Strawberry tart with elderflower pastry cream

Summer began on Friday, around five in the afternoon, when I arrived at home. As soon as we got out of the car, I immediately felt the heat rising from the sun-baked stones. Grandma was outside, in the garden, hanging out the clothes on the drying rack, hidden in the shade of the bay tree, finally without the woollen cardigan she wears for at least eight months a year. 

I hugged Noa, who was waiting for us at the gate, wagging her tail, tousled as usual, and I looked around, aware for the first time of where I was, of the season and the blinding light of an early summer afternoon. The grass had grown out of control, just like the rose bushes, that this year had elected June as their month. The brambles along the road were dotted with white flowers, as fleeting as this feeling of lightheartedness of the first days of summer.

In the last weeks, I’ve been completely absorbed by cooking classes, photo shootings and the preparation of a speech on Tuscan PDO and PGI products for BuyFood Toscana. If I am worried about something, I don’t even realize what’s going on outside my window. A public speech, in English, in front of so many people, certainly falls into the category of those tasks that make me slightly nervous. For days I roamed around the house holding the crumpled pages of my speech, trying to learn it by heart, forgetting everything else. I had not noticed that the most rainy, humid and cold spring of the last few years had finally given way to the new season.

On Friday, coming home after the event, elated for the speech and light as after an exam, I realised that summer had arrived.

And summer found me totally unprepared, with the duvet still on the bed and the plaid abandoned on the sofa in the living room, with my coasts hanging on the coat rack along with the woollen scarves, without my favourite teas for the scorching hot afternoons and with a couple of spring recipe still in draft here on the blog.

I looked at this strawberry tart and I told myself that, after all, it is always the right time to make it: a Sunday gathering with the family, an invitation to a friend’s house, but also one of those afternoon teas in the garden that then, lazily, turn into into a dinner. It could not wait there, in the archive, for another year, could it?

Strawberry tart with elderflower pastry cream

I’ve made this strawberry tart quite a few times in May, when the weather was cooler, when the elderflowers were still fragrant and immaculate, speckles of light along the country roads, and when the strawberries would steal the show from any other ingredient on the market stalls.

If you can’t find fresh elderflowers, you can replace them with lemon peel, with a vanilla bean or, if you prefer to keep a floral note, with some chamomile flowers.

As for strawberries, they are still in the peak of the season. However, as we are now quickly moving towards summer, try also cherries, pitting them first, or apricots, or make a summer fruit salad, mixing shapes and colours.

As the aromatic herbs are now living their most splendid season, you can rely on them to add a fresh and botanical note to the tart: thyme or lemon thyme with strawberries, lemon balm or verbena with cherries, rosemary with apricots.

Speaking of this Italian pastry dough, pasta frolla, work it quickly, and don’t skip the resting time in the fridge, it’s the only way to be able to use it when summer comes. 

Summer tarts with fruit compote

I have recently rediscovered the pleasure of making shortcrust, our pasta frolla, during cooking classes: hands that smell of butter and lemon zest, slices of tart served at the end of a meal in vintage small plates found at a flea market, accompanied by a cup of espresso. After a winter and a spring of olive oil and chocolate cakes, of apple cakes, almond biscotti and zuppa inglese, now all I want is fruit tarts and crostate, and I propose them with studied persuasion.

As always, when the time of an ingredient or a recipe is coming to an end, I have never enough of it. In the next days, the sultry sticky summer heat will be back, which will make it difficult to work with shortcrust. So, during the last cooking classes, we had fun with pastry cream tarts and fresh compotes, made with strawberries or cherries and very little sugar.

So if you prefer to simplify today’s recipe, skip the pastry cream and replace it with a fresh fruit compote: strawberries, or cherries, but also apricots. Rinse the fruit and cut it into small pieces, then collect it in a saucepan with the juice of half a lemon and cook it over low heat, stirring often, until collapsing. Now add two tablespoons of sugar, stir and cook for a few more minutes. Cool the compote before pouring it on the tart shell – you don’t need to blind bake it – and bake it for about 30 minutes. Transfer the tart to a wire rack and let it cool completely.

I have the feeling that this year I will overturn all the rules and I’ll be making fruit tarts and pies all summer long.

Serve the strawberry tart with… a summer menu

We can finally work on a summe menu, one of those easy, lazy menus, to seal with a strawberry tart.

• Fried sage leaves. Fried sage leaves are probably the easiest appetizer you can serve to open a summer Tuscan meal.They are usually paired with other fried goodness, such as zucchini flowers or leftover slices of stale bread.
• Ricotta gnocchi with zucchini flowers. The best seasonal fresh herbs shine through these ricotta gnocchi: mint, basil and lemon balm add a fresh and green note enhanced by a bouquet of zucchini blossoms used an unusual seasoning. It’s like biting into an early summer evening, like a restoring nap among bushes of fresh herbs in the shade of a quiet garden.
• French bean salad. This dish debunks the myth that all salads are boring. It fills you up and has a heady basil smell. But above all, it is vibrant in its summer colours: the olives wink among the French beans and the eggs add substance. Do not omit the anchovies, they will make a difference.

Link Love

• There’s a new episode of our podcast, Cooking with an Italian Accent, and it is all about Tuscan PDO and PGI products. How do you choose your products? Are you familiar with PDO and PGI products? How do you recognise the quality of the food you buy when you do not know the producer? If this is a subject that is interesting for you – an informed way to shop for local and sustainable products – let us know, as we might work on a series of episodes specifically dedicated to the different products, with interviews and recipes. 
• Maida Heatter, Cookbook Writer and the ‘Queen of Cake,’ Dies at 102. I must confess I didn’t know Maida Heatter and her books, but when I read this, I knew I had to have one of her cookbooks. “A cookbook should be treated like a school textbook. When reading it, or cooking from it, keep a pencil handy for notations. Underline things you especially want to remember, make notes — just don’t be afraid to write in it. In the future,” she added, “you will find that your own notes have added to the book and made it more valuable to you.”
• More recipes with elderflowers here and here.
• There’s a new series on Netflix, The Chef Show, with Jon Favreau and Roy Choi, and I can’t wait to watch it. 

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