Apple, Goat Cheese & Honey Tartlets - Healthy Recipe Ecstasy (2024)

Tomorrow evening is the beginning of the Jewish holiday, RoshHashanah. As a non-practicing Jew, the Jewish holidays don’t usually register on my radar — except Hanukah, becauseHanukahmeans presents. Though I learned as a young child, that while Hanukahmeans one present a night for eight nights,the present total from Christmas far outweighs that of Hanukah. Fortunately, as a child of divorced parents, and, subsequently, a child of remarried parents in new interfaith relationships, I got the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, my parents soon caught on to the fact that, not only was I getting presents from two different householdsduringtheDecember holidays, but I was alsomakingbank in loot from two different holidays. The best things in life (like Chrismukkah) never last for long. But, I digress.

As a self-described “Bagel Jew,” the only part of the Jewish holidays that registers on my radar is the part which involves food. That’s likely because my radar istransmitted out of my stomach. In addition to thepresents, Hanukahbrings chocolate candies (otherwise known as Gelt). During Passover, I get to eat cartoons of matzoslathered in butter just like my grandma used to make for me. If grandma says it’s good for me, then who am I to argue? YomKippuris probably my least favorite Jewish holiday as it involves a fast which is the antithesis of my life goal(to eat delicious food as often as possible). RoshHashanah, the relatively exciting Jewish New Year, also ranked pretty low for me as it was not known in my mind for any of the three most important Jewish-related foods: bagels, matzo or chocolate.

So, when my“practicing” Jewish friends invited us over for a RoshHashanah dinner, I decided that it was not only an opportunity to familiarize myself with the holiday, but, more importantly, familiarize myself with the holiday foods. During my tutorial (aka Wikipedia), I learned thata common greeting on Rosh Hashanah is shanatovahu’metukah, Hebrew for “a good and sweet new year.” That’s why many traditional RoshHashanahfoodsinclude a sweet component— apples and honey, raisin challah, honey cake and pomegranate are all common foods found on Rosh Hashanah menus.

Since my friends were pulling togetherthe big RoshHashanah feast with matzoball soup, brisket and kugel, I decided that I should bring an appetizer. You can never have too many appetizers at a dinner party, am I right? After searching through the online catalogues of Rosh Hashanah recipes, I settled on an Apple, Goat Cheese and Honey Tartlet from Bon Appetit. Now, let me preface the rest of this blog by saying that I am not the kind of person who goes around making tartlets. In fact, I usually breeze past any recipe that involves the word pastry because it brings to mind veteran French chefs with many kitchen tools who demand perfection. I am the opposite of that. I am neither French nor a chef. I don’t have many kitchen tools and most things I make fall far short of perfection. I guess you could say that while I was always happy to eat anything deemed a pastry (especially if it’ssavory), I didn’t feellike it was my place to create such a lovely culinary concoction. Until today. Until I decided to ignore the words “cookie cutter,” “puff pastry,” “pastry ring,” “diameter,” and everything else that made my anxiety levels rise. Instead of making excuses as to why I could not make a tartlet, I just followed the directions and made a damn tartlet.

You know what? It was FREAKING EASY. I mean,my little tartletsare not all perfect. If you look close (well even if you look from far away), you noticesome of my pastry rounds are a little crooked and the apples aren’t sliced just so. But, you know who doesn’t care about perfection? My taste buds, which, like my stomach,don’t have eyes. Nope, they just have buds that taste and all those buds could taste was tangy goat cheese, tender, buttery apples and sweet honey all nestled into a crispy, golden, flaky puff pastry crust. To my taste buds, this tartlet was perfection, and, in the end, that’s all that matters.