Crust
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup walnuts (you can actually use a cup or so of walnut halves)
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- 2 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup (generous) strawberry jam
Filling
- 1 C whipping cream
- 2 Tbs white corn syrup
- 4 Tbs unsalted butter
- 6 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped
- 1 pint strawberries, hulled, halved.
Preparation
For Crust:
Combine flour, sugar and salt in processor and mix. Add walnuts; process until chopped. Add butter and cut in using on/off turns until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add yolks and process just until moist clumps form. Gather dough into ball; press into tart pan. Chill 30 minutes.
Preheat oven 375°F. Bake until golden brown, about 25 minutes or until golden. The crust will “puff” slightly, but that’s OK. Spread jam on crust. Cool completely on rack.
For Filling:
Heat cream and corn syrup in heavy small saucepan over medium-low heat until tiny bubbles appear around edges. Remove from heat. Add chocolate and butter, shake pan to mix slightly. Then beat with a whisk until mixed, cool until mixture is room temperature and beginning to thicken but still pourable, stirring occasionally, about 50 minutes. Pour chocolate filling into crust. Refrigerate until filling is set, about 1 hour. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. cover and keep refrigerated.)
Arrange strawberries cut side down in concentric circles atop filling. Serve immediately or refrigerate up to 1 hour.
Have dinner of Creole shrimp a la “po’boy” (recipe to follow, some day) with friends and eat tart with birthday present of Rain vodka. For whatever reason, this is a great life.
I took these pictures at 7:30 p.m. The cloud cover is so thick that we’ve had fairly consistent light since the sun rose at 4:49 a.m. Civil twilight isn’t until 8:57, for a full 16 hr, 45 minutes of visible light. I could easily be working outside now, at 8:45, and the thrush is singing in the tall trees at the edge of the garden. Tomorrow’s light will be shorter by 18 secs and the long slide toward Christmas begins again.
The house sits at the top of a south-facing slope that was originally quite steep and sandy. We planted strawberries and a cherry tree there quite soon after moving in, and the ground was raw and unstable. I tried stacked rock walls and haybales and had some success with the resulting terraces, but nothing seemed to keep the whole hillside from sliding into the path at the bottom of the hill every spring.
Every once in a while, your mother comes by the garden and it’s a nice enough day to take a picture or two. We’ve had a cold, wet spring and both Mom and the peach trees have been unhappy with the weather. Finally we had a day with bright sun, a little extra warmth, and a nice breeze to keep the bugs off for a few minutes.
Three years ago I cleared out a lot of scrub that had grown up between the bottom of the garden and our gravel road. I left a young spruce trunk about 5′ high with the thought that eventually I’d put a bird house there or something. A few days later someone left this owl and since then neighbors and mysterious strangers have dressed it up in any way you can imagine. The owl has had ski goggles and a hat/scarf combo, Halloween costumes, yellow silk bunny ears, flag bunting and flower garlands. Last Christmas someone put a beautiful wreath around its neck, decorated with scallop shells. Tomorrow afternoon the Boy graduates from high school and someone has commemorated the occasion with an owl-scaled mortar board. This is a cool neighborhood.
Generally, the best plant combinations in my garden are unplanned. Not the plants, but the size, texture and color of the picture they make together, which is something I don’t see until they have grown together in a way that one day, has become exciting and attracted my attention.
The fragrance is wonderful. I have a still-life set up in the hoop house of three of these in a vase and I can’t keep the hummingbird and bee-moths out of there.
Not that it’s very summery here - we’re having a damp, cool, long English spring. The high temperature here was 57 F and the low tonight is predicted to be 40 degrees, which is on the chilly side for the folks already filling up the campgrounds. Time to heat up the kitchen by making cookies!