Serendipity and Cornbread Apple Tarts

A recent viewing of Alton Brown's french onion soup recipe on Good Eats put me in mind to buy ceramic crocks.  As such, I did some research and discovered that there are 2 restaurant supply stores in my area (Alton suggests visiting these stores for lower cost cookware options), and I visited them yesterday.  What meccas of culinary excitement!  There were spatulas and potato mashers over a yard tall!

I did finally find my crocks, but, having no onions or time to make the soup, I got to thinking of other ways I could try out my new toys.  Sudden visions of countless tartes tatin and clafoutis made in similar vessels came to me.  As I stared at my lazy susan, I came across a bag of cornmeal that was really too fine to be used for what I had purchased it to make (corn mush).  I thought, "I'll make a little cornbread."  But that seemed sort of boring, and lacking in the traditional fruit of the dishes I had envisioned. 

Soon, the two ideas elided, and it struck me - Cornbread Apple Tarts!  I quickly sliced an apple thinly, then sprinkled some brown sugar and spices in the bottoms of my crocks (for future reference, butter the dishes first).  I layered the apple slices carefully in the bottom of the dish, making them as pretty as I could , then topped with more cinnamon and a squirt of lemon juice.

The cornbread recipe was adapted from one on the side of the package.  I'll think of it as Quarter Cornbread from now on, and you'll see why...

• Combine 1/4 c each of corn meal, flour, and sugar, with 3/4 tsp baking powder.
• Combine 1/4 c milk, 1 tbsp oil (4 quarters, if you wish), and 1 egg (no quarters here, no matter how I think of it).
• Combine wet and dry ingredients.

 Pour the batter over the apples and bake for about 15 minutes, until the bread is set.

 

What does this recipe say about my learning?  It wasn't immediately apparent to me.  But I think it says something about the value, or at least the inevitability, of serendipitous convergence of ideas and events.  I doubt most people would have been motivated to create this dish to go alongside salmon and asparagus on Good Friday (perhaps with good reason).  But the combined experiences of the shows I've watched, the meals I've eaten, the perpetual presence of apples in my house, my mother's love of corn mush, and my love of Alton Brown all blended together into a little cornbread apple tart.  Which is quite a lot of symbolic weight for such a little tart, and so perhaps I've gotten carried away.  But if serendipity can make my dinner tasty, I think maybe it's what sweetens other parts of life as well.

In honor of serendipity, I'll share a favorite quote I just came across in a young adult book I just happened to start re-reading, since I ran out of other books.

"When I was little, I used to try to capture the colored light [streaming in through a stained glass window in church.] I thought I could hold it in my hand and carry it home.  Now I know it is like happiness - it is there or it is not, you cannot hold it or keep it."

 --- From Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman