Vera's Cookbook: Rustic Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

My two cousins visited New York from Seoul in early spring of 2008. One of them just graduated from Le Cordon Bleu (a culinary school), and I was thinking about getting into a culinary school at that time.Naturally, when we visited farmer's market in Union Square, we were very excited about sharing our ideas on all the fresh ingredients and what we can cook out of them.

Rhubarb... as it was still early spring, we didn't see fresh rhubarb but there were jars of rhubarb jam.

I was not even sure what rhubarb is at that time. The taste was really familiar. I must have had rhubarb dessert at some points... although I surely didn't know what it was when I had it. The tart & fruity taste reminded me of apple, strawberry and lemon. Simply delicious! My cousin explained to me that rhubarb looks like red celery. "Aha! I know what you are talking about!". Yes, rhubarb looks like a red celery, but far from celery in its taste; a very tart stem with fruit-forward fragrant.

The following recipe has two parts. One is tart crust (pâte sucrée), and the other is strawberry-rhubarb compote. You can use the tart dough recipe for any other tart. Also, the strawberry-rhubarb compote can be spread over your bread, or be served as a sauce with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Rustic Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

(Yield: 6 servings / Cooking time: 2 hours*)
2 hours do not include 2-3 hours resting time for tart dough.

Ingredients:
Tart crust (Pâte sucrée)
+ 200g flour
+ 100g very cold cubed butter
+ 30g sugar*
+ pinch of salt
+ 2 egg (one for the dough, and the other for egg brush)
+ ice water (if needed)

* If you do not add sugar to the dough, it is called "pâte brisée". Although I think pâte sucrée which has slight sweeter flavor than than pâte brisée is better for this recipe because of the tartness from rhubarb, you can always use pâte brisée instead of pâte sucrée for less sweet dessert. Pâte brisée means "broken dough", and pâte sucrée means "sweet dough".

Strawberry rhubarb compote
+ 2 stalks of rhubarb
+ 32oz strawberry (one large package)
+ 1 orange, zest only
+ 1/2 tsp grated ginger
+ 1 Tbsp light brown sugar

Procedures:

Tart crust (Pâte sucrée)

1. Sift flour + salt + sugar, and cut icy butter into 0.5" cube. Not to make flour mess in your kitchen, I recommend to make the dough over a large parchment paper.

TIP! If you have food processor, you can just add the sifted flour mix and cubed butters to the food processor and give them a quick whirl. Then, add an egg and pulse the button a few times to make the dough. The following steps are traditional way to form the dough with your hands getting dirty!

2. The keys to make a good tart crust are (1) not to overwork the dough* and (2) work fast and over cold surface not to melt the butter**. So, when you mix the butter into the flour, please do not use your hands at first, but mix it roughly with your pastry scraper.

* The more you work the dough, more gluten is formed, and the gluten will result in hard chewy texture while tart shell should be flaky and crusty.

** The reason for using cold butter and being careful not to melt the butter: If you mix cold butter with flour, the butter doesn't melt into the flour - instead it forms very small butter pieces coated with flour. Those small pieces of butter melt away in baking and leave layers, which gives the flakiness to your tart shell. However, if you use warm butter, those "layers" are not going to form properly resulting in hard tart shell.

3. When the butter is incorporated with flour roughly, use your finger to smash the butter pieces into small pieces quickly.

4. When the butter pieces are about the size of lentil, make a well.

5. Pour one beaten egg in the center of the well.

6. Combine the egg and flour+butter. First, start with your finger, incorporate the flour + butter mixture into the egg, then work the dough until it is homogeneous. Again! Be careful not to over work the dough. Add a few drops of ice water if the dough is too dry.

7. After mixing the dough, wrap it with a plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2-3 hours. If you don't use the dough right away, you can freeze the dough up to a few weeks. When you use the frozen dough, please take out the dough from the freezer and let it seat in room temperature for 15-20 minutes. If the dough is still too hard to work with, heat or hardly push down the dough with a baking roller to make it softer.

Strawberry rhubarb compote
1. Prepare the strawberries and rhubarbs as follows:

- Rhubarb: Peel the skins, and cut into ~1/3" thick pieces. The red color from rhubarb is mainly from the skin. Please reserve the skins if you cook the rhubarb with non-red colored ingredients, and use the skins to enforce the red color. In this recipe, we don't use the skins because the red color from strawberry will dye the rhubarb in bright red.

- Strawberry: Cut off the top (leaves) and cut into pieces. This is "rustic" tart... you don't need to make it small pieces at all.

2. Pour 2/3 of cut strawberry and rhubarb into a wide pan. As most of the strawberry and rhubarb are going to lose the structure, we are going to add 1/3 of them later to give more texture to the compote. Cover the pan with parchment paper lid (so called "cartouche"). Cook over very low heat. Check the compote frequently to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan and burned. Cook about 10 minutes.

3. After 10 minutes, add sugar, orange zest, and grated ginger and cook about 20 minutes more, until the compote is thick enough so that you can see the bottom of the pan for a while when you scrap the compote with a wooden spoon (please see the picture below). If the compote is too watery, remove the cartouche and raise the heat so that water can evaporate.

4. Turn off the heat and add the remaining 1/3 of chopped strawberry and rhubarb and mix well.

5. Cool the strawberry rhubarb compote completely. You can make the compote ahead and reserve in a fridge for three to four days.

Assemble the tart and bake it!

1. Preheat the oven to 420°F. Take out the tart dough from fridge, and divide the dough into six equal sizes. Roll each portion into round shape, 1/8" (~3mm) thick.

2. Place the rolled tart dough over a baking pan layered with a parchment paper or silicone baking pad. Spoon the cooled strawberry rhubarb compote in the center of the rolled dough. Fold the edge of the dough over the compote.