Rustic Peach Blueberry Tart
Summer's all about the fruit. (And veggies, but that's another matter entirely.) As I finish up our step-by-step plan to get off all fake, processed food (due, oh, next week to the publisher!), I'm struck by how easy it is this time of year when our market's are bursting with copious abundance. So in the spirit of summer, here's a great tart Bruce came up with on the fly. Watch the twists in the recipe. I think they're really cool.
First, preheat the oven to 350F.
Next, the filling: peel, pit, and dice two peaches and set them in a bowl with 1 cup blueberries as well as 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.
Bruce used raw sugar, unrefined and spectacular. We've become unabashed fans of turbinado, muscavado, and the other unfiltered, unrefined sugars. They're admittedly expensive, but here's the good news: they carry so much flavor that there's no reason to add very much.
Set that mixture aside and work on the crust. Put 1/2 cup all-purpose flour in a large bowl, then stir in 1 tablespoon sugar. Now cut in 3 tablespoons coconut oil with a pastry cutter or two forks until the mixture resembles coarse sand. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature, sort of the consistency of very thick mayonnaise. It adds a gorgeous, almost tropical taste to the crust, a formidable flavor match to that fresh fruit. Stir in 2 tablespoons very cold water and 1/4 teaspoon cider vinegar, then stir into a loose ball.
Drip some water on your work surface, lay a piece of wax paper on top of the drops (which will keep it from sliding around), add the dough, sprinkle with a little flour, and roll into a rough circle about 10 inches in diameter. Bruce then turned the wax paper over onto a well-sugared pizza peel because he cooked the tart out on the pizza stone on the grill over indirect, medium heat. (No fancy sugar here, just the refined stuff because it's basically to keep the dough from sticking to the wood.) You could also just turn the wax paper upside down onto a lightly greased baking sheet and be done with it. In any event, peel off the wax paper.
Mound the peach mixture into the center of the crust, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border all the way around the thing. Again, think rustic. There's no reason to get crazy here. Save the Type-A stuff for bread-baking and checkbook-balancing. Rustic is rustic, after all. Like life, it's uneven.
Fold up the edges of the crust so that they come up and over the filling a bit, leaving the center exposed. Remember this: if there are rifts in the crust, the filling will bubble out. Not the worst thing for a little aesthetic dripping, but you definitely don't want all that juice running all over the baking sheet (or pizza stone).
Place in the oven--or if you're like Bruce, slip the tart from the peel to the hot stone on the grill. Bake until the center is bubbling and the crust is lightly browned. (And if you're like Bruce, you'll have to use that peel to get under the tart and get it back off the pizza stone.)
What next? Ah, well, that's gelato. And tomorrow.
blueberry, dessert, fruit desserts, peaches
Reader Comments (2)
Hi Bruce and Mark,
This tart looks spectacularly delectable.
I like that you've gone away from used your everyday cane sugar, but I'd like to know more about your experience with Turbinado etc.
On one hand, if you can get away with using less because of its sweetness, that's a victory in itself, but my understanding is that turbinado sugar is still similar to table sugar in its health properties...
have you read otherwise?
many thanks,
Michael
Michael:
We still steer clear of more refined sugars when we're making recipes for ourselves--we can't when we're working for magazines and such because of testing requirements. But we do really enjoy the taste of the less-refined sugars.
But yes, you're right that turbinado and the rest are the same as refined sugar when it comes to the pancreas and liver and other body processing functions. You can't eat them if you've got blood-sugar issues, for sure. Or must at least limit your intake as you would with any sugar.
But that said, we find that for people without dietary restrictions, these less-refined sugars bring more satiety because they are loaded with trace flavors, rather than the monochromatic palette of refined sugar. And as we discuss endlessly in REAL FOOD HAS CURVES, more flavor = more satiety for various brain-chemical and digestive-signaling reasons.
That all said, we wrestled with sugar as with no other ingredient in that book about getting off processed food.
M.