July 18, 2011
Mignardise
tartes dattes
(date tarts)
When I staged at Le Château d’Amondans (Amondans, France) for 5 weeks in 2000, I quickly learned how much work it was to produce 4 pieces of mignardise for each guest each day. On the weekends, there would be wedding banquets for 200 to 250 people and each person had their share. One of the standard items on the mignardise plate in those days was a small tart that measured just 4 cm (1-1⁄2 in) across. Each tart consisted of a pâte sucrée (sweet short crust) base filled with crème pâtisserie (pastry cream). Just the before serving, the filling would be caramelized slightly with a torch. It took a bit of time to make 250 of these tarts. Luckily, that was mostly left to the interns working in the pastry section of the kitchen. (I sometimes filled or glazed the miniature éclairs that were also on the mignardise plates.) And though I didn’t have to spend time making the tarts, I appreciated the work of those who did.
The problem with making tarts for a mignardise plate at home is that most simple tart recipes would make a enough mignardises for a party of 30 guests. My typical party is 4 to 6 people total. So I’ve had to work out some ways of adapting recipes for my smaller demographic.
Since filled tarts are really made from two independent parts, a crust and a filling, there are almost endless combinations that I can come up with. This discussion is for one combination, and I’m sure that I’ll write about others in the future. For this one, I’ve chosen a pâte chocolat (chocolate short crust) and a purée de dattes (date puree).
The pâte chocolat is adapted from a recipe I found in French Tarts by Linda Dannenberg. She in turn got the recipe from Gérard Mulot, a pâtissier located in the 6eme arrondissement in Paris. For years, I stayed at a hotel just around the corner from his shop, but usually I just admired his creations through the window since they were far above my price range.
85 g (6 T)
unsalted butter, softened
45 g (3⁄8 c)
powdered sugar
1 t
vanilla sugar
1⁄4 t
fine salt
1 extra-large
egg
140 g (1 c)
all-purpose flour
35 g (2-1⁄2 T)
Dutch-processed cocoa powder
15 g (1⁄2 oz)
blanched almond meal
1. Process the butter, both sugars, salt, and egg in a food processor until well combined. Add the flour, cocoa powder, and almond meal, and pulse until just mixed. Transfer the contents of the processor bowl to a large square of plastic wrap and form into a disk. Wrap the dough disk very tightly with the plastic wrap and set in the refrigerator to hydrate, which will take about 12 hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 180 °C (355 °F).
3. Using a small, 28-mm (about 1‑in) diameter scoop, take some of the dough and press it into the bottom of a 4-cm (1-1⁄2-in) tart pan. Using your thumb, work your way around the pan to form an evenly thick crust along the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Level the top edge with your thumb, and use the tip of your index finger to make sure the dough is all the way into all the corners. Do the same for each of the tart pans you are filling.
4. Place the filled tart pans on a baking sheet, and place the baking sheet on a center rack in the oven. The tart shells will take from 12 to 20 minutes to bake.
5. When done, remove the baking sheet from the oven. If the bottoms of the crusts have risen, use the end of a dowel or a small rolling pin to press the crusts down in the center. Leave the shells in the tart pans until cooled and filled.
I usually divide the hydrated crust into two or three disks and freeze the extra portions. When I’m ready to use the next disk, I move it from the freezer to the refrigerator to thaw. This recipe produces enough dough for about 2 dozen tart shells. I always bake a few extra in case one or two are imperfect or break in handling. I sometimes will bake the whole batch and freeze the baked shells. If I do this, I vacuum pack the shells, in their pans, on something rigid, like a small plate, to protect the shells in the freezer.
Now with the shells completed, it’s time to think about a filling. The space for the filling in the empty shells is about 6 mm (1⁄4 in) deep by about 25 mm (1 in) round. That’s not a lot of space. I could choose a filling that I can pile high (but there still isn’t enough room the do a mixed-fruit tart). Whatever filing I choose, it has to have lots of flavor.
Last summer, my friend Sonia gave me a 5-kg (11-lb) box of dates from her cousin’s farm in Southern California. I could only snack on so many of them, so I turned about 2 kg (4-4⁄10 lb) of them into puree. I did this by first pitting the dates and then cooking them slowly with a little liquid to help them break up a bit. The liquid was homemade vin de noix (walnut wine) that I made the summer before. As I cooked the dates, I just added enough vin de noix to create a fairly loose puree. Once this was done, the whole mass was forced through a sieve to remove the date skins and any pits I had missed earlier. I packed the finished puree in a couple of jars I had laying around, and placed them in the refrigerator.
When it came time to fill the chocolate tart shells, I just used a small offset spatula to scoop out some puree and fill the shells level with the top. A single half of a pistachio nut was placed on top of each as a garnish. Even though the filling has a little moisture, the crust remained crunchy until the tarts were eaten, about 12 hours later.
© 2011 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.