King Arthur's Tart
Let me be the first to say that I love Mark Bittman. He's hilarious, his recipes are tasty, and he's not all high-brow and scary like Food Network recipe folks sometimes are.
But oh god Bittman, your recipes are a BITCH to follow.
I think my husband put it best when he said, "It's a recipe, not a story." Seriously. Don't write out your recipe in paragraph form. Give me each step in a bulleted list. Don't make me do math in the middle of doing a recipe just to figure out how much flour is "remaining flour." I measure as I go, man. Not everybody's got this nice kitchen with all these cutesy little glass bowls to hold their perfectly measured ingredients. Instead, I've got a normal kitchen and a LIFE, thank you can we move on now.
*cough*
This is my take on Mark Bittman's Mock Lattice Pie (or Stone Fruit Patchwork Bake, depending on which page of his blog you're on). I'm calling it the King Arthur Tart (or The Sword in the Stone Fruit Bake, since coming up with multiple names seems to be the way to do things 'round these parts). It's fairly easy, it's really delicious, and hell, I'll confess: it's the reason I bought a food processor in the first place.
King Arthur's Tart
Ingredients
Pastry topping
1 and 3/4 cup flour*
6 shakes salt
4 tsp sugar
1 and 1/2 stick butter/margarine, cold, cut into 12ish pieces
6 tbsp ice-cold water
Plastic wrap to wrap the dough in
A sprinkling of flour to roll the dough out in
Fruit filling
A pat of butter to grease the pan
3 decent-size ripe nectarines, pitted and cut up
3 ripe plums, pitted and cut up
31 cherries, stemmed and pitted
6 tbsp flour*
1/2 cup sugar
1 generous tbsp lemon juice
Some sugar to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Pastry
• Preheat oven to 400˚F. Grease a 9x13" casserole dish with butter or margarine. Set aside.
• In a food processor, combine 1 3/4 cup flour, 6 shakes salt, and 4 tsp sugar.
• Pulse until blended.
• Add in 1 stick cold butter/margarine, cut into 8 pieces, and process until mixture looks like very coarse cornmeal (about 20 seconds).
• Slowly add 6 tbsp ice water through feed-tube.
• Process until just combined.
• Scoop dough out of food processor and onto a sheet of plastic wrap
• Form it kind of into a ball and sock it into the freezer for 10 minutes, or until you're ready for it.
Fruit filling
• Cut up nectarines. I cut each half in half, cut each of those halves into quarters, then slice them so they're little triangles.
• Do the same thing to the plums.
• Stem and pit the cherries.
• Dump all of the fruit into a large mixing bowl.
• Add 6 tbsp flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1 healthy tbsp lemon juice.
• Using your hands (or salad tongs if you're a wuss), mix well until you have a mess.
• Dump that mess into the greased 13x9" pan.
Assembly
• Get the dough out of the freezer.
• Onto a floured cutting board or rolling sheet or heck, cleaned counter-top, roll out the dough into something 1/4" or 1/2" thick.
• Cut that something into rectangles 1/2" to 3" wide. DO NOT get rid of the janky weird edge pieces.
• Arrange the rectangle dough across the top of the fruit. It should cover everything and have plenty of error-margin for putting another not-as-thorough layer on top.
• Wet your (washed) hands with water and rub them over the dough to moisten it, but only a little.
• Dry your hands.
• Sprinkle juuuuuust a little bit of sugar over the top.
Baking
• Bake this bitch for 35ish minutes. It should be bubbling merrily around the edges when it's ready and just starting to brown a little on the corners of the pastry.
• Let it cool for about an hour before trying to serve it. If you can't wait and you serve it when it's hot, it'll still taste good, but you'll probably want to serve it in a bowl, 'cause it'll be goop city. Tasty goop city.
Goes great with a glass of milk!
* I use whole wheat flour and it is DELICIOUS (and slightly healthier, but this is dessert so shh don't tell), but white flour would probably work just as well.
But oh god Bittman, your recipes are a BITCH to follow.
I think my husband put it best when he said, "It's a recipe, not a story." Seriously. Don't write out your recipe in paragraph form. Give me each step in a bulleted list. Don't make me do math in the middle of doing a recipe just to figure out how much flour is "remaining flour." I measure as I go, man. Not everybody's got this nice kitchen with all these cutesy little glass bowls to hold their perfectly measured ingredients. Instead, I've got a normal kitchen and a LIFE, thank you can we move on now.
*cough*
This is my take on Mark Bittman's Mock Lattice Pie (or Stone Fruit Patchwork Bake, depending on which page of his blog you're on). I'm calling it the King Arthur Tart (or The Sword in the Stone Fruit Bake, since coming up with multiple names seems to be the way to do things 'round these parts). It's fairly easy, it's really delicious, and hell, I'll confess: it's the reason I bought a food processor in the first place.
Ingredients
Pastry topping
1 and 3/4 cup flour*
6 shakes salt
4 tsp sugar
1 and 1/2 stick butter/margarine, cold, cut into 12ish pieces
6 tbsp ice-cold water
Plastic wrap to wrap the dough in
A sprinkling of flour to roll the dough out in
Fruit filling
A pat of butter to grease the pan
3 decent-size ripe nectarines, pitted and cut up
3 ripe plums, pitted and cut up
31 cherries, stemmed and pitted
6 tbsp flour*
1/2 cup sugar
1 generous tbsp lemon juice
Some sugar to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Pastry
• Preheat oven to 400˚F. Grease a 9x13" casserole dish with butter or margarine. Set aside.
• In a food processor, combine 1 3/4 cup flour, 6 shakes salt, and 4 tsp sugar.
• Pulse until blended.
• Add in 1 stick cold butter/margarine, cut into 8 pieces, and process until mixture looks like very coarse cornmeal (about 20 seconds).
• Slowly add 6 tbsp ice water through feed-tube.
• Process until just combined.
• Scoop dough out of food processor and onto a sheet of plastic wrap
• Form it kind of into a ball and sock it into the freezer for 10 minutes, or until you're ready for it.
Fruit filling
• Cut up nectarines. I cut each half in half, cut each of those halves into quarters, then slice them so they're little triangles.
• Do the same thing to the plums.
• Stem and pit the cherries.
• Dump all of the fruit into a large mixing bowl.
• Add 6 tbsp flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1 healthy tbsp lemon juice.
• Using your hands (or salad tongs if you're a wuss), mix well until you have a mess.
• Dump that mess into the greased 13x9" pan.
Assembly
• Get the dough out of the freezer.
• Onto a floured cutting board or rolling sheet or heck, cleaned counter-top, roll out the dough into something 1/4" or 1/2" thick.
• Cut that something into rectangles 1/2" to 3" wide. DO NOT get rid of the janky weird edge pieces.
• Arrange the rectangle dough across the top of the fruit. It should cover everything and have plenty of error-margin for putting another not-as-thorough layer on top.
• Wet your (washed) hands with water and rub them over the dough to moisten it, but only a little.
• Dry your hands.
• Sprinkle juuuuuust a little bit of sugar over the top.
Baking
• Bake this bitch for 35ish minutes. It should be bubbling merrily around the edges when it's ready and just starting to brown a little on the corners of the pastry.
• Let it cool for about an hour before trying to serve it. If you can't wait and you serve it when it's hot, it'll still taste good, but you'll probably want to serve it in a bowl, 'cause it'll be goop city. Tasty goop city.
Goes great with a glass of milk!
* I use whole wheat flour and it is DELICIOUS (and slightly healthier, but this is dessert so shh don't tell), but white flour would probably work just as well.
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