Rustic Pluot Tart

It’s been a little quiet around here, I suppose.  I promise there’s a good reason.  I’m planning a wedding.  My own.  And, let’s just say, it’s on RATHER SHORT NOTICE! We just (a few short weeks ago) decided to have a wedding on October 25th.  This short-notice wedding stuff is not for the faint of heart – that’s all I have to day about it right now, although I am sure you will get an earful on another day.

Anyway, the picture of the tart has absolutely nothing to do with the wedding.  And that’s why I’m here posting about it.  Because I need a break.  From all the wedding insanity, which creeps in, no matter how hard I try to stay in a zen state of being about it all.

Last Friday night, we were invited to a friend’s house for hot dogs.  The tart above is the kind of thing that happens when you invite me to a gathering.  Pretty much any gathering of any people.  I get so excited that there will be several mouths to feed.  And then I beg (yes, really) for you to let me bring something for dessert, even when you insist that I’m not to bring a thing.  Because when I bake like this too often just for the three of us at home, we all start accusing the dryer of intentionally shrinking our jeans.  Even though we are rational people who realize that the dryer does not have a brain of its own.

A rustic tart is one of my favorite things to make, precisely because it is supposed to look rustic. Every single time I make one, it looks completely different from all the ones I’ve made before.  Yet somehow mouth-watering drop-dead gorgeous.  No perfect circles to roll out, no fussy crimping.  Just buttery good crust, surrounding juicy fresh-from-the farm fruit.

I roll out the crust on parchment paper, which is the answer to everything in my kitchen these days.  The tart stays on the parchment while baking, and, well, that’s just a really, really good thing.  So easy to transfer onto and off of the baking sheet. I even put another sheet of parchment on top to roll the dough out.  Non-stick goodness.  And because I still don’t quite believe that parchment paper is that much of a miracle, you can see above where I went around the entire circle of dough, checking to see if the dough was sticking.  It did not! I didn’t even use any flour on it at all while rolling it out, because I was testing it.  I mean, some things just have to be tried.  I wouldn’t recommend the completely flourless approach, however.  There were spots that really wanted to stick, although they didn’t.  Next time I will use the tiniest amount of flour that I can possibly sprinkle out.  The crust was to-die-for good.

The flour, toasted nut, and sugar layer that you see on the dough helped to soak up the extra juices, which allowed the middle of the crust to stay extra crisp.  It’s a technique I hadn’t used before, but since I was using super-ripe and juicy pluots, I knew the tart would need it.  There’s nothing worse than having the middle of a tart collapse as a carefully cut piece makes its way to a plate.  (I must correct myself – not having a tart at all is far worse!)

After rolling out the dough and then spreading the filling, all that’s left is to arrange the fruit.  Sometimes I do it carefully, sometimes I prefer to just dump the fruit on and be done with it.  This time I added a few grocery store plums to the pluots from the farmers’ market.  I wasn’t happy with the result, as they remained too firm after baking for my taste, but I only heard praise from the crowd that devoured the tart.  The color contrast was nice, and they did add a tartness to the tart (I smile), which ran the risk of being slightly too sweet from the juicy pluots.

At this point, I usually throw some raw sugar on top (because I just love the crystalized look and slight crunch – but you can use regular sugar, of course), fold up the edges around the filling, brush the pastry with milk, and bake.  You can make the same tart with almost any fruit, and you can vary the nut used in the filling.  Sometimes with peaches, I sprinkle toasted almonds on the crust before adding the peaches, and I skip the flour.  (I toss the peaches with the sugar before adding them to the tart.)  In other words, a rustic tart is a great way to play in the kitchen.  And people always go crazy for them – I swear – as if I’m a genius in the kitchen!  Simplicity is highly under-rated, my friends . . .

Rustic Pluot-Plum Tart

I use Molly’s pastry recipe, which she adapted from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook.  After refrigerating it, I roll it out to an approximate 18 inch circle – more or less.  (And go ahead and make her apricot tart that’s at the link.  My god.  That’s all I have to say about it.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

For the filling:

Combine in a food processor
½ cup sugar
¼ cup flour
¼ cup of toasted chopped walnuts
3 TBSP oat bran (optional, but adds depth to the toasted nut flavor)

Leaving a 2 inch border, spread the mixture over the rolled out dough.

Pit and slice, then arrange on pastry dough
1½ pounds of pluots.
½ pound of plums (but make sure they are as ripe as your pluots!)

Sprinkle with
¼ cup raw sugar (or regular sugar if that’s what you’ve got)

Fold up the edges of the pastry, to partially cover the pluot/plum filling.
Brush the pastry with milk.
Transfer to a baking sheet, leaving the parchment paper underneath the tart.
Bake for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
Cool on a rack until tart is completely cool before removing the parchment.
Juices will thicken as the tart becomes cool.

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Tagged as: dessert, fruit dessert, pluot, rustic tart