Grape and Honey Goat Cheese Tart

It's been a grape-tastic weekend! A weekend I've been looking forward to since last year's harvest of grapes, and the most delicious, cherry-pie-like grape pie. Grape Pie! Do it. You'll thank me later.
This year's harvest of grapes from three vines growing on a pergola was much more bountiful than last year's. After splitting the booty with a friend, and plucking the good from the bad, I ended up with two huge bowls of grapes.

I, of course, made a grape pie. But what else could I do with grapes?I loved the onion and goat cheese puff pastries I made a while back so much, that I decided to rip off myself. I ended up making little puff pastries filled with grapes and honeyed goat cheese. They turned out well, but...

I had a little pie pastry left over from the grape pie, so made a small tart filled with honeyed goat cheese and grapes, as well. This was the much better combination! A larger ratio of cheese and grapes to dough, and the tart's crispy crust contrasted better with the filling.The grapes I used were picked just shy of perfectly ripe, so they're tart, but still enjoyable out of hand. Grapes in the grocery store are much sweeter than what I was working with. If you don't have access to homegrown grapes, I suggest picking up the tartest grapes you can find. Also, I think red grapes would be more aesthetically pleasing after being baked. Just a hunch.

I've still got an entire bowl of grapes left. Hmm....more tarts!
Grape and Honey Goat Cheese Tart
Makes (1) 9-inch tart, or multiple smaller tarts

1/2 pie dough recipe (I like this one)
12 ounces goat cheese
4 tablespoons honey
3 eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
3-4 cups tart grapes

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Roll dough out and fit it in tart pan. Butter one side of aluminum foil, and line the tart with the foil, buttered side down. Fill the foil with beans, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove beans and foil from tart shell, and prick bottom all over with fork, and bake for another 10 minutes.
  
• Beat goat cheese, honey, eggs, heavy cream, and salt together, then pour into baked tart shell. Top with grapes.
• Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until tart is firm and top is lightly browned.

Roasted Grapes

Well, I’ve got more grapes hanging around here after the harvest last week. Besides make grape pie, I wanted to roast grapes – all new things to me. I saw an article in a newsletter that mentioned roasted grapes as an accompaniment for cheese – just toss grapes with vinegar and roast for fifteen minutes. I can do that.

Of course, I took it a bit further. I had six types of vinegar in my pantry: rice vinegar, ginger infused rice vinegar, cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, white balsamic vinegar, and strawberry infused balsamic vinegar. (Some cooks take hits from extract bottles, I take hits from vinegar bottles; I like vinegar so much.) It turns out that it really doesn’t matter what vinegar you use; the differences are subtle. Just use what ever vinegar you have.

After fifteen minutes of roasting in the oven, the grapes soften, release juices, and caramelize a bit. The homegrown grapes I was using were very tart, so these roasted homegrown grapes mixed with vinegar were too tangy for most people to handle.

This ain’t gonna work! I reached in the fridge and pulled out the store bought green grapes I bought before the grape harvest came in. (Yep, it’s grapey over at my house.) I tried it all over again with store bought green grapes. Much better. These grapes ended up being sweet and only slightly tangy from the vinegar. These guys can go on a cheese plate without arresting your taste buds.

Roasted Grapes

1 bunch of grapes
a few tablespoons vinegar (your choice)

• Wash and dry grapes.
• Toss grapes with vinegar in a bowl.
• Place grapes in an ovenproof dish or on a baking sheet, and cook in a preheated 450°oven for 15 minutes.

Green Grape Pie

Growing good-looking grapes is not easy. As with most fruit crops, grapes need loads of chemicals sprayed on their foliage and fruit throughout the growing season in order to get anything you would even consider sticking in your mouth. (That’s why grapes are high on the list of foods with residual pesticide.) Organic or non-organic pesticide (go argue amongst yourselves), thin-skinned table grapes need pesticide if you want to be rewarded by fruit.

Efforts have paid off, and we managed to salvage about fifty percent of the fruit growing from two Lakemont grape vines growing on a pergola with a minimal, but regimented, spray program. Previous years had very low percentages (lucky to get a handful), so I was quite pleased to take home a heavy plastic grocery sack of grapes. My partner took home a bag, too, as well as the not so pretty grapes, which were crushed to make grape juice.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my bounty of grapes – make grape pie! I know. WTF? I’ve never eaten grape pie, much less heard of it, until I saw it on some show somewhere (Food Network, god bless 'em) and thought, “Gotta try that sometime.” Well, the time has come. And gone. As has the pie. I ate it in two days. I’m quite efficient.

I would have to say that my favorite fruit pie is cherry, but after eating this grape pie, I questioned the ranking order of my fruit pies. Grapes are round and cook down like cherries, and, if you had blindfolded me, I might have guessed this pie was a tart cherry pie.

This grape pie was tart due to the fact that these homegrown grapes were tarter than store bought grapes, but these fresh grapes were not tart to the point of making your face squench up. I’m not sure what a pie made from store bought grapes would taste like, but I’m guessing good, as there are plenty of recipes out there for green or red grape pies.

This pie is not the prettiest thing I’ve made. Make grape pie and serve it to your family; buy some puff pastry and make grape tarts to serve to your friends. Your family already knows you’re a screw-up, but you’ve worked too hard making your friends believe you’re perfect, so make pretty little tarts to impress the friends. Give it a go. Try something new. Your disillusioned friends will think you’re a genius.

Green Grape Pie

2 pie crusts
7 cups green grapes
1 1/2 cups sugar (adjust according to sweetness of grapes)
zest from 1 lemon
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons butter

• Crush 3/4 cup of the green grapes in a saucepan.
• Add remaining grapes, sugar, lemon zest, salt, and cornstarch to the crushed grapes.
• Heat fruit on stove, stirring occasionally until the juice has thickened.
• Fill pie crust with fruit. If there is excess juice, use a slotted spoon to transfer the fruit, so the pie will not be a wet mess.
• Place pats of butter on top of pie.
  
• Top pie with the second crust, crimp pie edges, and cut slits in the top of the pie.
• Place pie on a foil-lined baking sheet to avoid cleaning headaches.
• Bake in a preheated 425° oven for 30 minutes or until golden brown.