Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Lemon Blueberry Tart

I've previously mentioned that I had an over abundance of citrus around my house, so I made my first lemon and lime curds. I followed Ina Garten's recipe for lemon curd, which I have to say, didn't really work for me. I have loved all of the other Barefoot Contessa recipes I've made, but this was too bitter, and here's why. She calls for the zest of 3 lemons taken off with a carrot peeler, being careful to avoid the white pith. I was really careful, but it still came out bitter, so after putting it through a sieve to remove all of the zest - which was a lot of zest because my lemons were big - it worked out beautifully. So for the lime curd, I used my microplane and only put 1 tablespoon in, and that was perfect from the get go. Overall, I decided curds are much easier than I thought to make, and that it is much cheaper than buying a jar at the store.

So what to do with a quart of lemon curd? Make a tart for Sunday dinner!

Pastry:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
pinch of salt
1 stick unsalted butter - straight from the fridge, cut in small cubes
6-8 tablespoons ice water

Prepare it like you would any other pastry/pie shell. Refrigerate for about half an hour before rolling it out and putting it in a tart pan (I used a 9 inch square, but anything about that size will work) Then poke holes with a fork in the crust, add parchment paper and weights, and blind bake the crust at 350 for about 25 minutes. While that is baking and cooling, let's talk about the filling.

You have many options, here are a couple:
I combined 1 cup of sour cream with 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk and a teaspoon of vanilla paste (you can obviously use good vanilla extract, but I love vanilla paste), and put that as a first layer on the cooled crust.

I had some blueberries that were really tart, so in order to use those, I made a compote. But if you have delicious blueberries at your disposal, you could just put those on top of the sour cream mixture. To make the compote, I put in a quart of blueberries, probably 3 tablespoons of water, 1/4 cup of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice. I put it over medium heat for about 10 minutes, but you'll know when it's ready. (You could put half of the blueberries in at the beginning and reserve the other half for after the heat, but my blueberries were too tart for this.)

After it cooled for about five minutes, I put the compote on top of the sour cream, then put that in the fridge for a while. Since I already had the lemon curd made, I just threw it on top right after the compote had set up a little bit. And voila, a great way to use lemon curd.

I am sorry I didn't take a picture of it, but I forgot. End of story.

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