pan con tomate and fruit tarts
sometimes the simplest beauty can help you survive a rough day. and then also there are ancient acuaducts.
it is the first of october. soundly into fall, but it’s 78 degrees outside here today. the perfect weather: 70s during the day and 50s at night. perfect.
other than the weather, things are not perfect. not that we expected them to be-but just so many things are happening all at once. it all seems to take longer, cost more, have newly-encountered frustrations-but we are still here. we are still working on fixing up the l’albi house, still getting used to new schools and grocery stores and languages and norms and bureaucracy. moving to another country is an adventure-and sometimes adventures are tough, y’all.
and also oh so beautiful. this weekend, we went to a friend’s house for dinner- and it was a traditional evening spread for the whole group: pan con tomate, spanish tortilla, coca (like a very thin rectangular pizza base) with onion, toasts with black butifarra, olives (she cured them herself!), boquerones (like anchovies) marinated in vinegar (made those herself, too! 12 hours in vinegar results in “cooked” fish at that size), and of course iberian ham slices and so much more. the food just kept coming.
the nine of us ate well, both in quality and in quantity, and there was still so much left. i was charged with dessert, so i made my homemade chai, an apple tart, and a pear tart. i admit there were mixed reviews on my chai, and understandably as i make it good and gingery and it’s definitely outside the norm of flavors in spain. but the tarts? the tarts were a hit. we sat around that table for hours, eating little bites, sipping wine, telling stories, learning the history of those tiny little casitas in the middle of fields everywhere here, getting angry about politics, laughing about getting angry about politics…
we didn’t get home until about one in the morning, so i guess that was a… four hour dinner. this, friends, is a typical spanish evening meal. if you had ever been to my house for a potluck friday, back in the day, you now understand the inspiration.
but yes, daily, there are the hard parts. there are old house frustrations, there are paperwork hassles, there are new-school discoveries. for example, did you know in spain it’s wrong for an older student to use a pencil on their homework? pencils are for little kids, they said to me with a straight face as i sat across from them with my Blackwing pencil tattoo on my forearm.
but also daily, there are fields of olive trees. there is cafe con leche and a croissant for a euro seventy. there are strangers greeting you as you pass them on the street. (adeu! they call, lilting up at the end. ‘deu you respond, dropping your tone on the u.). there are sunsets over the old tree at the corner of the plaça. there is the castle up the hill one way and the church up the hill the other way.
and always, always, whenever you are in need of a little extra goodness, there is pan con tomate with the neighbors.
las tartas
in a premade flat pie crust or puff pastry (listen, i don’t want to hear it, i have not yet had the chance to perfect my great-great-great-grandmother’s pie crust with spain’s flour here), you can make a simple fruit tart quite easily. for my ginger pear and apricot apple tarts, i tossed thinly-sliced pieces of fruit in the spread, then arranged them on the crust, leaving an inch of crust surrounding them that was then folded over, brushed with egg and dusted with raw brown sugar. bake until browned in a 400f/200c degree oven on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. in my oven here it took about 15 minutes for the bottom of the crust to start browning up. i recommend baking them one at a time for the sake of even cooking. below are the ingredients for the spreads those fruits get tossed in. for each, mix all together over low heat on the stove until butter is melted and all is incorporated. that said, mess around with your own measurements and combinations (and then tell me what worked for you!)
apple, adjusted from midwest foodie:
lemon juice from half a lemon
1/3 c white sugar
1/3 c brown sugar
1/2 c apricot jam, the smooth kind
1/4 c flour
2 t cinnamon
3 T butter
pear, adjusted from broke and cooking:
2 T brown sugar
2 T ginger, freshly grated
2 T butter
1 t vanilla
1 t cinnamon
dash of nutmeg