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Craft pumpkin tart

Time1 hour 40 minutes
YieldsServes 16
Craft pumpkin tart
(Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
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I’ve always associated the color orange with Thanksgiving. Before I moved to California, I lived in a house with a huge tree out front that turned a flaming shade of the color every autumn. And by Thanksgiving, I was so sick of raking up those dead orange leaves that I didn’t care whether I ever saw that color again. Granted, that little phobia didn’t do much for the color scheme on my holiday table, but back then that seemed a small trade-off.

Today, of course, I live where leaves have the good sense to stay on the trees almost year-round. Now, thankfully, I can enjoy the orange colors of autumn right where they belong -- on my dinner plate.

Some of the sweetest and most distinctive tastes of fall come in the color orange: pumpkins and other winter squash, sweet potatoes, persimmons, the first mandarins.

Winter squash are among the most versatile vegetables around. Start with the most basic preparation: Cut them in half, scoop out the seeds and roast them at 400 degrees (cut-side down in a little water in a jelly roll pan) until the flesh is so soft the squash collapses, about an hour. Scoop the meat out of the shell and whip it with some butter and a little cream to make a smooth puree. Fold in some shredded raw apple or add a hint of warm spices such as clove and ground ginger to the puree to make a filling for ravioli or cannelloni.

Thin the puree with stock and you’ve got a nice soup, particularly when the squash is sweetened with dark maple syrup and spiced with roasted chiles, paprika and New Mexican red chile powder. Or for a more traditional take, puree the squash and chicken stock with a base of sauteed leeks and garnish it with some fresh sage leaves you’ve crisped in hot oil.

You can also peel the squash, cut it into cubes and roast or steam. If roasting, give the cubes a turn in some good chile powder and moisten them with pumpkin seed oil first. There are two tricks to peeling: having a good, sharp vegetable peeler, and choosing squash that are smooth-skinned, such as butternut, rather than those that are deeply ridged, such as acorn.

Arrange steamed squash in a buttered gratin dish. Add just enough cream to moisten (because squash is lower in starch than potatoes, it won’t thicken as much liquid), top with grated Gruyere and bake until everything is bubbly.

Whether you choose the starchier golden variety or the denser, sweeter dark orange one, sweet potatoes are just as easy to prepare as winter squash. Roast them on a cookie sheet in a 400-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes or in a 375-degree oven for an hour. Puree the pulp in a food processor with a nub of butter and a grating of nutmeg. Rather than apple, add small cubes of ripe pear. Sweet potatoes also make a wonderful gratin: Moisten them with cream flavored with a little bourbon and top with chopped toasted pecans.

One of my favorite sweet potato dishes is a twist on the old favorite of sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows. Seriously, this is really good: Instead of the marshmallows, top an orange-scented sweet potato puree with hazelnut souffle.

Fall is ripe with orange fruits, such as persimmons. The smaller Fuyus can be eaten when they are hard. Cut them into wedges and toss them with lime juice and cilantro leaves for a salad or side dish, or toss them with sugar, a hint of orange liqueur and chopped toasted walnuts for a dessert.

The larger, acorn-shaped Hachiya persimmons need to be ripened to the point of squishiness before they can be eaten. But once that’s done, all you need to do is slit the skin in quarters so that the peel opens out like petals, then stir the pulp inside and top it with some bourbon-flavored whipped cream and chopped toasted nuts.

And then there’s citrus: Though the bulk of the harvest starts in December, mid-November is the perfect time for Clementines and Satsumas, the first of the mandarins. Both are seedless, or nearly so.

All you need to do to get them ready for the table is peel them. Well, you can go a little bit further. Rub off any pith, then arrange the sections in a bowl and pour over them honey that’s been warmed with minced rosemary or lavender leaves.

That’s one combination of orange and leaves that I can handle.

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Cashew tart dough

1

Process the cashews in a food processor until very fine.

2

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or in a large bowl using a hand mixer. Add the cashews to the butter-sugar mixture; mix until combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3

Add the orange zest, egg and vanilla extract, scraping down the sides again. Add the flour and salt and mix until well combined.

4

Roll the dough between two sheets of parchment paper into a large rectangle, slightly larger than 12 inches by 16 inches and about 1/8 -inch thick. Place the rolled dough flat on a pan and freeze it for 2 to 3 hours until stiff.

5

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Using a ruler, cut the dough into pieces to fit the bottom of the pan and all of the sides of the pan. Once your dough is cut into the exact dimensions, peel away one the parchment paper and fit the pieces of dough in the sheet tray. Seal any cracks by pressing the dough together with your fingertips. Bake until very golden brown, about 25 minutes. Set aside and allow to cool while you make your tart filling.

Pumpkin filling and assembly

1

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Whisk one of the eggs into the pumpkin puree (by hand or in a stand mixer). Crack the other egg into a small bowl and whisk to combine the yolk and white; add half of the combined egg to the pumpkin mixture. Discard the other half or reserve it for another use. Add the sugar, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg to the puree and mix until incorporated.

2

Slowly add the milk and condensed milk. Pour the filling into the baked tart shell. Bake on the center rack for 30 to 45 minutes (turning once during baking), until the filling is set and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the tart to cool.

3

When cooled, place the tart in the refrigerator. To serve, slice the tart lengthwise in half, then slice each half into eight slices. The tart will keep for 2 days, refrigerated.

Adapted from Craft pastry chef Catherine Schimenti. This recipe requires a 9-by-12-inch rimmed baking sheet.