La Palette’s strawberry tart

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

Thanks to Marie of A Year in Oak Cottage for choosing an immensely doable recipe this week. Inspired by a La Palette Cafe in Paris, this tart has few components – for my version an almond pâte sucrée crust, some strawberry jam from Summerland, British Columiba, and fresh strawberries from the Okanagan Valley. Put together at the last minute, the finished tart is such a looker:

I have yet to make it to Paris and the recipe for this week’s TWD intrigues me. A New York Times review of La Payette piques my interest even more. After a few Google searches, I came upon Peter Hilton’s website where he writes about his many travels. Mr. Hilton names La Palette as one of his favourite restaurants and the photo below was taken by him (released under a Creative Commons License). Click on the photo below to enlarge.

To start, I made a pâte sucrée crust with ground almonds added. Done correctly, this will look like a loose sandy-pebbly mixture that comes together with slight pressure. I patted this onto an eight-inch tart pan.

I was happy to have Summerland Sweets strawbery jam, which in my opinion is the best available in Vancouver. Edible BC sells it at Granville Island and also via their online store. A good amount of this ruby-red jam was heated slightly over the stove then poured onto the still-warm crust.

Washed, trimmed and cut strawberries were then heaped generously over the cut shell. Ms Greenspan likes to serve this with crème fraîche, just the way they do at La Palette.

Notes:

• The recipe was shared by Ms Greenspan on Serious Eats. Click here.

• Pâte sucrée is basically a sugar cookie. Don’t expect flaky pastry, think shortbread. The dough is very forgiving, easy to pat onto a pan or rolled for a more refined looking tart. Scraps can be re-rolled and re-used or can be dipped in sanding sugar to make cookies.

• Here is a video showing how to press crumbly dough onto a tart pan.

• The shell is best when baked to a deep golden brown. When you are nearing that perfect dark shade, stay close to the oven. The time it takes to go from perfect to burnt is very short.

• Sides are browning faster than the rest of the shell? Fashion a shield with foil or take a shiny aluminum tart pan one size larger than the one being used (without its bottom) and invert it over the baking shell.

• Please visit Tuesdays with Dorie blogs. Click on “TWD-all” on the upper left to expand the list of TWD bakers, then click on anyone to view.