

[CeramicChef]

Shack - posting pics is so easy even I can't screw it up!

 

In the bottom right corner of the Reply box, all you have to do is click on the MORE REPLY OPTIONS button.  

 

That takes you to a reply box that has in the bottom left an area that says ATTACH FILES.

 

Click on the CHOOSE FILE button.  UP pops a window that allows you to chose any photograph you have on your computer.  All you have to do with the new window that opens is find the picture you want to post.

 

Once you find that picture and have chosen it in the new window, all you have to do is hit the ATTACH THIS FILE button right below the CHOSE FILE button.

 

This takes a few seconds and then a bar will appear above ATTACHE FILE.  On the far right hand of that bar click on ADD TO POST.

 

Do that procedure for as many pics as you want to post.  Then to post your post, click on the black ADD REPLY button at the bottom of the Reply Box.

 

There,see how simple that is?  Like I said, if I can't screw it up, you'll do just fine and dadgummed dandy!

[ckreef]

That sounds really good. I make a cracker crust pizza that is best used as an appetizer pizza so I can imagine how good your cook was.

I do agree a recipe is not given proper justice without a picture.

[bryan]

Ckreef -

Thanks for the input.

I have been absent from the forum for awhile. Are there many active posters?

I know those Komodo-Kamado's are hot. I can smell the smoke. We neeed some recipes and pictures from all the owner/users..

I can use the catch up help and all the daily banter.

I have a neat collection of cooks if interested. I just get hung up cooking some of them over and over.

[CeramicChef]

Shack - I've been an active member since I got my first KK, TheBeast, a KK BB 32.  There are a few consistent posters, but not many.  I like this Forum and the consistent posters.  Good people.  The thing I do like about this Forum is the depth on information on a variety of topics that has been accumulated over the past few years.  Good to have you back and good to make the acquaintance.

[bryan]

Chef - It realy goes great when a big group comments. I know we spent a lot of time helping the new owners master the vents. After that short curve they posted a lot of cooks which we all learned from and commented on.

How is that 32? Are you doing big cooks?

[CeramicChef]

Chef - It realy goes great when a big group comments. I know we spent a lot of time helping the new owners master the vents. After that short curve they posted a lot of cooks which we all learned from and commented on.

How is that 32? Are you doing big cooks?

 

Shack - I absolutely LOVE TheBeast!  I have previously owned a couple of BGEs and Primo XLs.  But TheBeast is, by orders of magnitude, so far beyond those cookers it isn't even funny!  Shack, cooking on a KK is a whole new experience, but TheBeast is beyond anything I have experienced.  The sheer mass and size of TheBeast is beyond belief ... people who see it in person just stand back and shake their heads. Temperature control on TheBeast is so simple.  Once you know the response curve, dialing in temps is as easy as hitting a preset radio station on your car radio.  

 

What is stunning is the size of the cooks that can be done on TheBeast.  I have not found a cook that is too big for TheBeast.  I will typically entertain between 10 and 25 people at a time about every other weekend.  So each party will typically have a theme.  Butts, one weekend, brisket the next, burgers of one type or another the following, etc.  I've never found the limit to what TheBeast can accommodate.  Nothing gets crowded and nobody is left standing in line waiting for a cook to be finished so that their cook can go on the grill.  I've done as many as 8 butts at once when I was cooking for a charity event.  No problem whatsoever.

 

TheBeast is also pretty good on small cooks, but it is not his forte.  That is why I got the 19" Hi-Cap, aka Beauty!  Now I'm here to tell you that compared to TheBeast, Beauty! is the most petite thing I've seen.  But that is misleading because in her own right she's bigger than the Large BGE, the Classic Kamado Joe, and just about every other cooker out there!  And she has no small amount of heft to her.  Beauty! just got placed on the patio and its been the week from hell, so while I have done the curing burn, I have yet to do a first cook on Beauty!  That will happen here by Monday.  I've got some beautiful NY Strips that should do just fine for the inaugural cook.

 

Shack, owning a KK is a treat that most kamado cookers will never get to experience.  I'm lucky, I have two!  Each will serve a different purpose but both are beyond belief in terms of ease of operation, beauty, quality and over engineering, etc.  You know.  People who see my two cookers just stand there slack jawed.  They can't believe what they are seeing.  One dear friends wife asked my when I got into lawn art!  I had to explain to her that TheBeast was a kamado.  She told me that I could call it whatever, but to her it was and always would be lawn art that doubled as a cooker.

 

You're right.  Big groups make for lively and interesting conversation.  We need to kick this Forum in the butt and get after it!

 

Have a great weekend and enjoy your KK!

[bryan]

Chef - That does it!  Ralph (kk) is buging me to get him a fat girlfriend. I keep trying to explain that he is still to young......

Some good versitle cooks with pictutes will help the new and old owners alike. There are also those non-owners that are out there cooking.

[ckreef]

Chef - That does it! Ralph (kk) is buging me to get him a fat girlfriend. I keep trying to explain that he is still to young......

Some good versitle cooks with pictutes will help the new and old owners alike. There are also those non-owners that are out there cooking.

I'm one of those non-owners for the moment (although that will be rectified asap). I do a lot (4+ times a week) cooking on a kamado just not a kk yet. I do read this forum daily but only limited posting for now.

[bryan]

Ckreef - I am interested i seeing some of your cooks. How you cook will have a lot of info.  Once you start cooking on a KK it's more like set it and forget it.

What are you cooking? Any pictures?

[ckreef]

Ckreef - I am interested i seeing some of your cooks. How you cook will have a lot of info. Once you start cooking on a KK it's more like set it and forget it.

What are you cooking? Any pictures?

I post 4+ kamado cooks per week (with plenty of pictures) on another forum but I'm not cooking on a KK yet so I feel it might not be appropriate to post them here.

Ceramic Chef can attest to this. Some of them are just no flair dinner's but others I feel I hit it out of the ball park.

I have recently done a lump experiment using KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal which yielded 13 separate cooks on one load of coconut. Very impressive results. Will post a summary of this within the next day or two.