Tarragon Pistachio Raspberry Pithiviers

Ingredients:
(I have some of the proportions written down elsewhere. When I find them I'll add them.)

Two nine inch circles of puff pastry.  Preferably homemade.  (It's kinda hard to describe how to make it, but it's relatively easy to do.  Pictures can be found here, but they only have part of the process.  If you have questions, ask them in the comments, and I'll fill in details.)

Filling:
1 egg (plus 1 for egg wash.)
5 tbsp butter
sugar
1/2? cup ground pistachios (with the skin removed).
Scant cap-full vanilla
Zest of 1 lemon
Scant tbsp 151, or other light rum. (I'm curious whether Absinthe would work better, but probably with the tarragon, it would just be redundant.)
Raspberries (Enough to make there be lots or raspberries in the filling.)
About 2 bunches fresh tarragon leaves

Procedure:
For the filling: In a mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar till fluffy. Chop the tarragon and lemon zest and add, together with all the other ingredients, except the raspberries, and mix till well blended. Remove from the mixer and carefully stir in the raspberries, by hand, being careful they remain intact. (You want a nut filling with raspberries in it, not a nut-raspberry mixture.)

Cover and place in a freezer (or refrigerator) till hard.

Lay out one circle of puff pastry, place the filling on top, leaving edges free from filling so another layer of puff pastry can be added on top (make the edges an inch or so wide). Moisten the edges of the pastry so it will adhere to the other piece. Place the other piece of pastry over the top, sealing it well to the bottom. (Use  water, and also, press down on it well.) With the tip of a knife, cut a small slit in the center and press out any air trapped inside.

Do ahead note: At this point it can be refrigerated, covered, for a day or so.

Paint on an egg wash, place a tinfoil cone in the hole on top, paint on another layer of egg. Cut a design in the top, if desired. Bake at 450F for about 20 minutes, till pastry has risen and browned slightly. Reduce heat to 400, and cook for about 25-30 more minutes, till sides are crisp and well browned. Remove from oven, sprinkle with confectioners sugar.  Melt the sugar into a glossy glaze by placing Pithiviers under the broiler, or in a 500F oven, for a few minutes, checking often, and rotating, to keep from burning.

It can be eaten almost immediately, but will also keep for several hours.

Pistachios.

Filling.

Ready to cook.

Just about finished.

Pithiviers.

Puff Pastry Two Ways: B

And here's Julia Child's Puff Pastry.

She has you use a bowl?  Scandalous.

And includes butter in the dough?

Doesn't measure the butter by weight?

And includes flour in the butter?

Skipping way ahead, the filling for the turnovers.  (Pictures if the intermediary steps would be almost identical to ones in the preceding two posts.)

The finished turnovers.

Analysis:  Because she included butter in the flour, Julia Child's pastry was quite a bit harder to make.  And I'm not sure that it tasted any better.  Actually, it didn't taste as good. But that might be because of the difference in the turnovers.  Apples are hard and have pointy edges, so it was hard to get them into the turnover, jelly isn't going to poke a hole in your dough, and you won't have to stretch the dough thin to get it around the obnoxiously uneven bit of jelly.  But all that's just explanation for the fact that Fr. Capon's was puff pastry was much much more flaky and buttery.  Julia Child's was almost doughy.  Of course, that may be due to inconsistencies on my part.  But given the higher quality of Fr. Capon's, at least this time, and the fact that it is much easier to make, I think I'll stick with his.  His recipe did, however, make a slightly smaller portion, and I should probably double the recipe, or at least increase it by 3/2 if I'm using it for a Julia Child pastry.

The filling for the second set of turnovers, however, was very good.  So a recipe follows.

4 tart baking apples, peeled, cored, and chopped.
~ 1 tsp cardamom.
Sugar and lemon juice, to taste.  (Quite a bit of sugar.)
Raisins sufficient.

Mix all the ingredients but the lemon juice, and let the apples brown a little (to lose some of their juices so they don't make the pastry damp).  Add the lemon juice.  Place a little on the center of each square of puff pastry, bake at 425 for 8 minutes, turn down the heat (to about 350) and continue baking till golden.  Remove from the oven, set on a rack to cool, and dust with sugar.

Puff Pastry Two Ways: A

It's Spring Break, and I finally have a break from my studies. So what better way to spend my break, than making puff pastry. And I have two recipes for the stuff, one from Julia Child, the other from Fr. Capon, so why not make both and compare techniques and results? And if there's time, make Fr. Capon's Danish Pastry too. (I still haven't gotten to that last one.)

The interesting thing about the two recipes is how different they are. Fr. Capon emphasizes that you should not use a bowl--to minimize the amount of kneading, I believe--tells you to use bread flour, has you knead the butter under water, and includes no butter in the pastry layers. Mrs. Child has you use a bowl, includes butter in the pastry, and flour in the butter, does not have you knead the butter under water, and adds some cake flour to the regular flour. Oh, and Fr. Capon has you measure the butter by weight, Mrs. Child, by volume.

The basic idea for puff pastry is fairly straight forward. Make rough dough with as little water and as little kneading as possible, knead butter to make it smooth (but keep it cold as you knead it), fold up the butter into the pastry (like you're wrapping the butter up as a Christmas present), roll out the pastry with the butter in it, fold it neatly (Julia Child says in thirds, like a business letter, Fr. Capon has you fold up the ends to the middle, and the fold in in half), roll it out, repeat six times, chilling after every two. These pictures are from Fr. Capon's recipe. Julia Child's will follow early next week.

Inauspicious beginnings of the turnovers.

It's beginning to look like dough. Kinda.

Dough. 14.2 oz of it.

And 7.1 oz of butter. (Somehow it lost 0.1 oz while I was taking pictures.)

7.1 oz of butter, ready to be kneaded.

7.1 oz of butter, kneaded into a nice pliable log. (I then made it into more of a square so it would fit in the dough better.)

I forgot to take pictures of the dough just after the butter has been added. But here it is after a couple of turns.

These will be fig and raspberry turnovers.

Ready for baking.

The finished product.

I'll post on Julia Child's method later--I'm done with the dough, but I don't think I'll make turnovers till Monday. Kneading the butter under water worked marvels. It remained cool, but was very very pliable--I wouldn't have guessed there was butter wrapped inside the dough when I rolled it out the first time.