Food52
I wanted to share this recipe for a scrumptious tart that I made this past thanksgiving. Not a traditional turkey day pie, so I think it would be grand for the Christmas table as well. Previous years I had dabbled in rum raisin custard and other interesting cream pies but my French tart pans had yet to grace the table and I wanted to create something new. In a sea of brown apple and orange pumpkin I thought how wonderful to offer something with a reddish hue. As the great poetess of tarts Tamasin Day-Lewis has said the holidays call for something, “scarlet and latticed… distinctly elevating to the spirits”. Scarlet, Yes I would make a scarlet jam tart. And this, the word scarlet, is what brought me to thoughts of Hester Prynne. It seems du rigueur these days to have some sort of wild inspiration for your dishes with all the reality cooking competitions, “that panna cotta is so Carrie Bradshaw season three” or “I see the fall of Rome in that souffle.” So I had found mine in Hester Prynne. What sort of dessert would she bring to supper, what would Prynne’s offering be? Living amongst puritans with that pesky “pleasure is sin” belief I am sure that one was expected to bring something proper and prim, prim and proper. But this I know. The cooking always reveals something about the cook. So I imagine that our dear Hester couldn’t help herself. The tart would be humble in appearance; one might fear the noose turning up with Nipples of Venus or some other overtly provocative thing but be sure there would be a hidden surprise, wild fruits or exotic spice. Subtlety lost not on Tinsdale, he would get her message, something unbridled within. So Voluptuaries this is one for the recipe box, jam made with wild ligonberries and star anise draped in a crisp linzer crust, Puritans proceed with caution sinful pleasure contained within. Adapted from the Linzertorte recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook
