Joanne Chang's Milky Way Tart

Everytime I flip through my copy of Joanne Chang's Flour cookbook I always stop on the Milky Way Tart.  I usually passed on it because a) we didn't own a tart pan, and b) it just seemed too difficult.  However, when we got a tart pan off our wedding registry, I decided to go for it, and ultimately it wasn't that hard and it came out really well!

Milky Way Tart

While I won't publish the recipe here, these are the simple steps I followed.  The full recipe is available on Leites Culinaria, but I'd encourage anyone to grab a copy of this great book if it's not already a part of your collection.

Slow Cooker Asian-Style Short Ribs

One of the big gifts we received for our wedding was a slow cooker - a cooking tool I am not familiar with in the least!  From what I have heard, however, it can become an indispensable tool.  Luckily, when we were checking out in one of our many trips to Williams-Sonoma, we spotted this slow cooker cookbook at the checkout and thought it would be a helpful tool - not that we really needed another cookbook in our small apartment.

When looking at the recipes there were loads of delicious sounding ones, but when we stumbled across the Asian-Style Short Ribs, it seemed too good not to try.  One thing we quickly learned - short ribs are pricey!  The 6lbs required for the 6 servings (lunches that week) was about $45!  That is a lot of money for us to spend on a single ingredient, but we figured we could give it a shot just this once.

Short Ribs

To begin, Nick rubbed salt, pepper, and 5-spice powder into the ribs and brown all sides of them in the broiler - about 10 minutes on each side.  Meanwhile, he stirred together hoisin sauce, ketchup, vinegar, soy sauce, fish sauce, honey, onion, ginger and garlic in the bottom of the slow cooker.