Berry Bonanza

Last Sunday we went berry picking over on the coast, between Pescadero and Davenport. Beautiful sunny day, and  row upon row of beautiful berries. The strawberries there are slim pickings by now, but there are tayberries and olallieberries in abundance. If you are local, then you should definitely check them out: Swanton Berry Farm

 

 An afternoon's berry picking does of course leave one with a dilemma - what to do with the results! I confess I had never tried a tayberry before, but they are delicious- a cross between a blackberry and a raspberry. In case you are romantically envisaging two adjacent plants coincidentally growing towards one another to create a tasty happy accident, then scratch that. Apparently the tayberry was created in a lab by a Scottish scientist. Oh well, they are still tasty! They look kind of like a longer raspberry, but taste sweeter than raspberries. The difficulty when picking them is that, as far as we could tell, the colour varies from red, when they are unripe to... err a slightly different red when they are ripe. The only solution was to taste test them to find out what colour was the optimum (oh what a horrid job!) Once you have the colour in your head , it is easy pickings.

 

So what to do with this gorgeous haul? I did what every self-respecting cook does and googled it, serendipitously coming across a lovely tart recipe on a blog ingeniously called Swallowing the Seasons. (I will definitely be checking back there regularly - some beautiful recipes). Now, I often baulk at making my own dough, but I also found a recipe for pate sablee, a French sweet pastry, for the base, and thought, what the heck, nothing ventured nothing gained. (The fact that I'd been out in the sun all day, and had already had more than a sample of the wine we picked up at a local winery, probably also contributed to the decision!) Of course, if time is pressing, then by all means use a simple pre-made pastry, but this one is a lovely shortbready crust, which is worth the effort, if you can.

 

Tayberry Tart
Serves 5 very greedy Farrars, or 8 normal human beings

For the pate sablee (from About.com):
1 1/4 cups AP flour
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup finely ground almonds
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter

Tart filling (from Swallowing the Seasons):
6 large egg yolks
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
4 TBSP white sugar
1 pt fresh rinsed tayberries (or raspberries), left to dry on kitchen roll
2 tsp confectioners/powdered sugar

1. First make the pastry. Prepare a tart pan (mine is 11" in diameter and 1 1/4" deep), by spraying lightly with canola oil spray. In a food processor, pulse together flour, sugar, almonds and salt. Add chilled butter and continue to pulse until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs with a few pea-sized pieces of butter still visible. Add egg, and pulse until the mixture forms a ball that holds together. (If you don't have a processor, you can totally do all this by hand and with a pastry cutter, but don't handle it so much that the butter starts to melt).
2. Make dough into a disk shape and wrap in cling wrap. Place in the freezer for 40 minutes before working with it. While it is in the freezer, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
3. Roll out dough as much as possible on a floured countertop, but this is a temperamental dough. Don't worry though; when it starts to crack too much, or stick to the counter, put whatever shape you have into the pan and press into the tin, then trim off any excess. (This recipe made too much for my tart, but I baked the remainder into little cookies)  Line pastry shell with parchment paper and fill with baking beans, then bake in the preheated oven for around 20 minutes until the shell is starting to brown at the edges. Remove the baking beans and parchment paper and continue to bake for a further 5-10 minutes to dry out the pastry. Remove from the oven and set aside.
4. Make the filling: Use a handheld mixer to beat together the egg yolks, cream and sugar. Pour the mixture into the shell, but not all the way to the top. (Again, this recipe makes too much of the custard filling for an 11" tart tin, so you will have some left over unless your tin is bigger than mine).
5. Carefully place the tayberries into the custard, distributing them evenly across the tart. They will stick up out of the custard.
6. Place tart in the center of the oven and bake for a further 20 minutes until the center of the tart is almost set (only slightly jiggly), and the custard is starting to brown.
7. Cool completely to serve (tart will set further while it is cooling), then dust with powdered sugar.