This past weekend I got my first taste of the French countryside... both literally and figuratively. Our friend Jules (who also was kind enough to host my
birthday party) and his family have a country house, or compound rather, in the coastal town of Veulettes sur Mer. It's located in the Normandy region on the coast of France, about 2 hours northwest of Paris. They share the compound with his whole family, aunts, uncles, and grandmother, each with their own home, a shared pool, trampoline, game house, etc.
We spent the weekend basking in the sun and eating our hearts out. We jumped like little kids on the big trampoline, and drank the night away. One of the best parts about this time of year is that it's blackberry season. If picking almost 3 kilos (almost 6 1/2 pounds) of blackberries with Quentin and his mother in the forest behind their apartment (just the day before, mind you) wasn't enough, Veulettes was
loaded with unpicked bushes of the tart little morsels. We picked enough to make a tart (and a little extra)... you know, since we didn't already have
tons of food... and went back to the house to look up some recipes. I came across one recipe which called for
créme fraîche and since we just bought some of the most delicious créme fraîche from the supermarket that morning, I thought it would only make the tart
that much better.
The tart was
delicious. Blackberries taste so much better when you pick them yourself. It's probably due to all the hard work that goes into picking them... since they have super sharp thorns and tend grow alongside massive bushes of poison ivy (eek!). It's sooo worth it.
I didn't actually get a chance to take pictures of the tart we made in Veulettes... it was just so good, and disappeared so quickly. So I went back into the forest when we got back to Bougival, and picked my way through the thorns and poison ivy to get enough blackberries to make one more tart. I added some lemon zest to this one, to brighten up the flavors even more.
So in honor of the blackberry, I'm substituting Tartine Tuesday with Tart Tuesday... it just seems fitting.
Tarte aux Mûres (Blackberry Tart)
Pâte Brisée (Pastry Dough):
250g flour
125g room temperature butter
1 egg yolk
pinch of salt
water
Cut room temperature butter into small pieces. In a large bowl, add flour and a pinch of salt. Stir to combine. Add the pieces of softened butter to the flour. Using your fingertips, loosely incorporate butter into flour just until the butter/flour mixture becomes flaky.
Add the egg yolk into the bowl. Begin gradually incorporating the flour into the egg yolk with your fingertips and add a little water if necessary. Mix until all the flour is incorporated into the dough, and you are able to form it into a ball. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Wrap ball of dough in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
Once dough has rested, roll out in a circle wide enough to fit an 11-inch tart pan.
Filling:
600g blackberries
1/2 cup créme fraîche (if you don't have access to créme fraîche, I guess you could use sour cream... *sigh*... just make sure it's full fat, none of that low fat stuff!)
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 egg
zest of 1 lemon
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
Wash blackberries in a colander and set aside. Line an 11-inch tart pan with pâte brisée (pastry dough) and arrange the blackberries on top. In one bowl, whisk the milk and créme fraîche together until there are no more lumps of créme fraîche. In another bowl, combine sugar, brown sugar, lemon zest, and flour. Stir to combine. Add egg and mix into the flour/sugar mixture. Finally, add milk/créme fraîche mixture into the flour/sugar/egg mixture and whisk to combine. Pour the mixture over the berries. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Serves 6.
