Lemongrass Mango Tart SHF no.9
June 17th, 2005

Today has been sunny and warm and best of all, I had a day off. All good reasons to be in a great mood and to top it off, it’s Sugar High Friday again! Well, like I need a reason to live out the sweet tooth I have… This month’s edition is hosted by Jarrett at life in flow with the lovely theme “Tantalizing Titillating Tempting Tarts”. Since I just bought a book on quiches and tarts, I was more than eager to finally try one. I narrowed down possible options to four and asked O. for a final word. As one of them contained an Asian ingredient, my question was rather rhetorical…

Lemon Gras Mango Tart SHF no.9

Finely mince the lemongrass by hand or use a food processor. Combine with the double cream/heavy cream in a pot and bring to the boil. The original recipe uses only double cream, as I ran out of it, I used 300g and substituted the rest with 100g heavy cream – which worked fine. Take the mixture of the heat and let it rest for about an hour.

Butter a tart pan (the one I used was 26cm in diameter, while the original recipe suggested 22 cm) or use parchment paper. Sieve flour into a bowl, add butter and salt. Mix well, then add the coconut rasps, the icing sugar and enough water to get a smooth dough. It’s fun doing it with your hands, sometimes…, but you can, of course, also use your favorite kitchen machine.

Roll out dough in a large enough circle and press into your tart pan. Use a rolling pin to trim away any excess dough by rolling it across your pans’ edges.

Line the tart with parchment paper, fill it with dried beans (or rice, as I didn’t have any dried beans – anything dry of this size should work I guess) and chill for about 30 minutes in your fridge. Meanwhile preheat oven to 190 ° Celsius. Bake for 15 minutes and remove from oven. Take out beans/rice or whatever you used and bake for another 10 minutes, until the tart shell gained a nice golden crust, then allow to completely cool down.

Whisk yolks and sugar to a foamy cream. Sieve double cream (with the lemongrass bits) into a pot and blend with the egg yolk cream. The lemongrass you can toss. Cook the mixture at low heat and let thicken.

Soak gelatin in cold water for a few minutes and let it dissolve in the hot cream while stirring. The recipe calls for 4 sheets, I used 3 and would probably reduce it to 2 the next time. Remove pot from heat and let chill. Once cooled down, add filling to the tart shell and put it in the fridge for about 3 hours.

Before you serve it, peal the mangos (how many/much you need also depends on the size of the mangos of course) and cut in thin slices (this was one of the hardest parts for me, how can you get equal looking slices from a mango?). Arrange on cake, add some icing sugar and caramelize under high heat until the mango develops golden spots. I skipped the last part and used a blowtorch for single pieces, which worked fine… until the cream began to melt again… Note-to-self: If I use a blowtorch for a already cut piece of cake, I have to be really quick ;) — so the backup plan was to simply use little mango cubes instead.

Résumé: The taste of the lemongrass cream was an absolute surprise. In combination with the mangos and the coconut crust definitely one of the best tarts I have ever had. On the other hand it’s rather time-consuming and I yet have to find a solution for cutting and arranging the mango pieces on top, so the whole tart is covered AND looks good.

Lemongrass Mango Tart

Recipe source: Sarah Banbery "Quiches & Tartes", p.54, adapted

Required time: prep. ~45 min., baking ~30 min., chilling ~3h

.

Ingredients for the tart shell (serves 4):

225g flour (Thank you Lis :)

1 pinch of salt

125g butter, chilled

50g coconut rasps

1tbsp icing sugar

water, cold

.

Ingredients for the filling (serves 4):

3 stalks lemongrass

300g double cream

100g cream

4 egg yolk

100g brown sugar

3 sheets gelatine

2 ripe mangos

1-2 tbsp icing sugar

Comments

Jun 17th,
2005

Jun 17th,
2005

Jun 17th,
2005

Jun 17th,
2005

Jun 18th,
2005

Jun 18th,
2005

ALTAF

Jun 18th,
2005

Jun 18th,
2005

Ana

Jun 18th,
2005

Jun 18th,
2005

Jun 18th,
2005

Jun 19th,
2005

Jun 19th,
2005

Jun 19th,
2005

Jun 19th,
2005

lis

Jun 19th,
2005

Jun 20th,
2005

Jun 20th,
2005

Jun 20th,
2005

Jun 20th,
2005

Jun 21st,
2005

Lyn

Jun 21st,
2005

Jun 21st,
2005

Jun 24th,
2005

Jun 27th,
2005

Jul 7th,
2005

Ted Ray

Apr 1st,
2007

Hazel

Sep 20th,
2008

Megan

Jan 16th,
2010

Mar 24th,
2011

Jes

Aug 27th,
2011