Fruit Slinger

In the relentless heat of Tuesday's market, my eyes fell on the fraises des bois.

"What do you think about a tart?" I asked Fred, waving my head in the direction of the berries. He looked at me.

"Yes!" he said. "With a little crème pâtissière!" Fred is French. When he said crème pâtissière, I had to stand back to avoid being hit by the diacritical marks.

"Mmm... I don't know about the pastry cream. I was thinking just the berries sitting in the tart crust."

"No! You have to do it with a crème pâtissière!"

He was right. Then it hit me: "I can spike the pastry cream with Cointreau!"

I bought — yes, bought! — a half-pint of the fraises des bois.

I had already purchased some Cointreau, inspired by a dessert plate from Carnivale chef Mark Mendez. I had plans to follow his lead for dessert one night a few weeks ago. He had macerated some berries in the liqueur. But for as simple as that technique would have been, we had spontaneously settled for an even simpler technique: Cointreau and shot glasses. The half-empty bottle was still sitting on the counter.

"I'll bring you the tart tomorrow morning," I told Fred.

At home later that afternoon, I headed straight for the kitchen and started a tart crust and half a batch of pastry cream. I would make the crust for tomorrow morning's tart now and fill it with pastry cream and berries in the morning.

For dessert that night, I would skip the crust and serve the fraises des bois sitting atop pastry cream in tiny cups.

The crust was a struggle. The kitchen was hot. The crust had been in the freezer, but the butter in it started to melt as soon as I touched it. I had to roll it out in stages, popping it back in the freezer for a few minutes to let the butter solidify again.

Then the crust was done.

I stood whisking constantly over the double boiler to make the pastry cream. Finished, it rested in the ice bath.

With my impeccably clean finger, I poked the pastry cream. It wasn't custard; it was soup. In my reluctance to see it curdle, I had failed to let it set well enough.

I made a second batch. This time, it took. While the pastry cream sat in the ice bath, I whisked in butter and two splashes of Cointreau.

The two-bite dessert of wild strawberries resting atop pastry cream was perfect for a steamy summer evening. I was satisfied.

The next morning, I assembled the tart. I put the pastry cream into the tart shell.

In the refrigerator were the berries that I had set aside the night before.

Only they weren't there.

I closed the door and opened it again, hoping to reset the contents of the refrigerator.

The fraises des bois weren't there.

My friends knew I would be on the farm for the next few days. I suspect — but don't know — that sometime after I called it a day and went to bed, they made sure the berries didn't go to waste.

It makes sense. It was the right thing to do! After all, what the hell was I going to do? Make a tart the next day before dawn? And anyway, couldn't I just get more berries the next day?

I took the tart — no fruit, just pastry cream — to the market and told the story to Fred. He laughed. I laughed, too.

From a box underneath the table, I took some of the bruised strawberries we had set aside and sliced a handful on top of the tart.

The tart was finished.

Fred got a spoon. I got a spoon.

And we both dug in.

Update on Friday, 26 June 2009 at 05:50 AM by Dan

From the department of unsmirching reputations:

This morning I awoke to find in my inbox rather convincing evidence that the fraises des bois had not, in fact, been consumed by others while I slept.

My friend sent me a photo of a bowl of them on the kitchen table. Now of course you're right when you say that they could have been anyone's fraises des bois on anyone's kitchen table at any time since the invention of digital photography. 

But I'm inclined to believe her when she says that they were in the fridge the whole time.

Would you believe this isn't the first time I haven't been able to find something in the refrigerator or the pantry?

I'm somewhat notorious.