Marching through the fantastic Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, I made a wonderful Green Chile Chocolate Tart the same day as my second Maple Buttermilk Pie attempt.
The tart turned out wonderfully – creamy, incredibly rich, and with a perfectly sublime fresh chile flavor. The baking experience also finally taught me what I was doing wrong with my Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie dough construction, and I got the added bonus of using my pretty Williams-Sonoma tart pan for the first time (good thing I made a special trip to buy it 5 years ago!).
Unfortunately, the one drawback of making this pie is that it is definitely a time consuming process – even slightly more so than the other Four & Twenty Blackbird pies. In addition to the standard pie-making steps, you also have to boil the milk and cream, steep the green chiles in the mixture, and then use the hot milk/cream mixture to melt the chocolate pieces. So while in totality those steps aren't that onerous, on top of the pie dough making:
the pie dough kneading:
the pie dough rolling, chilling, and pricking:
the pie dough pre-baking:
the pie dough baking and cooling:
This is a long process! Oh well, onward to the next steps of steeping the chiles:
whisking the milk/cream/chile mixture with the now melted chocolate pieces:
and then baking/cooling:
Unfortunately the baking/cooling process was a bit trickier than I would like because the butter melting and leaking through the tart pan bottom, which made a bit of a slippery mess under the foil wrapping.
The baking process was also a bit more complicated because the crust shrunk while baking (yet, again!) so I had to use some of the excess filling to make individual custard (or fudges?) in ramekins:
Otherwise, though, serving was a breeze – look at this great, guest-ready crust:
And just a small slice goes a far way with this rich tart:
So lots of leftovers, which was great after a day's worth of effort to make this pie:
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