Medieval Custard Tarte

     Since this is supposed to be a French pastry blog, I decided to use the French spelling for tart.  This is a nod of both respect and adieu as I have decided to make this all about baking, not just about French pastry.  This is because I have discovered that I quite like American baking and French, well, not so much.  Or at least, not as much as I thought that I would.  So, I am widening my horizons and including baking from all nationalities.  That being said, I did use an authentic French medieval recipe to prepare this custard tart.  I started thinking about medieval cooking as I was contemplating the idea that I have been reincarnated and that one of my lives (possibly my only other) occurred in the middle ages.  Now, stop laughing.  This is not as absurd as it sounds.  Many great thinkers believe in reincarnation.  Unfortunately, I can't think of any right now, not being one of those great thinkers myself.  So, I believe that this is true because I have an overwhelming emotional reaction to the scent of lavender which was very commonly used at that time and deep down I feel that it stems from that time period.  Really, stop laughing.  Somehow this lead around to medieval cooking methods and this landed me smack dab in the middle of the French Tarte.  The tart was an ingenious invention, not unlike the sandwich, in that it is a dish that does not require either a plate or silverware which were both hard to come by in the middle ages.  It was very portable and tidy with the tart shell acting as an edible receptacle.  This recipe was incredibly simple with a sweet butter crust and eggs, milk, sugar, cornstarch and nutmeg for the custard.  All very easy and simple.  Or so it would seem.
     This is the first time that I used a dough that was this sweet and with only butter as the shortening agent.  It produced a very dense dough that required a small bit of kneading which seemed very foreign in a pastry recipe.  I have always worked with the idea that the handling of the dough should be kept to the barest minimum.  The crust it produced, however, was quite yummy, although denser than the pie crusts that I usually make.  The custard itself was absurdly easy.  The only complicated part (and it's not all that complicated) was tempering the eggs before they are added to the heated milk, sugar and cornstarch.  There was a moment of hesitation when adding the spices.  The recipe I was using called for cinnamon, but all the other recipes that I researched called for nutmeg alone.  Apparently, although not widely used in French cooking today, nutmeg was very popular in medieval French cooking.  Cinnamon was not as common at that time.  So, I chose to go with the more authentic nutmeg only recipes.  I imagine that it would have had more depth of flavor if I had used the cinnamon, but it was quite delicious with just the nutmeg.  It would seem that I will not get away with making any recipe without some sort of crisis in the kitchen and this one was no exception.  After I had made the crust and lined my tart pan and after the custard was ready to go in, I realized that I had way too much custard than would fit into the tart.  So, at the last minute I threw together an extra tart crust and tossed it into a pie pan.  The only problem with that is that it is always more difficult to bake two pies or tarts at once as the air circulation is compromised.  Because of this, one of the tarts had a fairly dark skin on top when I took it out.  So much so, that I peeled this layer off.  Unfortunately, it looked naked after that, so I put it back into the oven for another few minutes to try to reform a nicely browned skin.  Didn't really work, but I had one beautiful, perfectly browned tart.
     This is the one that I shared with my friend Krista and her family.  I also shared half of the first one with our friends Andii and Bruce.  I recommended that the tart be served with a bit of sweetened whipped cream.  This is how we enjoyed it at our house and while this is not something that most kids would chose first, my son Jeffrey did enjoy it.  Quite a lot.  So much so that he is thinking of joining me in the kitchen from time to time to help bake for this blog.....just one of the many blessings that have stemmed from this gastronomical journey.
A Votre Sante