Ellie attempts a fig tart

Ok, I promised I'd write this post for my friend Emily, who wants to learn to cook.

The other night I tried to make a fig tart. Which is odd, because I don't even really like figs. But the farmer's market store had some for sale, and for some reason they looked good, so I bought some and then tried to figure out what I should do with them. Deborah Madison's Local Flavors cookbook had a lovely looking fig tart recipe, so I thought I'd try that. The recipe called for the usual stuff plus something called "orange flower water." As I don't really know what that is, nor do I think any of the supermarkets in Oxford, Mississippi would have any, I decided to leave it out. Lesson #1: recipes change while you're making them. Best to think of them as guidelines.

First I had to make a pie crust, which I haven't done in a while. So I tried to mix everything in my food processor. I just discovered my food processor and started using it (I got it for Christmas). It might be the best thing ever, but pie crusts, so far, do not get along with it very well. Chopping vegetables for soup, awesome. Chopping vegetables for salsa, awesome. Pie crust? Not so much. but it looked ok, so I kneaded it a couple of times and stuck it in the fridge, while I proceeded to cut up the figs, which looked like this:

Damn, adding pictures is confusing. Anyway. Aren't they pretty? Aren't they just so, so pretty?

So I got the crust out of the fridge once it had cooled off and firmed up, and rolled it out on some parchment paper. It fell apart in places like it always does, but I managed to get it into the pie dish and into the oven without too much fuss. Flour all over the kitchen, of course, but relatively speaking. Unfortunately, I then proceeded to totally burn the crust:

Well, it's hard to tell in the picture, but trust me. It was burned. 25 minutes at 400 degrees, my ass. Though I should probably have also not substituted salted butter for unsalted. Lesson #2: recipes are sometimes wrong. Lesson #3: Sometimes the changes you make to recipes are wrong.

So I had all my figs ready to go, along with the cream/sauce stuff that was supposed to go in the tart as well, but I had no crust. So, cussing all the way, I turned the oven off, got in the car, drove to Wal-Mart, and bought ready-made tart crust. So I used that instead, tried really hard not to burn the tarts, and came out with this:

So. Not entirely homemade, in the end, but hey, they looked pretty good and they tasted better.

Lesson #4: go with the flow. Sometimes you have to make a Wal-mart run in the middle of the recipe. Drinking a beer or two helps keep the stress under control. Or sometimes the water in your apartment shuts off for a couple of hours with no warning. Again, I recommend having a drink.

Meanwhile, I want to learn to make a tart crust like the kind fancy bakeries do. Like a tart crust I might get at Bottletree (remember the raspberry-ginger Valentine's Day tart, Sarah? Yeah, we're still talking about that one) or one I might have gotten at Provence in Nashville. Sigh. I miss Provence. It was like Bottletree but with an even bigger selection. And an olive bar. But you know, a tart crust that's almost like a cookie but not quite? Any suggestions?