Festive fruit tart

Photograph by Lori Korleski Richardson




This fresh fruit tart, with a shortbread base and a key-lime spread, looks pretty any time of the year, but with its blueberries, strawberries and raspberries, it's especially festive and appropriate for Independence Day. Enjoy!

The crust:

Ingredients
1 1/3 cup flour

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

2/3 cup butter, softened

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour a  12-inch tart pan.
Mix flour and brown sugar. Cut in butter until crumbly. Pour crumb mixture into pan. Press firmly and evenly against bottom and side of pan. Bake 10-15 minutes or until light brown.
Cool completely before proceeding.

The filling:

Ingredients
1 can nonfat sweetened condensed milk
8 ounces lowfat cream cheese, softened
1 cup key-lime juice

Instructions
Blend thoroughly the milk and cheese, then add the lime juice slowly until well blended. Spread to about an inch from the edge of the shortbread crust. It may look a little runny, but it will firm up as it chills. You may have an extra custard cup of the filling left over. Chill while preparing the fruit in the next step.

Putting it all together:

Ingredients
1 pint blueberries
1 pint red sweet cherries
4 very ripe strawberries
1 pint raspberries
(You will probably have fruit left over)
1 can of whipped cream

Instructions
Wash all the fruit. Stem and cut the cherries in half, removing the pits. Cut a cone around the top of the strawberries and remove the green tops. Slice the strawberries vertically almost to the tip, then fan them out and place tip to tip in the middle. Surround the strawberries with a circle of blueberries. Surround the blueberries with a circle of cherry halves, cut side down. Surround the cherries with another circle of blueberries. At the very edge of the shortbread, spray whip cream into rosettes and top each rosette with a raspberry, stem end down.

Serves 12

Dive into endive

Now that spring seems to be arriving in Virginia, I am looking forward to the opening of the farmers market. I only went a few times last year before it closed in the fall.

One of my favorite things at the Sacramento market was the little baggies of endive, often in two colors. I would use the outside leaves for appetizers, then slice up the centers and sprinkle in salads. Their bitter crispness was more than offset by a diced avocado, or a sprinkling of cheese, and made the salad more interesting.

If you find endive at a good price, especially a mixture of both colors, buy a bunch. And if you get tired of using it in salads, or smeared with a combination of blue and cream cheese for an appetizer, here's a tart by Gordon Ramsay that he says "is a lovely accompaniment to roast lamb, beef, duck or game dishes." The metric measurements in parentheses are his; I translated for U.S. kitchens. And although we use the term chicory to describe the curly-leafed green or the root that's roasted into coffee, in England it's what they call endive.

Gordon Ramsay's "chicory" tart
Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients:
4-5 heads of endive (chicory)
1 tablespoon (
25g) butter

2 tablespoons superfine (golden caster) sugar

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 ounces (
75g) blue cheese, such as 
Stilton or Roquefort
2 tablespoons crushed walnuts or pecans (optional)
9 ounces (
250g) puff pastry

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (200C/
Gas 6). Trim off a little of the base of each endive (chicory) head, then halve lengthwise. Set aside.
Cut the butter into thin slices and arrange in an 8-inch ( 20cm) ovenproof sauté pan. Sprinkle the sugar evenly over the butter and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Place over a high heat and cook for 4-5 minutes until the sugar and butter begin to caramelize.
Take off the heat and arrange the chicory halves in the pan, cut-side down (pack them in tightly to cover the base). Crumble over the cheese and scatter over the nuts, if using.
Roll out the pastry on 
a lightly floured board to 1/8-inch thick (
the thickness of a £1 coin). Use 
a dinner plate, slightly larger 
than the diameter of the pan, 
as a template to cut out a neat circle. Prick the pastry round with 
a fork, then drape it over the tart, tucking it down at the sides.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden and crisp. Remove from the oven and leave to stand for a few minutes. While still warm, turn out on to a plate and slice into four portions to serve, spooning over any juices from the base of the pan.