Market Finds July 30: Simple Tomato Tart

The farmer’s market rockin’ this morning and I came home with a gorgeous haul.  My favorite farmer’s market to frequent in Houston in the Urban Harvest market, open Saturday mornings year round.  It isn’t the biggest farmer’s market, but it has become a quite well-rounded one.  You can find eggs, breads, pastries, local meats, vegetables, fruits, honey, preserves, vegan goods, flowers, coffee, and Gulf Coast shrimp.  Even in the short time I have been living in Houston, the market has expanded and if you live in the area, is quite a treasure.

Houston (and no doubt, the city where you live) has no shortage of venues for buying high quality food, just check out this recent Culture Map article.  For some people this is exciting, for others overwhelming.  I thought I would start a running “series” of sorts to highlight some of these places as well as show you how to use their products in your cooking repertoire.  My hope is to emphasize seasonality (most specifically here in Houston), support local farmers and business, continue to introduce new recipes, try new things myself, and maybe make someone out there feel more comfortable shopping at these opulent stores and markets.

This is what caught my eye this week:

- Pain au chocolat from Angela’s Oven (because who can resist?) – How to eat? ASAP

- French country bread also from Angela’s Oven

- Texas peaches – I am obsessed with poaching them at the moment

- Charoomy cheese from Pola Artisan Cheeses.  A young, soft, pungent cheese, cow’s milk cheese that makes me feel like I am in France and is great with fruit like…

-Figs!  To make an easy appetizer, just halve the figs lengthwise, caramelize cut-side down in a hot skillet with a bit of butter and oil, top with a soft cheese (in my case charoomy), and wrap in thin strips of prosciutto.  Voila!  Doesn’t get much easier.

-Tomatoes.  Our tomato season is quickly slipping away, but I plan to make the most of it.  Right now, few things make me happier than a tart, even savory tarts, so why not one topped with tomatoes?

Simple Tomato Tart

Serves 8

Adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

For tart shell:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons ice water

For tart filling:

1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

5 tomatoes, cored and sliced 1/4 inch thick

Salt

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

1 cup part-skin ricotta

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella

1 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Process the flour, sugar, and salt in a food processor until combined.  Drizzle the oil over the flour mixture and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse sand, about 12 pulses.  Add the ice water and continue to process until large clumps of dough form and no powdery bits remain, about 5 seconds.

Sprinkle walnut-sized clumps of the dough evenly into a 10-inch tart pan.  Working outward from the center, press the dough into and even layer, sealing off any cracks.  Working around the edge, press the dough firmly into the corners of the pan with your fingers.  Go around the edge once more pressing the dough up the sides and into the fluted edges.  Lay plastic wrap over the dough and smooth out any bumps using the palm of your hand.  Put in freezer for 30 minutes and preheat oven to 375°F.

Set tart pan on a large baking sheet.  Remove plastic wrap and press a double layer of aluminum foil into the frozen tart shell and over the edges of the pan and fill with pie weights (or dried beans if you are like me).  Bake until the tart shell is golden brown and set, about 30 minutes.  Transfer to a wire rack and carefully remove weights and foil.

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of the Parmesan evenly over the bottom of the tart shell, return the baking sheet to the oven, and continue to bake until the cheese is golden brown, 5 to 10 minutes.  Let the tart shell cool on the baking sheet while making the filling.  Increase the oven temperature to 425°F.

Meanwhile, spread the tomatoes out over several layers of paper towels.  Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon salt and let drain for 30 minutes; gently blot the tops of the tomatoes dry with paper towels before using.  Whisk 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic together in a small bowl.  In a separate bowl, mix the remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan, ricotta, mozzarella, and remaining 1 teaspoon olive oil together and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Spread the ricotta mixture evenly over the bottom of the tart shell. Shingle the tomatoes attractively on the top of the ricotta in concentric circles.  Drizzle the garlic-olive oil mixture evenly over the tomatoes.  Bake the tart on the baking sheet until the cheese is bubbling and the tomatoes are slightly wilted, 20-25 minutes.

Let the tart cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then sprinkle with the basil.  To serve, remove the outer metal ring of the tart pan, slide a thin metal spatula between the tart and the tart pan bottom, and carefully slide the tart onto a serving platter or cutting board.  Serve warm.

Roasted Rhubarb and Strawberry Tartlets

Every Monday I cook dinner for my entire Houston family.  It is our chance to take a moment away from our busy schedules, catch up, and take advantage of this time when we all live so close to each other.

This week I made a special dinner for my mom’s birthday.  I recreated that wonderful pasta and for dessert, baked these tartlets topped with the season’s first strawberries, roasted rhubarb, and a quick strawberry sauce.

Rhubarb and strawberries are one of my favorite combinations, but strawberries are often the star of the show.  This tart highlights the dueling sweetness and tartness of rhubarb with strawberries playing the supporting role; a great way to get to know rhubarb if you ask me.

Remember my reconciliation with tarts?  Well, our relationship is moving on quite nicely and tartlets, baby tarts, have also become dear to me.  What an elegant way to present a dessert and each of your guests gets their own!  I even made my niece a super-mini tartlet (see below), she gobbled it up.

Welcome Spring and Happy (belated) Birthday Mom!

Makes 6 5-inch tartlets

Sweet dough recipe from the Tartine cookbook

Inspired by the Gourmet Today cookbook

Note:  The recipe for the sweet dough will make more than you need for this recipe.  The extra dough can be frozen for 3 weeks or rolled and cut to make sugar cookies.

For the dough:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

For the tart filling and sauce:

1 1/2 pounds rhubarb stalks, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

10 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar

1 10-ounce package frozen strawberries

1/4 cup water 1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 cup creme fraiche

Fresh strawberries thinly sliced, approximately 6 per tartlet

Special equipment: 6 5-inch tart pans. If you don’t have these, you can make a regular 9-inch tart.  If you don’t have that…you need a tart pan!

