Drinking Plums with Friends / Croatian Plum Tart
No matter the light that entered my family’s house,
no matter which of my father’s houses that the light entered;
if a holiday morning,
a quiet Sunday,
a winter’s chill,
or after one of my mother’s European midday meals–
My family’s Croatian link was Sljivovica.
The warmth
and joy
of drinking plums
heightened
our sense of life.
Jump to RecipeCroatian Sljivovica, or Sljivovitz in otherwise old Yugoslavia, is our national drink. Our moonshine. The most famous fruit “rakija” (any rakija in Croatia is made from fermented fruit.) Plums trees, especially in the region of Dalmatia along the coast (the region my father’s family calls home), were as common as sunshine. It was only years into adulthood when I found out that Sljivovica was booze made from plums. Plum = Sljiva, Plums = Sljive.
Therefore, once I set out to prepare a plum tart, I wondered two things. How would I prepare the tart, and would I find plums in this mid-spring pandemic shopping madness?
Before I could even consider these issues, I first took a chance of a different sort. I had been connected to a community of food bloggers and photographers via the online Foodtography course. I followed, liked, and enjoyed all that I could, but one Instagram page stood out from the start, because its author, called Prairie and Pampa, had a food blog that was just as much written word as recipes and images. I looked in from time to time, only remembering that her background was interesting to me–She was Argentinian, and lived in Minnesota. Since my blog is A Quarrel of Feasts and I love the history, origins, and contradictions about food traditions, I loved this story.
Her name was Carolina (even better), and the origin story of her blog took me immediately. It was about being homesick for her culture, and the flavors of Argentina, and locating a Peruvian empanada place in Minnesota only to find it had closed. Sometimes, we work best from limitations and within a challenge. It seemed that we both did. I felt this homesick feeling, but, since I was born and raised in New York and Florida, I could not claim to be an expatriate. I did have a Croatian born father who I had lost 13 years ago, a father who was my absolute hero, and friend. My mother, likewise, was a Croatian-Ukrainian from Queens, with immigrant voices filling in both the large and small roles of our lives. The Croatian (then Yugoslav) world that surrounded my youth has fallen away, along with many of the players within it. The homesick feeling I had was more nostalgia than Carolina’s, but it pulsed within me just the same. Nothing could bring me back like a meal, an ingredient, or a flavor. More than anything, Carolina was a writer and that made her an instant friend to my eyes.
Back to the world of social media. It’s a difficult world for me, since I am tactile to the bone, and find myself in the age group that remembers the birth of the internet (my first year at NYU Film in the 90’s). I think often the thing that drew me to food photography was using light, texture, and a story to draw people into a world without smartphones or the internet, even if it was being looked at via the internet. Maybe it drew just me.
On Instagram, sometimes people would react to “stories” I’d sheepishly toss up when completing a particularly good dish or dessert. One profile kept liking so much of what I did. In fact, she most often “reacted” to stories of mine. I began to notice collaborations amongst bakers and makers and felt a tinge of jealousy; perhaps just the all too often feeling I easily nurture in life of feeling left out. A professional misfit.
I decided to communicate with her, since it turned out she was the author of the Argentine-Minnesota Prairie and Pampa blog and I sensed her kind nature. We immediately launched into a comfortable, warm dialogue about our families, our locales, and our love of French tarts. Her mom’s side, it turned out, had French heritage and I let her know that I was using the 17 year Napoleanic rule over Croatia in order to find a reason to bake French.
I knew Argentinian (or Argentine, we both can’t decide) cuisine was loaded with Italian influences, as was our Dalmatian Croatian cuisine. Argentina remains the one place in South America that I want to visit first…when we can visit anywhere again. She told me that she still remembers her visit to Paris when she was 15. Strangely, I felt that I had French in laws, since my boyfriend’s Armenian mother was Paris born, and raised. He spent summers in the south of France for most of his childhood and I demand he speak French comically to me on many an occasion.
I wanted to do a fruit tart, and loved infusing the fruit with liquor of some sort, so I finally had a reason to see if she wanted to do some kind of plum tart. Our national drink, the Sljivovica/Sljivovitz of all the best and slowest days of my life, was made out of plums. It was a shot in the dark, but I asked, and she jumped at the prospect. She let me know that she was thinking of a plum tart too, perhaps one with roasted plums. Even better, she told me that her maiden name was “Plaumen,” or “plum picker” in German. The world moves on a glorious curve sometimes.
I spoke of my Greek landlord’s plum trees outside our house in South Brooklyn and how he often shared them with us in late summer. As there were no plums yet, and there was Covid 19, I worried about finding plums. I managed to score five beautiful dark plums, then seven or eight more not-so-beautiful ones. Jam making was to come after the fact.
