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Zucchini Tart with Curried Custard and Dried Currants
May 18, 2003 | by Heidi
Once Upon a Tart, Page 22
I had a batch of tart dough left over from last weeks Provencal tart with Gruyere, so I figured I would try the Zucchini Tart from the same book which uses the same base tart recipe. Let me start off by saying, I might have been better off freezing the dough because after a week in the fridge (wrapped in plastic) I knew my dough would probably still pick up that stale funky fridge aura. It ended up being subtle, but I'm sensitive to that sort of thing.
Speaking of which, our dishwasher has a permanent funky smell that hits you whenever you open it to load dishes. I grew up with a dishwasher and never noticed any smells coming from it. I can't figure out what is causing this...anyone have a solution?
On with the tart-making. Roll out the dough, par-bake the shell. I reduced the shrinkage this time buy using a giant jar of pie weights (instead of the white beans I used last time), and leaving them in throughout the baking and cooling of the shell. The shell ended up shrinking just a wee bit, and didn't pull away from the sides of the pan at all.
You toss a ton of zucchini slices in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and brown them in the oven for a bit before layering them over a bed of golden currants in your perfect semi-baked crust.
Whisk 2 eggs with some light cream (I used half and half), some curry powder, and pour it over the top of the zucchinis. Sounds tasty.
I baked it for about 45 minutes. The zucchinis got nice and lightly browned on top, and the edges of the tart behaved nicely and didn't burn on me.
Looking at the recipe, I thought the zucchini with the curry powder would be an interesting tasty combination. It was good, but I wasn't blown away. I think I could have bumped up the flavor a bit more. Next time I think I will try a different curry powder, or mix my own. My curry quotient was way too understated.
A couple things I have learned in my recent tart making escapades. When you are starting from scratch tarts take a god-awful long time to make, don't kid yourself. I'm not even going to get into the making of the actual crust which requires mixing, and chilling, and rolling, and chilling, and pre-baking. After that with many of these savory tarts, there requires a pre-baking of the vegetables going into the tarts (like the zucchini in this one), and then a completely cooling of said pre-baked ingredients, so as not to cook the eggs in the custard. So a word to the wise: don't come home from work late and expect to bust out on one of these if you expect to eat before 10 p.m.
Impulse buy: I was downtown last Friday to get a haircut which is right across the street from William-Sonoma. I ended up buying 2 shiny, new, rectangular tart pans (which were, of course, strategically placed next to the pie weights), so I am going to use them to try out the next tart recipe in here which is the Roasted-Potato Tart with Fresh Tarragon, Sauteed Mushrooms, and Melted Gruyere.
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