Something else I cooked this weekend was what I’ve called Rustic Fruit Tart. This was mainly because I’d had some blueberries in the fridge for some days and thought they should be cooked. It’s rustic because it used mostly what I already had to hand and it isn’t designed to look fancy, just taste good. I used rhubarb and blueberries; you could do it with any other combination of fruits you like.

For two 8″ (20cm) tarts this is what I did …

1 packet of commercial pasty (or enough homemade pastry for two 8″/20cm flan tins)
800g fresh Rhubarb
350g fresh Blueberries
2 tbsp Sugar
half wine glass of Fruit Juice

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C (gas mark 6); use the fan if you have one.
2. Wash and chop the rhubarb and put in a pan with the fruit juce and sugar. You want the end product to be fairly sticky so don’t add too much fruit juice.
3. Cook, with a lid on and stirring occasionally, until well cooked and the rhubarb pieces have broken down.
4. Meanwhile roll out the pastry and line the two flan tins. Prick the base of the pasty cases with a fork so they don’t bubble too much; use baking beads if you have them. Keep any pastry offcuts.
5. Blind bake the pasty cases for 15-20 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and fill each case with the cooked rhubarb.
7. Scatter plenty of blueberries on top of the rhubarb.
8. Decorate — as badly as you like, after all this us “rustic” tart — the top of the flans using the pastry offcuts and glaze (I used milk and sugar).
9. Now bake for another 15-20 minutes until the pastry decoration is golden and the filling bubbling.
10. Remove from the oven and eat hot or allow to cool in the tins before turning out.
11. Dust with icing sugar (if such is your desire) and devour with clotted cream.

Notes
1. You can use either puff or shortcrust pastry. I used puff which didn’t work well as it puffed too much when blind baked. I’m also lazy and use commercial pastry — well I’m allowed some shortcuts!
2. Individual tartlets would work too, using exactly the same method.
3. I put a piece of baking parchment in the base of each flan tin to ensure the case didn’t stick too badly.