We discussed the tart base, and decided on a crumbly sable (“sandy”) crust. I thought to make a Frangipane, but alas, no more almond flour at the scary grocery store. So, hers would end up being a rich orange blossom cream cheese filling with fresh plums (German style, which I much approved of.) I decided to enrich my plums in sugar, lemon rind/juice, a little cinnamon and clove, and the Sljivovica. The scent coming off of the pot was obviously intoxicating, but also swam through my nostrils with the force of every family memory: Croatians visiting our house on the hill in Westchester and drinking Sljivovica in one fell swoop, while keeping me up at night with their loud, laughing voices which I’d listen to closely from my upstairs bedroom. It was the smell of Christmas morning, when, even now, my mother feels closer to my father by sipping some with her holiday breakfast. I do too. The smell was plums on fire, electrified.
I had intended on a full Clafoutis with custard, but the plum mixture almost filled up the tart shell. Instead, I gently poured the eggy custard over the plums after about 15 minutes in the oven, creating little swirls here and there, just enough to have custard play with plums like good friends.
We sent each other smartphone photos of our progress. Carolina’s tart shell looked beautiful; thicker, and more golden than mine. Her orange blossom filling made me want to dive in with a bathing cap and her perfectly arranged leaves of sliced plum were so picturesque, like a big plum tree.
It felt so exciting to share with each other the tastes and flavors of the things that we baked, the words, images, and worlds that made us happy. I’m so proud to present the first collaboration between A Quarrel of Feasts and Prairie and Pampa, two writer-bakers looking for a taste, or a feeling, that brings us back home, wherever that may be. Croatian Sljive Plum Custard Tart and Plum and Orange Blossom Cream Tart, from Brooklyn-Dalmatia-Paris-Germany-Croatia-Argentina-Minnesota.
Croatian Plum Custard Tart
Equipment
- Tart tin (8-10 in.)
Ingredients
For the Pate Sucree
- 1½ cups all purpose flour
- ⅓ granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) (cold)
- pinch salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 1-3 tbsp cold water
For the Plum Filling
- 2 cups sliced plums (depending on size of tart shell)
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tsp cornstarch
- 1 lemon juice and rind
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- 1/4 cup Croatian Sljivovica plum brandy or similar brandy
- Handful sliced almonds (optional)
For the Custard
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 cup heavy cream
Instructions
For the Pate Sucree
- In a food processor or in a large mixing bowl, add the cold cubed butter, flour, sugar, and salt and pulse until the texture is coarse crumb aka grains of sand aka "sable."
- Add in the egg yolk and at least 1 tbsp of cold water to pulse. Add in more of the cold water if needed and pulse until the dough just comes together.
- Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Butter/grease the tart shell tin and when ready, roll out the tart dough to larger than the shell and fold over the top half over the rolling pin. Pick up the dough and place gently in the tart tin. Unfold and remove the rolling pin. Very gingerly press the dough into the bottom and sides of the tart tin. Use your fingers to place dough in all the grooves and pinch the tops of the grooves, leaving a little dough over the top in case the tart shell shrinks. I decided not to blind bake this time since the extra baking time for the custard might lead to a dark crust if also blind baked.
For the Plum Filling
- In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the sliced plums, the sugar, the lemon juice/rind and the cinnamon/cloves. Keep mixing and lower heat if plums catch at all. They will begin to liquify and break down from the sugar. Keep them going for about 10 minutes. You can add the cornstarch once the mixture softens.
- After 10 minutes, increase the heat and add the Sljivovica to the plums. Let the liquor boil off for a few minutes, then keep mixing for an additional five minutes on a medium-low heat. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
- Whisk the egg yolks and heavy cream together for 2-3 minutes, by hand or with a mixer. As said, you can add less plums and more custard (I only use ⅓ of the custard).
Assemble the Tart
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
- Scoop up the plums from the mixture with a slotted spoon and gently add to the cooled tart shell. Carefully pour the rest of the plum liquid (which should have thickened) around the plums. You can then go in and arrange the plum pieces to your liking. This tart is not as visually pleasing as a fresh fruit tart, so do your best. It has its own special charms. You can sprinkle sliced almonds on top for some additional texture. If you tart shell sides grow too dark, you can cover them with a bit of foil.
- Allow the tart to cool completely to set, and enjoy with powdered sugar, ice cream, creme fraiche, whipped cream, or completely naked. The immense plum flavor is brought to life by the Sljivovica and the lemon, perfectly complementing the shortbread like crust. Allow it to transport you to any memory you like, or perhaps it can create a new memory. Here’s to plums and new friends!
Notes
- I typically blind bake tart shells, but chose not to for this plum tart, since the tart bakes for a total of 45 minutes and I feared the overly dark tones that come when longer baking times occur. I was very pleased with the result: golden brown bottom!
- If you prefer more of a custard tart, you can adjust the amounts of plum filling with custard. I decided I wanted this tart to be 75% plum filling, 25% custard (also because I ran out of room) but you can adjust in any way your tart can see fit (and any way in which it can fit).
- You do not want to add the hot plum mixture to the tart shell. Make sure to allow to cool completely to room temperature. The tart base will thank you for it.
- I used the only tart shell I own, an 11 inch tin — I love it, as my mom gave it to me and thus began my love of tart making. However, I love a smaller, deeper tart shell (which I now have), so adjust your baking times accordingly. A deeper shell might take a little longer, but it is well worth the effort.