THE PURE TASTE OF PEACH TART by Robert Reynolds
Over the years I got to live in Provence a number of times. I brought students there for training, and my friend Michel, who owned restaurants there, would take them under his wing. He was smart, funny, irreverent, and very talented. He loved the American students, and was generous to them. Whenever I announced my intention to come back to France, Michel would simply say, “Your room is ready.”
Michel grew up in Lyon. He knew every corner of the city. After one time when he spent 6 weeks working with me at my restaurant in San Francisco, he was happy to return to his city. Hardly off the train, he phoned me to say he anticipated dinner, telling me he planned to eat a Poulet de Bresse, drink an excellent Beaujolais, and finish with a San Marcellin. I can hear the expectation in his voice, such was his pleasure. His menu stays in my memory, and when I go to Lyon, they are what I eat.
While prowling the neighborhoods in Lyon, Michel found a small shop run my two women. It had a plain décor, furnished only with the foods the women made and displayed behind old-fashioned glass counters and on shelves. It was modest and inviting. The women made the simplest apple tarts composed of a flat crust, and a thin layer of apples glazed with jam.
Those tarts were so good that he would say to me, “Let’s drive to Lyon and visit those ladies who make the apple tarts.” It took an hour and a half to make these impromptu trips. Michel would buy several tarts to bring back to the restaurant, or to his home. He would gather staff, family, or friends to eat. The goal was always to determine what made these simple tarts so good. In the end, we always drew the same conclusion: good ingredients, good flour, butter and salt. Good apples, Good jam for the glaze.
The tarts, made with a single layer of the thinnest slices of apples, always yielded an essential flavor that seemed disproportionate to the amount used. How could so little yield so much? The tarts seemed to affirm the French dictum that “Things taste best when they taste like what they are.”
This summer has been good for stone fruit. Magnificently perfumed apricots came and went in a flash. Peaches are having a longer run, but we know time is fleeting. Yesterday I prepared a simple pastry with flour, butter, salt, a bit of vinegar, and water from Bull Run. I rolled the dough, lined a pan with it, and froze it while the oven warmed.
I chose firm fleshed peaches that gave the slightest hint of yielding. They were not fully ripe. I halved them, peeled the skin, and cut ten slices from each half.
When the oven was hot, I scattered sugar onto the crust and baked the shell until the sugar caramelized and the crust was nicely golden. While the crust baked, I melted a piece of butter in a skillet, added the fruit, dusted them with sugar, and cooked them for not more than two minutes. I wanted them to soften slightly, give up some juice so the crust would not be soggy. I wanted the slices to hold their shape.
I carefully fanned out a single layer of peaches onto the crust, (didn’t use a glaze as the peaches were so juicy) and baked it ten more minutes. It then sat on a rack in a place of honor until it was time for dessert. It was like a small bouquet of garden flowers sitting on a counter exuding unparalleled charm.
It was served without cream. I was tempted by ice cream, or crème anglaise, but I kept resisting. I listened to that voice in the back of my mind reminding me that “Things taste best when they taste like what they are.”
THIN PEACH PIE
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
3 to 4 tablespoons cold water
3 large peaches
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 or 2 tablespoons sugar
Put the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to fluff. Add the butter, cut into half tablespoon-sized pieces, and pulse a dozen times until you obtain pea-sized pieces of butter. Add the cider vinegar to the cold water. Turn the processor on, and tip a tablespoon of water at a time into the flour. Pause a few seconds before adding the next volume of water. Stop adding water when the dough starts to gather. Turn the machine off, invert the dough onto the counter. Flatten into a cake, and refrigerate 15 to 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 375oF.
Roll the dough into a disk large enough to fit into a 9-inch tart pan. Fit the dough into the pan, trimming any extra. Freeze for 10 minutes before baking. Bake 15 minutes until the sugar caramelizes, and the crust is uniformly golden. Remove from the oven.
Halve the peaches, trim the skin. Cut each half into ten slices and put them in a utility bowl. Add the butter to a skillet large enough to hold all the peach slices. Dust lightly with sugar, and cook for two minutes. Return the peaches to the bowl.
When cool enough to handle, arrange peach slices in a single layer on the crust. Put the tart back into the oven and bake for another ten minutes. Remove to a cooling rack to rest until ready to serve. Hold the cream, or not.
Look for the new September/October issue of NORTHWEST PALATE.
I share the cover with Vitaly and Kimberly Paley. They hired me as the writer for their new book, “PALEY’S PLACE COOKBOOK, Cooking in the Northwest,” which will be released mid-October. Read and find out why we are so jazzed.
