The first leg of our Mediterranean excursion starts in France. Not a bad place to start, don’t you think? Home to the Eiffel Tower, Les Champs-Elysées, The Lourve, yes; but let’s not forget about the food.

I still remember the first time my family took me to a local French patisserie as a child. My parents love to tell me the story of how I stood in front of the glass case mesmerized by all the pretty sweets on display. It’s amazing how, within a single memory, the mind can recreate the scent of freshly baked baguettes or the image of sweets perfectly aligned on display.

I like to think that that memory played a pivotal role in me wanting to pursue cooking, but who knows. One of the things I remember most from that shop growing up is the array of tarts, sweet and savory, that the head chef was known for. Seeing as this is the first installment to A Taste of the Mediterranean and we’re on our way to France now, I thought we could make tarts for the first challenge.

The tarts could be sweet or savory, it’s up to you! Probably many of you (with exception of the kiwis and aussies) are wondering where you can find fresh berries like these this time of year without having to pay an arm and a leg for them.

The simple solution is to not limit yourself to summertime berries! Luckily, one of my favorite French food bloggers, Fanny from Foodbeam, is not only our lovely co-host for this month, but she also has a couple of amazing posts for some tart inspiration.

On her blog, Fanny has a milk chocolate passion fruit tart with roasted pineapples inspired by Pierre Hermé – of course in French that all rolls off the tongue as as simple as Tarte chocolat au lait et fruit de la passion, ananas rôti. How’s that for inspiration? Not only that, but Fanny also offers a beautiful step-by-step tutorial on how to make your very own pâte sucrée at home, here.

The first challenge for A Taste of the Mediterranean is to create your own tart, sweet or savory. The blogger with the winning tart will receive a $50 gift certificate to igourmet.

Submission Deadline: January 31, 2009

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Aside from not having stable internet for an entire week, nothing irks me more than to have to deal with the providers to come fix the problem.  The customer “care” service probably qualifies as some sort of psychological warfare/torture; what with the annoying elevator music loops during hold and the machine constantly reminding you, “you’re call will be answered in the order it was received, please hold for the next available representative.”  It’s enough to make any sane person go mad!

As I’m writing this post the internet problem has finally been resolved, but the past few days have not been pleasant. To help ease my discomfort, I turned to baking. I didn’t want to make cookies or brownies… I needed something bright; something that would be sure to lift my spirits.

I needed fruit tarts.  To me, plump berries and fresh fruits epitomize summertime. For the regular shortbread crust, I gussied it up with some finely ground pistachios. It takes away from some of the bland flour taste and adds a tasty nutty undertone. I brought those pistachios with me from Aleppo - a Syrian city internationally renown for its pistachios. Of course, once these babies run out, that doesn’t mean I’ll stop making this amazing nutty crust.  High quality pistachios work just as well. 

I use my food processor to form the crust because it cuts the butter into the flour perfectly. You pretty much want to end up with tiny beads of butter running throughout the flour.  The dough will seem a bit dry, but that’s perfectly normal.  Once it just barely comes together, you’ll want to wrap it in plastic wrap and throw it in the ice box to chill out for a bit.

Once it’s chilled you can easily roll the dough out into your favorite tart molds.  I like these little ones because I could quickly convince myself to go for seconds since they’re so darn tiny.  Don’t dwell on the amount of butter in the dough – just look at the pretty specks that the pistachios leave.  

I couldn’t resist with the title of this photo. After poking the dough with a fork so it doesn’t rise while baking, throw some dry beans on top to secure the job.  This will also prevent the crusts from browning too much while you’re blind baking them.  Now on to the pastry cream.

Pierre Hermé is a culinary genius.  I adapted this pastry cream recipe from his collection and can say without a doubt that it is one of the best pastry creams I’ve made at home.  I infused mine with some grated orange zest and a vanilla bean (again, my obsession with the specks).

Since I have yet to find a decent farmers market in the area, I resorted to the ultimate culinary saviour that is Costco.  The fruits on display looked and tasted amazing, but now I have kilos upon kilos of kiwis, blueberries, oranges, strawberries etc. leftover (even after making the tarts). I’m sure I’ll think of something creative to do with them.

I usually don’t like to toot my foodie horn, but these tarts were so yummy.  I even went on to make another batch (this time with an almond-infused pastry cream) and they were all so good.

Part of the fun was assembling the tarts and coming up with neat little designs.  You seriously can’t go wrong with such pretty fruit, though. So make sure to make some fruit tarts (or anything with fruits) before summer’s long gone. For the Ausies and Kiwis reading this post, sorry for the tease… soon your summer will come and we’ll be the ones keeping warm with soups and stews.

Decisions, decisions… I was about to dig into this little tart with an equally little spoon, until I realized how portable they are. Needless to say, I put the spoon down and dug right in. 

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