Scenes from Scotland

A few weeks ago, I was able to spend a short couple of days in Edinburgh, Scotland, visiting a good friend of mine and doing academic stuff.  It was officially a work trip, so much of the time was spent in cafes or offices, working away at various things (yay to the British and their tea), but I did get to snap some photos--though not as many as I would have liked because, let me tell you right now, the light in Scotland is some of the most beautiful that I have ever witnessed.  It's truly, truly incredible.  And the city is amazing, too.  Squint and you can just pretty much see painted-face Scots storming through the valley to the castle, with flags flying and swords waving.  Anyways, here are some postcards from Scotland for you.

Faux-laroids after the jump....

Strawberry and Rosemary-Caramel Buckwheat Tart

My friends seem to be getting a wee bit spoiled.

Case in point: last weekend was a combined birthday bash for Richard and some of the folks in his family who have birthdays in May and June.  My line of thought on this party was "Oh, perfect! I'll make cupcakes of some sort to bring, which will be nice because I haven't made cupcakes in quite a while."  Perfectly reasonable, no?  So, I asked Richard what kind of cupcakes he would like for his birthday.  This is what he says to me:

"No, I don't want cupcakes.  I want a tart."

Wait wait wait--back up--come again?!  Now, you all must understand something about Richard.  He's not a food enthusiast like I am.  Not in the slightest.  This is the guy who, when I met him years ago, would have been perfectly content eating the same turkey-cheese-iceberg lettuce-mustard sandwich for lunch every single day for years on end.  People who meet us nowadays are constantly scratching their heads about how we're together, since Richard feels as dispassionate about food as I feel passionate about it.  Over the years, I've managed to train him well on certain things--for instance, he now has a fine appreciation for well-made tapioca tea or fresh, finely-rolled, raw-fish-incorporated sushi.  But he often still snubs his nose at my culinary... er... creations.  So, imagine my incredible surprise upon discovering that I'd actually trained and spoiled him far more than I had even thought, Mr. "I Want a Tart and not Cupcakes for my Birthday."

So once his choice of desserts was settled, I set about working on designing a tart worthy of a closeted dessert connoisseur's birthday.  And there's possibly no food item Richard loves more than strawberries.  I've never seen anyone inhale the same vast amounts of the fruit like he does.  Hence, I knew it had to be a strawberry tart.  Because there would be so much strawberry-age involved, I wanted to darken up the rest of the flavors more and to develop a robust earthiness to the layers underneath the sweet summery berries, so I went for a strawberry, rosemary-caramel, and buckwheat tart.

The tart has a base of buckwheat pastry--slightly nutty and sweet from the buckwheat but with a darker tang than with a regular, white flour crust.  The pastry is coated with a light layer of rosemary caramel that is just salty enough to cancel out the sweetness, and the rosemary offers a hint of brightness and uniqueness to the strawberries on top.  (The rosemary isn't overpowering at all.)  The strawberries sit on a bed of simple vanilla pastry cream and are brushed with a generous amount of freshly-reduced strawberry syrup, basically packing double the amount of strawberry flavor into a single fruit layer.  With patience, you can slice the strawberries and arrange them around the tart, or, go for the rustic look by plopping entire tiny whole strawberries on top.

Richard's a man of few words (yet another big difference between us, since I'm prone to blathering on and on and on), but given that he pretty much polished off the entirety of the two tarts that I made on his own, I'd say that this was a fair success.  Next year, though, he's getting cupcakes....


Read on for recipe....