While everyone around the country seems to be shouting FALL from the rooftops, I’m trying as hard as I can to hang onto summer. Our warm season starts a month later than everyone else so I’m less eager to see it go. I’m OK with a bit cooler temps, sure, but not fall; not yet. We’re just now getting the best of summers crop of tomatoes, corn, peaches and plums and I’m not about to go into harvest mode. I want the simplest dishes; fresh tomatoes dressed only with salt, olive oil and maybe a bit of basil, corn from the grill slathered with the most amazing chile butter (coming soon!), peaches often eaten just standing over the sink and plums, gorgeous little orbs that I like fine from my hand but I have learned to LOVE cooked into a tart or pie.
Last Sunday I went to a local farmers market and I happened to time it just right. Later than I would have liked, it turned out to be perfect as the stand I went up to first was handing out bags with the offer of $10 to fill them up. No problem. I did just that! Poblano peppers,eggplant, zucchini and patty pan squash, tomatoes and potatoes, pears and pluots. I was looking for plums but these pluots were perfect. Firm but ripe and a bit less sweet than a plum, I thought they would be perfect for a tart I wanted to make using up the rest of the puff pastry I had in the fridge.
What is a pluot you say? Well, many think they are half plum and half apricot but that combination is actually called a plumcot. Pluots are the result of a fellow named Zaiger crossbreeding plumcots with plums; resulting in a fruit that is generally 60-75% plum and the remainder apricot. As the Zaigers began backcrossing plumcots with plums to create more complex hybrids (with varying ratios of plum to apricot), they wanted to market them with a different name—one that wouldn’t be tarnished by the notoriety of plumcots. Thus they trademarked the name pluot (pronounced plew-ott) in 1990. (They renewed the trademark in 2007.)
They were sweet but not TOO sweet and had a beautiful color; just perfect, well, except for one thing. As long as someone is going to invest time in breeding fruit, why on earth they don’t make them cling-free is beyond me. The first half pulled off the pit relatively easily but I had to do surgery with a small paring knife to remove it from the second half of the fruit. I’m certain there was a GRR or two said during that process. Still, not a biggy and I soon had my fruit pitted and quartered. I like doing very little to fruit that is this fresh in the summer, so a short maceration in some orange liqueur and orange zest and we were good to go.
I normally use mascarpone cheese when I want to seal a crust that I’m going to fill with fresh fruit but this time around it was baked for just a bit with the pluots. Just enough of a filling element to hold the pluots in place without being so much that it masked their fantastic flavor. I did have one little hiccup. I decided to blind bake the puff pastry as I didn’t want to cook the fruit or cheese for the time it would take to bake. Um, hello big domed thing in my oven (doggone that’s what I should have gotten a photo of!). SO glad I looked before it had become too crispy. Doing the same thing? I had to remove it from the oven three times and prick it with a fork to let the air escape. Now if I could find a dessert to make with that big dome; I will tell you it was pretty spectacular looking! I think you could use any stone fruit for this tart or a combination even. Just make sure it’s ready and ripe; there is not a lot of cooking; it’s all about the fruit being fresh, ripe and fabulous!
Serves Serves 6-8
15 minPrep Time
25 minCook Time
Save RecipeIngredients
- 1 Puff Pastry, thawed
- 8-10 Ripe Plums or Pluots
- 2 Tbsp Orange Liqueur
- 1 tsp Orange Zest
- 8 oz Mascarpone, room temperature
- 4 Tbsp Brown Sugar
- 1/2 Cup Walnuts
- 4 Tbsp Brown Sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400'
- Cut the plums into quarters and add them to a bowl with the orange liqueur and orange zest
- Fit the Puff Pastry into a tart pan. (I didn't have a tart pan to use where I'm living right now, so I just used some aluminum foil to create a smaller form on a cookie sheet and then folded over the dough about 1/2 inch all the way around and used that for my edges.
- Prick the dough to allow some steam to escape and bake the crust on the middle rack for 15-20 minutes until golden on the edges. Check every 5 minutes and prick the dough again if it starts to inflate.
- Remove from the oven and increase the oven temp to 450'
- In a small bowl, mix the mascarpone with the brown sugar and spread it on top of the crust.
- Arrange the plums in rows to almost fill the top of the crust. Discard the leftover liquid.
- Chop the walnuts and mix them with brown sugar and scatter them over the plums and the crust.
- Bake on the top rack, just to toast the nuts and let the plums bond with the cheese; about 5 minutes.
- Remove from the oven; let cool and then refrigerate until chilled; serve with vanilla ice cream or whipping cream.
I’ve included a photo of my ‘fix’ because I didn’t have a tart pan; just folded some foil a couple of times to create a new edge; folded the dough too so it would be sturdy enough to stand up and it seems to work fine. The tart pan is easier, I can not deny. 🙂
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