Strawberry Mille Feuille

As soon as I said I was going sit on my ass all day and do nothing, I got the urge to bake. And, of course, the more I thought about baking, the stronger the urge got, until it could no longer be resisted. Sigh. What can you do, right? Lets just chalk it up to me being totally dedicated to this blog.

So, why mille feuille? Because I saw Anthony Bourdain eating it on "No Reservations" last night, and it looked pretty tasty. Plus, he spent at least 15 minutes waxing eloquent about the virtues of this quintessential French dessert, so I knew it had to be good. Now, I wanted to try it for myself, but I wasn't feeling up to making my own puff pastry. So, I dragged Dan to the store to buy the pre-made stuff. Great decision. Instead of waiting a couple hours for the dessert to come together, we were able to sit down and enjoy this deliciously flaky, light and creamy treat in less than 30 minutes. Take that, Rachel Ray!

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of food.com.

Mushroom Tart

This post is kinda misleading because I did not cook a single meal this week. Yup. It's true. Zero. Cooking. We ate out 3 out of the 5 days, ordered in another day, and the rest of the time we ate leftovers. The tart you see here was actually last weekend -- I just forgot to post it. Oops.

The thing about phyllo dough is that it's the best thing ever. Seriously. It's pre-made, keeps for a long time, can be used in a billion different delicious ways, and is perfectly buttery and flaky in a way that few home-made doughs are. Every time I read one of my favorite blogs and I see a tart with a perfect crust, I scroll down to the ingredients and immediately feel gratified when I see that they used phyllo dough. It makes me feel so much better about my own struggle with making dough from scratch.

I originally made this tart in preparation for lunch with a college buddy that was in town for residency interviews. BUT, she is a jerk and decided to stay home and eat her mom's homemade Chinese food for lunch instead. How rude! Kidding, kidding.

In the end, the tart was devoured by me, Dan and Emily. The crust was flaky and buttery, the cheese was gooey and savory, and the mushrooms were fragrant and delicious. So good fresh out of the oven, and surprisingly still tasty the next day...even if the crust was a tad soggy.

Recipe** courtesy of the Kitchen Wench.

**Just a couple comments about the recipe:
(1) If you don't have goat cheese, just use 4 oz of cream cheese instead. It was still tangy and delicious.
(2) I made two tarts, and forgot to add egg to the topping mixture for one of them. I actually liked that one a lot better -- it was a lot more creamy/melty.
(3) I cut up big chunks of fresh mozzarella and layered it over the top of the tart, then sprinkled some sea salt on top for extra flavor. If you like pizza that has ropes of cheese pull away with every bite, you'll definitely want to do this.