apricot | Cecile's Cuisine

Fridges are fun to look into. By looking at someone’s fridge you can tell if that person cooks, loves to cook or just dine out. Generally a person who cooks will have an array of things to use at all times. Things like cheeses, pie crust, and raw ingredients.

I like to keep things like pie crust, puff pastry, phillo dough, wonton wraps because they are medium that can help you get dinner on the table quite fast. I love to use wontons to make fun appetizers. The pie crust of course can help you make tartlets, quiches and pies.

This past Friday, some friends of ours decided to come by unexpectedly to pick up some things at the house, and since it was close to diner time, I quickly ran to the store to get some meats to grill. We made a salad, some vegetable flan a tart for dessert. Not too bad for an unexpected dinner;-) Of course it is easy if you already have everything on hand.

For dessert, I made an Apricot tart because it is easy to do and I had no other fruits than apricots on hand. Of course, you can do this recipe with pear, apple, plum and strawberry.

Ingredients for a tart for 8 people:

1 puff pastry dough thawed at room temperature for 15 mns.
about 24 fresh apricots
sugar

Turn the oven to 450.
Place the puff pastry dough onto the roulpat and with the rolling pin, roll the dough so that it will fit the flexipat ( 12 x 15in”).
With a fork, perforate the bottom of the pie.
Cut each apricots in 8 quarters and lay them out onto the phyllo dough.
Sprinkle some granulated sugar and cook the pie for 20-25 minutes.
Sprinkle more sugar so that it will caramelized the apricots a bit and cook for another 5 minutes.
Remove the tart from the oven and let it cool a bit before serving.
Serve cold, or warm with or without ice-cream. Et voila!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

Have you indulged much over the holidays? I will say that i did not. Not because I tried to be good, but all that I made was gone before I had time to have second. The cookies that I made were offered to my fellow co-workers at school. The macarons I made for my Christmas gifts were mostly gone as gifts, and my buche de Noel was all eaten by my two children before I had the chance to eat a piece. Boo hoo..

Well for those of you who need to start fixing lighter dinner option, I will offer you this quick recipe of baked chicken.

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts
1/3 cup of apricot marmalade
1/3 cup of bourbon
2 tbsp of old-fashioned mustard
1 /4 tsp or more of red pepper flakes
salt
pepper

First you will want to tenderize the chicken so that it will more tender.
Cleanse the chicken by removing any nerves and fat.
Then rinse each chicken breast under running cold water.
Pat the chicken breasts dry.
One at a time, place a chicken breast on the rectangular roulpat, fold the roulpat over the meat and with the rolling-pin, pound the chicken lightly to flatten it.
Repeat this process for all chicken breast.
Place all the chicken breast on the deep flexipat, and season the chicken by sprinkling salt and pepper on both sides. Set aside.
Place all the ingredients mentioned above besides the chicken and the salt and pepper in a small saucepan and bring it to boil. Cook for a few minutes.
Divide the sauce equally into two small bowls.
With a pastry brush, brush the chicken with this mixture.
Cook in a warm oven at 400 for 15 minutes.
When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the oven and let it stand for a few minutes for the juices to be reabsorbed.
Slice the chicken and serve.
Drizzle more sauce over the chicken. Et voila!