Tartly

Another favorite souvenir of mine from this trip was a cookbook I bought from the Scottish National Trust. I try to bring back some sort of the food or a cookbook to learn about the food since my mother and I often see a lot of interesting food, but seldom try it. Mother is violently allergic to fish so we are always leery of restaurants, especially when staying on an ISLAND known for it's SEAFOOD! We grocery graze and carry a bag buffet every day unless, of course, we find an Uppercrust!

This cookbook had a recipe for rhubarb tarts and called for puff pastry, rhubarb, and sugar. That's it. And it sounded scrummy and simple. I was home with my parents this week and spent an afternoon making 2 pounds of puff pastry dough for this recipe. The rhubarb part is nothing more than chopped rhubarb coated in sugar and allowed to sweat for at least 30 minutes but no more than 2 hours. I picked nice and red slender stalks and split them lengthwise and into half inch pieces. I really coated them with sugar because I was skeptical that they wouldn't be tart or bitter.

While I had my rhubarb sweating, I got out my puff pastry and cut off a slab, rolled it out to 1/8" thick and used an empty cottage cheese container to cut out rounds. I lined the oven with Mom's long since broken baking stone (but I still use it as an oven liner when I bake bread and pastries) so I'd have a hot and stony surface to bake the pastry on. I assembled the tarts on a sheet of parchment which I transferred to the stone with a cookie sheet. While I was waiting for the oven to get good and hot (425 degrees), I used a bowl to score each round and press a border into the dough. I docked the centers with a fork and then piled the rhubarb on top, trying to stay within the borders.

Now if you have never worked with puff pastry, you have never lived. I use the recipe published May of 2002 in Martha Stewart Living Magazine and have had nothing but exemplary results each time. This recipe uses a full pound of butter and makes 2 pounds of dough that can be frozen up to 3 months. The dough starts as a very light simple pastry with flour, cake flour, 1/2 stick of butter, and ice water. It is almost a light biscuit dough. You chill this dough while you shape your butter. 3 1/2 sticks of butter are beaten between parchment paper until it is malleable and shaped into a 6 x 6" square. Beating it with a pin softens it without warming it. You then remove the dough from the fridge and roll it into a 9" disc. Center the butter package on this disc and mark the straight edges around the butter package with a knife. Remove the butter package and use a rolling pin to roll the edges past the knife markings into a clover shape. Recenter the butter package onto the dough and fold the clover leaves up as you would an envelope. Now carefully and slowly use your rolling pin to press and shape the dough into a 20 x 10" rectangle, keeping the edges as square as possible. Fold the dough up as you would a business letter and wrap in the butter pounding parchment. Chill for 30-60 minutes. Remove the dough from the fridge and again slowly press and shape the dough into a 20 x 10" rectangle and again fold up. Chill as before. Repeat this until you have folded the dough a total of 6 times. You can then use it or freeze it and use it as you do. You can have it longer than 3 months, but after then it will start to oxidize and turn a kind of gray color. It tastes just as wonderful, but it isn't as pretty!

If you do the math, you will find that there are over 1,450 layers of butter and dough! And there is no leavening agent in it: no yeast, no baking powder, no baking soda, no cream of tartar, etc. The steam from the butter as it escapes during baking is what causes the layers to rise and separate into the flaky loveliness that is puff pastry. This is why it is so important that you always put it into a HOT oven so that the rising gets a jump.

Once you have a 2 pound block of this in your freezer, you're set for a while. You just cut a chunk off when you want to make something. You can roll it out and slice it into strips and bake as an appetizer or make cheese straws by doing this after folding in a layer of freshly grated Parmesan cheese. You can make tart shells or flaky crackers or shape, cut, and coat it in sugar and bake until the sugar caramelizes and serve them as a cookie, etc. And for all you dough-heads out there, it is good just to eat it too!

No offense to the good people over at Pepperidge Farms, but I have tried the frozen puff pastry I saw in the store and had finished results that sure looked pretty but they weren't nearly as buttery or flavorful. And the dough wasn't nearly as tasty to just eat either, so I'm afraid I recommend making your own from scratch.

I baked the assembled tarts for about 15 minutes at 425 degrees and the edges puffed right up and contained the rhubarb and the rhubarb got quite juicy. I was just petrified it wouldn't have had enough time to really bake and soften and all I could think of was Celery Pie. This photo really doesn't do them justice! I sprinkled them with a little powdered sugar and whipped some cream with a little powdered sugar. I was very pleased with them. There were a couple tart places, but I think next time I will quite finely dice the rhubarb and let it sweat for at least an hour so it's good and soft when baked. I much prefer a mushy textured rhubarb pie and I like a consistent sweet/tart throughout. This is definitely an early summer recipe too because you need the slender and pretty red stalks. You wouldn't want to make this in August with green and woody rhubarb--that can be disquised in pies with orange juice and red food coloring! What a charming way to showcase rhubarb from the garden!