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Light Fig Tarts with Crème Fraîche

A lovely and light puff pastry tart recipe featuring sweet and sticky figs. The flavour is enhanced with sharp redcurrant jelly for a tasty vegetarian dish.

From the book

Introduction

This is one of the most pleasing ways I know to serve seasonal fruit as a hot sweet. The same technique also works with thinly sliced apple or pears. It’s an incredibly easy dish to produce and I often make a bigger tart if I’ve got a lot of people round for dinner. When I first wrote a recipe for these tarts, 25 years ago, I picked up the idea from a smart Michelin-starred restaurant in France -1 can’t remember which one – and back then not only did I have to include a recipe for puff pastry but also for crème fraîche, which you couldn’t get in the UK. I used to mix double cream and yoghurt and leave it in the fridge overnight to produce an approximation of crème fraîche.

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Ingredients

1kg (2¼lb) puff pastry
12 fresh figs
4 tsp granulated sugar
3 tbsp redcurrant jelly
Crème fraîche, to serve

Essential kit

You will need 2 baking trays.

Method

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas Mark 7.

Divide the pastry into 8, roll out each piece thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut into a 15 cm (6-inch) disc. Put them well spaced apart on 2 lightly greased baking trays.

Cut each fig across into 4–5 slices and arrange them slightly overlapping on the pastry discs, leaving a 1 cm (½-inch) border. Sprinkle each tart with ½ teaspoon of granulated sugar and bake for about 12 minutes, until the pastry is puffed up and golden and the sugar has lightly caramelised.

Meanwhile, put the redcurrant jelly into a pan with 2 teaspoons of water and leave over a gentle heat until melted. Set aside to cool slightly but do not let it set.

Remove the tarts from the oven and brush the fruit with the redcurrant glaze. Slide each tart on to a warmed plate and serve with the crème fraîche.

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