Sometimes it’s nice to take it easy with our
pastry, skip a few of the more traditionally grueling steps, and still end up
with a tart.
And there isn’t a more easy-going pastry dough than this family recipe from Paule Caillat, founder of the Promenades Gourmandes Cooking School in Paris.
And there isn’t a more easy-going pastry dough than this family recipe from Paule Caillat, founder of the Promenades Gourmandes Cooking School in Paris.
You don’t have to roll it out or wait for it to
chill, so you can go from “Hm, tart sounds good” to finished crust in about 40
minutes—no matter how cramped or humid your kitchen might be. Instead, all you
do is brown butter, plus small but crucial amounts of oil, water, sugar, and
salt, then quickly stir flour in. It sizzles and foams angrily for a moment,
then settles into a rich, malleable sludge. Once the dough is cool enough to
handle, you can press it into a tart pan and bake it straightaway.
The finished tart shell is crumbly and sandy, like
a good shortbread, with that barely sweet, haunting quality that brown butter
always brings to the table. It’s also inexplicably flaky: You haven’t laid the
groundwork for those layers, which normally require you to cut pockets of icy
butter into flour, but there they are.
Slick it with chocolate ganache, sweetened
mascarpone, or, as pictured, lemon curd. And if you
find yourself missing the demands of pastry-making, apply yourself to lining up
concentric rings of berries across the top.
Makes 1 (8½-inch/21cm) tart
shell
6 tablespoons (90g) unsalted
butter, preferably a higher-fat European-style butter like
Plugra
1 tablespoon vegetable
oil
3 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon sugar (for savory
fillings, just use 1 teaspoon)
Pinch of salt
All-purpose flour as necessary
(about 5 ounces/150g or a slightly mounded cupful)
1 Preheat the oven to 410°F (210°C).
2 In a Pyrex-type oven-safe bowl, combine the butter,
oil, water, sugar, and salt. Place in the hot oven for approximately 15 minutes,
until the mixture is boiling and the butter starts browning. Remove from the
oven, add the flour, and stir it in quickly. Keep adding flour, one spoonful at
the time, until it pulls off the sides of the bowl and forms a ball.
3 Once the dough is cool enough to touch, press it into
an 8½-inch (21cm) tart mold evenly with your fingertips. Pierce the bottom with
a fork, and press the sides with the back of the fork to form ridges. Bake for
15 minutes, or until the crust is light brown and shows fine cracks.
4 Remove carefully from the oven. It is ready for
filling—for example, with eggless lemon
curd.
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