Over the summer while cooking at Abracadabra, Dilara asked me to make tarts for my guest chef menu. Figs and various fruits were married with pistachio sable dough, the end result molded into a lemon tart originally created by Marco Pierre White. More recently, I was asked to make a daily tart on my fall menu. At first I was reluctant. My clientele are primarily a business bunch, in and out for lunch, not much time for a pastry. Perhaps they would go for a pudding, a mousse aux chocolat , berries, or sorbet. But why put even the minimal effort required for a tart when it would likely be eaten by staff rather than customers? Then again, even head chefs don’t write all the rules, all to say that I begrudgingly accepted another added task on my already long list of “to dos.”

It’s been a couple of weeks since baking some basic tarts, most of them scratched out of memories of previous time as a pastry cook. Surprisingly we actually sold a few. Maybe “the tart” is catching on. They are actually so easy to assemble. You can fill them with anything, and finish with a glaze or powder with sugar.

Recently on a trip out to Redhook Brooklyn, I bought a Rosemary shortbread and apricot slice at Baked. It’s awesome. The savory and sweet married so well with the sable crumb and streusel topping, I wolfed this pastry in minutes…seconds! So I decided to keep a compilation of tarts, a record for me and for some possible recipes coming up?