Make tart dough:

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, sugar, and salt and mix on medium speed until smooth.  Mix in 1 egg.  Add the remaining egg and mix until smooth.  Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Add the flour all at once and mix on low speed just until incorporated.

On a lightly floured work surface, divide the dough into 4 equal balls and shape each ball into a disk 1/2 inch thick.  Wrap well in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours.

Roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thickness, rolling from the center toward the edge in all directions.  Lift and rotate the dough a quarter turn after every few strokes, dusting underneath as necessary.  Cut out a circle 2 inches larger than the pan.  Carefully transfer the circle to the pan, easing it into the bottom and sides and then pressing gently into place.  Do not stretch the dough.  Trim the dough level with the top of the pan with a sharp knife.  Dock the bottom of the tart with a fork.  Place the lined pan in the refrigerator while preparing filling and sauce. (Don’t forget to freeze your extra dough!)

Make filling and sauce:

Preheat oven to 375°F.  Lightly oil a baking sheet with sides.  Arrange the rhubarb in one layer on baking sheet.  Sift 5 tablespoons of confectioners’ sugar evenly over it.  Roast rhubarb until tender, 15-25 minutes.  Cool to room temperature.  Lower oven temperature to 325°F.

Place strawberries, 1/4 cup sugar, and water in a small saucepan and simmer until strawberries are thawed and sugar dissolves.  Puree strawberries in a food processor.  Force puree through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl; discard solids.

Sift remaining 5 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar over creme fraiche in a small bowl and whisk to combine.

Bake tartlets for 10-12 minutes, until light golden brown.  Cool completely.

Assemble tartlets:

Distribute sweetened creme fraiche evenly over tartlet shells.  Garnish decoratively with fresh strawberries and top each with an equal serving of the roasted rhubarb.  Drizzle with strawberry puree.

French Apple Tart

Dear Tarts (of all shapes, sizes and varieties),

I apologize for always snubbing my nose at you.  For too long, I have considered you irrelevant; if you have cake or pie, why would you need a tart?  Or so I thought…

I’m sorry for being severely unhappy every time you would make an appearance for dessert and for wishing you were a giant piece of chocolate cake.  I was wrong.

Thankfully we have been spending a lot of quality time together lately.  And, in the past 3 months, I have probably made close to 500 of you.  I understand you now and even [gasp] prefer you over cake.

Thanks for being beautiful and elegant in appearance and taste.  I promise not to say anything bad about you again.

Truce?

-Emily

The absolute first thing I made when I started my bakery job was a fruit tart.  I was simultaneously ecstatic, nervous, and privately grumbling about how of all the things I could bake, I had to make a tart (I was waaay more excited than grumbly, just for the record, but it crossed my mind).

As I have gone from nervous novice to a more sure-handed one, I have learned to love not only making them, but eating them.  I love that the crust can be a flaky butter crust, chocolate, a sweet sugar dough, and even made with almond flour.  Filled with a simple raspberry jam encased in a lovely lattice, bright lemon curd, whole pears swimming in almond cream, or brimming with a nest of colorful fruit atop pastry cream, tarts are the canvas that allows the art of simple ingredients to shine.

No better example of this perfect simplicity is this French apple tart.  Barely over and handful of ingredients come together to make a stunning dessert highlighting the jammy flavor of Golden Delicious apples.

It’s hard to admit when you were wrong, but sometimes it is worth it.

Makes 1 11-inch tart

Recipe by Sara Moulton.  Featured in the January/February 2011 issue of Saveur magazine.

1 1/4 cups flour, plus more for dusting

12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed and chilled

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

7 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and halved

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup apricot jam

Combine flour, 8 tablespoons butter, and salt in a food processor and pulse until pea-size crumbles form, about 10 pulses.  Drizzle in 3 tablespoons ice-cold water and pulse until dough is moistened, about 3-4 pulses.  If dough seems too dry, drizzle in additional water 1 teaspoon at a time until  dough is sufficiently wet.  Transfer dough to a work surface and form into a flat disk; wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Unwrap dough and transfer to to a lightly floured work suface.  Using a rolling pin, flatten dough into a 13″ circle and then transfer to a 11″ tart pan with a removable bottom.  Using fingertips, lightly press dough into the bottom and sides of tart pan.  Using a rolling pin, gently press down on top edge of tart pan to trim excess dough (see picture, above).  Chill for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, heat oven to 375°F.  Working with one apple half at a time, make thin crosswise slices, keeping the heel of your knife slightly above the cutting board with each downstroke so the slices remain connected at one end (see photo, above right).  Trim the bud and stem ends from the apple, then stand the apple half on end to cut a thin layer from the cored side so that the slices fully separate but remain stacked together (see photo, below left).  Return the half to its flat side on the cutting board and cover it with your hand, pressing down until the mass of apple flattens into a neat row of overlapping slices.  Slide a metal spatula under half the rows of slices and transfer them to the unbaked tart shell.  Arrange seven or eight of these sections around the perimeter of the tart shell (see photo, below right).

Separate remaining apple slices.  Starting where the apple halves touch and working your way in, layer apples to create a rose pattern.  Fill in any remaining gaps with extra apple slices.  See pictures below for final product.  If its not perfect that is okay, just be creative!

Once tart shell is completely filled with apples, sprinkle with sugar and dot with remaining 4 tablespoons of butter.  Bake until golden brown, 60-70 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat apricot jam in a small saucepan until warmed and loose; pour through a fine strainer into a small bowl and set aside.  Transfer tart to a wire rack; using a pastry brush, brush top of tart with jam.  Let cool completely before slicing.  Serve with creme fraiche, ice cream, or whipped cream.