The Poetry of Food Fruit Tart (dedicated to all my Poetry Friday friends)

I recently came across an amazing little book called Poems from the Table: The Fruits of the Earth in Verse at my favorite local book store Read Books. It really is the most marvelous little bookstore with the nicest people running it. The book I found is filled with poetry about food by some of my favorite poets. I was inspired to create a poem in food after reading May Sarton’s The Fig. I thought I’d take a poem every so often and create a recipe for it. I’m thinking a fig sorbet or a tart for May Sarton’s poem. I love poetry as much as I love cooking and am part of one of the best little things around the blogosphere, Poetry Friday. The thought of food as poetry made me smile and I set out to create something that would be a poem.

The book is beautifully covered in rich, dark burgundy spine with a black glossy front on which is a painting of the fruits of the earth. The colors are red, black, purple, cream and the palest, muted green. I was so impressed with the colors of the book that I decided to make a tart in the colors of the book to start with.

Off to my local Trader Joe’s I went, rapidly calculating what I would make. I’d use puff pastry and blackberries the recipe voice in my head was saying. Then I walked into the store and just started grabbing whatever called to me. I ended up with blackberries, black raspberries, morello cherries, pomegranate seeds, almonds, puff pastry, cream fraiche, a bar of bitter chocolate and French butter. I didn’t know what it was going to be yet, but I knew it was going to be completely, hedonistically decadent.

Once home, I opened up the puff pastry, brushed it with an egg wash and popped it into the oven. When it was golden brown and glossy I pulled it out to cool. I took a pastry wheel and cut it into small diamond shapes but left it intact on the pan.

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I melted some of the French butter with half of the chocolate in the microwave. I was going to pull out the double boiler but was too excited. I ended up with a buttery chocolate syrup that I added a couple of tablespoons of sugar to till it was slightly sweetened. I turned the crème fraiche out into a bowl and spoon by spoon dripped in the chocolate and whisked it in using a wire whisk.

I drained the cherries and started adding cherries and blackberries to the puff pastry once it was cooled. Then added the black raspberries and pomegranate seeds. I covered the whole thing with the chocolate crème fraiche and sprinkled it with slivered almonds.

The result was a fruity, chocolaty, buttery piece of tart heaven that brought the taste of summer into a cold winder night. It was however one heavy piece of tart. It was a good thing I pre-cut the slices before adding all that fruit or I’d never have been able to get a gohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifod slice. The fruit was just too dense and heavy. I served the slice in a bowl with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and everyone loved it. The next time I make it, I’ll do individual pieces and not go so heavy on the fruit.

The round up is at the Shockingly clever Karen Edmenstein’s on February 1st.