Tarte au citron

Passport & Plate - Lemon Tart - Tarte au Citron

USA | Tuesday, March 11, 2014 | 4 photos

Ingredients
Ingredients

For the tart shell:
200 g flour
100 g butter, at room temperature
1 egg + 1 spoonful of water
4 g salt
4 g sugar
10-1/4” tart pan (although you can substitute another size)

For the Lemon Cream:
7 egg yolks (you can reserve the whites for baking individual meringues, or variations on the tart)
2 whole eggs
250 ml of lemon juice (I normally use 5 large, ripe lemons)
About half a cup of the zest from the aforementioned lemons
75 – 100 g of sugar, adjust to the tartness of the lemon juice, I normally use 50-75g, but I like it tart
75 g of butter, cold and cut into cubes
a good pinch of salt
100 ml of heavy cream

 

How to prepare this recipe
First, prepare the tart shell.
Mix the dry ingredients together. With your hands, mix together butter and flour until it reaches a sandy texture (this is known as sablage). Create a well and drop in the egg and water (you may find you need less water with a larger egg). Slowly work in liquid, then smooth with the base of your palm (this is known as frassage). Don't overwork the dough, but make sure there are no big lumps of butter left. Roll into ball, flatten and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Once chilled, beat with a rolling pin (loosens up the dough without warming it), lightly flour the workspace, roll to desired thickness, fold over onto buttered tart pan, chill for 20 minutes. Pre-bake the crust using pie weights and bake in a 185 degree Celsius oven ( 375 in Fahrenheit) for 15 minutes. Remove the weights and return to the oven for about 10 more minutes. You'll bake the tart again with the lemon cream, so don't let the crust color too much.
For the Lemon Cream:
Whisk together eggs, yolks, sugar and salt, add in lemon juice and zest. Transfer to a medium saucepan and add butter. Cook over medium heat (stir with a stainless steel or plastic whisk- the lemons will pick up acidity, so if you have an aluminum whisk, just use a wooden spoon) stirring steadily then continuously as it starts to thicken, don't let it boil as the eggs will scramble. Remove from heat and strain through a sieve. At this point it is still called a lemon curd, once you whisk in the cream it becomes a lemon cream. Let cool. Pour into the pre-baked tart shell and bake at 185 Celsius until settled although the center will still jiggle slightly. Coloration around the sides is fine. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. This makes a bright, sunshine yellow tart, since it is all those yolks that give it color.
A nice variation on a lemon meringue is to whisk two of the egg whites until stiff and carefully incorporate them into the lemon cream before baking. It will lighten the texture of the tart.

 

The story behind this recipe
I grew up in Southern California amongst the orange trees and strawberry fields. I've always preferred tarter flavors like lemon, grapefruit and rhubarb. Except that I often find that these fruits are sweetened beyond recognition. The chefs at Le Cordon Bleu used to insist that “sugar is not a flavor”. It enhances flavor, like salt. And so in my search to narrow down flavor, to find the essence of lemon and the multiple meanings of the word “tart”, I set to work studying lemon. Over the years I've read through numerous recipes, I can't so much follow a recipe as mine it for information, and I've incorporated different techniques and variations into my own. I've searched out lemon tarts in Parisian pâtisseries and restaurants for done comparisons on the consistency of the lemon cream and its flavor. I've prepared this tart in the United States and in France, although Americans tend to think it's not quite sweet enough. It's a franglais fusion with the bright, ripe, almost sweet Californian lemons and French techniques. Sometimes, depending on the season, I'll add rhubarb or even herbs like thyme or basil. Or I'll prepare meringue nests instead of the pastry shell and top it with mixed berries.
The crust is largely the one I learned in school. It's based on a very simple ratio of two parts flour to one part butter, adding enough egg and water make it workable.
This tart tastes like lemon, which isn't to say that it's “bitter”, but its tartness is undeniable. Lemons are a winter fruit, although they bring to mind the summer sun. To me, this tart tastes like the bright, warm winters of Southern California, the large ripe lemons with an almost orange hue against the blue sky. Perfect to brighten up the gloomy, grey days of a Parisian winter.