Fridays with Beatrice: Mushroom and potato tartlets & baked apples

Being in week 39 of my pregnancy, I am finally able to eat 'nearly normal' again. I still do have heartburns and some digestive issues, but not as worse as before. The only thing that prevents me from large cooking and baking sessions are my feet and my large belly that is always in my way. This is pretty dangerous because I need to be careful not to burn it with hot baking trays for example. Nevertheless I had to make something and Lena chose the ultimate comfort food this week, especially according to the wet and cold weather we have right now. The first course were mushroom and potato tartlets. "Uhhh, something vegetarian. It will taste like nothing just with potatoes and mushrooms ..." my hubby claimed when I told him what we would have for friday nights dinner. I got a little bit mad, in my opinion even blank potatoes are not tasteless. I remembered a pizza I made with potatoes and rosemary (and a bread as well) and those things were far away from tasteless!

"Well, at least, there is cheese on top." he said when he had a first glimpse at them. He loves things topped with cheese, and I used our favourite goat cream cheese for the tartelets. They must have been good, because he ate them without any more complaints ...

In my opinion there were lots of flavours, especially because I bought fresh brown bellybutton mushrooms and chars. Instead of leek, shallots and garlic (which would have been to much for my digestive system) I went for spring onions. The whole tartelet was tasting really good, the only thing that bothered me was the dough (which was crumbly, I guess because of the gluten-free flours) and the whole assembly process. It takes time to prebake the crust, fry the mushrooms and cook the potatoes, so this is no quick meal. I made 6 small tartlets (3 for one of us) and I felt stuffed after eating mine. Bea suggests a salad as accompaniment, but this would have been too much for me.

There had to be some space left for those delicious baked apples. I usually only make baked apples around christmas, filled with almond paste, nuts and cinnamon. The recipe wasn't reminding me of christmas at all, so I was curious how it would taste. It was another recipe that took time, because you have to make an infusion of apple and lemon juice, lemon zest and a vanilla bean first. The apples are then filled with a mixture of pistacios, almonds and cranberries, a cinnamon stick is put in the middle, then they are 'drained' in the infusion and topped with some olive oil and sugar. The supposed baking time is an hour, mine were done in about 40 minutes. You need to keep an eye on them, one of my apples "exploded" (split in half ), and the infusion became a thick caramel-like sauce which nearly burned. They were fabulous anyway. I served them with cold vanilla sauce - what I always do, but I think vanilla ice cream would have been even better.

Roundup: Tartlets - Nice comfort food for cold days, especially if you want something vegetarian.
Baked apples - Yummy! Something to make over and over again, regardless the season. I need to create a BBQ version ...or serve them with vanilla ice cream next time ...