Apple Tart

This weekend I experimented with tarts for a piece I am writing for the Free Times Entertaining section. It's more complicated than what I want to put in the article, but I muddled my way into a really good bourbon-apple tart with vanilla pastry cream.

I wanted to make an apple tart. I didn't want to use cinnamon, because I wanted to get away from the classic apple pie flavor. And when I asked Lawson whether he wanted apple tart with or without a bottom layer of pastry cream, his response was emphatic: more, yes, all of it, please.

I used the simplest tart crust recipe -- the one you posted under Blueberry Tart, actually -- and let it cool. I filled it a vanilla pastry cream using whole milk and 4 egg yolks, though honestly I think a simple cornstarch-based vanilla pudding would have been even better. I chilled that while I sliced up three Golden Delicious apples, two of them peeled, and sauteed them in 3 tablespoons of butter and half a cup of sugar until they were gooey and translucent. I arranged the slices on top of the pudding, then added some bourbon to the pan and reduced all that a little bit before glazing the tart with it. It was so good. I only wish there were someone besides the two of us to eat it.

In other food news, last week I was treated to a fried bologna sandwich from the local Exxon station, unlikely source of pork-based home-cooked local country foods. It tasted, surprisingly, like a good grilled hot dog.