TartsThe days roll on; today is a day that half of us gets older. It was this day that the Earth (more or less) made the same step as it trod around the sun. We celebrate such things. This year, she gets a tart.
Tarts remain easier than I think. They begin with crusts; pie crusts, more or less. Except less; the crusts are meant to be shorter, so much of the care and noodling that goes into a class A pie crust can be flung out the window. Perfectly serviceable tart crusts may be mangled together in the processor. One may take the effort to roll the stuff out for one's tin, or simply grub about with fingers, guiding the dough into a lumpish flatness. Bake the thing blind in the oven. It will turn out fine.
Tarts need pastry cream with which to fill the pastry. I will point out that all one needs for whipping up a pastry cream is a good, high-class pot, a whisk, and the demented attention of a hawk. Pastry cream is a good place to sneak in flavor: extracts (vanilla, almond, lemon), zests (lemon, orange, lime), spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper). Cool the shell and cool the cream and fill up one with the other.
We put fruit on the cream, we do. There is a history to that. Growing up, I saw tarts pass the table from the kitchen. Upon these tarts lay fruit, arranged by wiser hands than mine, long fingers carefully laying in deep orange slices of peeled peaches in locking geometric patterns to rival the Alhambra. A lesson from those days is to always use the best fruit available. I am in luck: we are in the season of blueberries, and they tumble pleasantly over the cooling cream. I need do very little work to make them pretty.
Glaze goes on this now, to make the fruit shine nicely. I have forgone the glaze this outing, but simple ones can be made by heating a favorite jam with brandy, or without brandy.
This is not the only way to make tarts. This is the way I do; they are celebratory things, special events for excellent people and all that they touch. They are meant to be shared things, passed around the table; I cannot make them for myself. And so: happy, happy birthday.
(And don't look in the closet.)
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