As a Chris Kimball fan, I recently borrowed the Milk Street New Home Cooking cookbook from the library to see if Kimball has been able to recreate the magic of Cook's Illustrated.
My initial report is not only has he done so, but that he also may have surpassed the genius of Cook's Illustrated (blasphemy, I know). The Milk Street cookbook has been churning out a number of great dishes in my kitchen, which I will be posting over the coming weeks.
I am a true convert, and will be subscribing to Milk Street in addition to Cook's Illustrated moving forward.
The first recipe to catch my eye? The chocolate tart, which calls for all the basics – homemade pie dough, bittersweet chocolate, eggs, sugar, and butter. This dense chocolate tart was almost too rich – but it was very satisfying in small portions, which makes it the perfect dessert following a large meal.
Making this tart also allowed me to try Kimball's new Foolproof Single-Crust Pie Dough, which I was curious to attempt after many a "fool-proof" Cook's Illustrated pie dough recipes. The dough's secret weapons were sour cream and a cornstarch / water paste, which were added to the more traditional ingredients in a food processor.
The dough then required the requisite chilling, rolling, more chilling, and then blind baking. So unfortunately no time shortcuts with this recipe!
Unfortunately this is where things went a bit off the rails. I decided to use my Cook's Illustrated-recommended Cuisinart pie weight substitute instead of traditional pie weights to go 3/4 up the pie dough.
Seemingly as a result, the base of the pie dough puffed up a lot, leading me to haphazardly push the cooked dough down with some cookie stamps (yes, I panicked). The bottom of the pie dough then became far denser than I would have liked, and seemed almost uncooked even though it seemed fully baked out of the oven.
Did I bake it enough or was the pie weight the problem? Only my next attempt will answer that lingering questions.
Ultimately though, the filling was super easy to whisk together, with no straining needed. And miraculously, the filling all fit into the tart crust despite my concerns about the base puffiness, so all's well that ends well?
The other point in favor of my improvisation is that my hodgepodge chocolate usage of 4 oz. semi-sweet, 1.5 oz. bittersweet, and 0.5 unsweetened also seemed to have no effect on the flavor of this bittersweet tart.
The tart was wonderfully rich and dense, but again, requires one to eat only a small piece, which is fantastic! This will be a good pairing to a heavy winter dinner party in the future.
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