Improvised Summer Fruit Tart

If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a pretty casual cook. What I mean is that I don’t follow recipes exactly. Often, I don’t even use a recipe, I just throw things together based on my experiences. This didn’t come naturally. I took a series of cooking classes starting in high school, which have taught me a lot of basic skills that have been extremely helpful. From understanding measurement equivalents to getting comfortable in front of a stove, I’ve learned a lot from being in a class.

What’s really awesome about the current state of food (or–I’m gonna say it–foodie) culture is that it’s made the art of cooking incredibly accessible. Look it up. I’m sure there are some basic cooking classes in your neck of the woods.

I highly recommend cooking classes as a place to start, because much like most knitters cannot learn to knit from a pattern book, most cooks cannot learn to cook from a recipe book.

Once you have the basics down though, you’ll find yourself drawing on some of your favorite recipes as a starting point for all kinds of dishes.

For instance, I almost always use Martha Stewart’s pâte brisée recipe as my jumping-off point for tarts, pies, and quiches. Then I just riff, like with this improvised summer fruit tart.

Here, I’ve taken peaches, sliced them and grilled them slightly on each side. I then deglazed the pan with about a quarter to a third cup of water, added chopped dried figs and chopped candied ginger, and reduced the sauce until it was syrupy (but still liquidy all over the bottom of the pan–you don’t want anything to burn).  I arranged the peaches in the par-baked tart crust, poured in the sauce, and baked for 15 minutes.

It’s so quick that I could do it during the meal. And it was a huge hit with my brunch guests.

Keep it easy. Enjoy.