I know, I can't believe we made it, either.

I know this is an ethnic food blog, but it’s safe to say that a French fruit tart — while familiar and from the Western world — falls under The Grand International umbrella.

It was rainy all day on Saturday, so my lady friends decided that it would be nice if we could perch ourselves on a couch at a cozy cafe, sip strong coffee and nibble on little French fruit tarts. But then we were like, fuck that. We can stay home and make it ourselves. Better.

And boy, did we make a French tart!

My roommate is an excellent photographer and I should probably use her photos, not my crappy ones. It would probably want to make you try the recipes more.

We used a basic sweet dough tart shell recipe, but we used Julia Child’s classic creme patisserie recipe for the pastry cream that lined the tart. We decorated the top with fresh fruit, and then glazed the fruits with a bit of imported blackberry jam from France for some shine.

My friends and I, upon examining the finished results, were in awe. We did it. The tart was magnificent, delicious, crispy, creamy, fruity, fresh.

Recipe:

-Sweet tart crust recipe from Serious Eats
-Julia Child’s creme patisserie recipe from Amuse Bouche blog

Make the cream and the dough for the tart. Refrigerate the cream. Bake the tart by itself according to the recipe. Let cool.

In a saucepan, simmer 3/4 c apricot jam (or whatever jam you have handy) for about 5 minutes or

so. Push through a sieve and discard the seeds. “Paint” some jam on the base of the cooled tart shell, but make sure you save some jam for the fruits.

Spoon a thin-to-medium layer of cream on the tart. Arrange sliced fruit (whatever’s in season) in a pretty pattern on the cream.

Brush each individual fruit with the remaining jam and voila, you’ve got a tart! Serve with French pressed coffee, of course…

And to think we would buy it at a cafe...for shame.

You will definitely need one of these babies to cook.

Mise en place. Getting all the shit ready. I’m not quite good at following directions, so I have to get rid of my cooking anxiety by making everything ready to toss in.

It’s hard to believe that Prague is the home to three Michelin star-winning restaurants, when my experiences with non-Czech food was appalling. I ordered a vegetarian pizza, which shockingly came with frozen peas, corn and carrots. An order of buffalo wings was doused in Thai chili sauce (well, good for the Czech for embracing Mae Ploy).

And horror of horrors: an overcooked pasta puttanesca from a decent-looking Italian restaurant (I won’t disclose which one), was sweet, had WAY too many olives in it and arrived with sliced cheese melted on top of it.

But what the Czech do know how to do is street food and desserts. Sausages were ubiquitous. The apple strudel, waffles with chocolate, crepes, poached pears and apples with ice cream, gelato and fried dough rolled in sugar and cinnamon (sorry, I don’t remember the name, but it was something unpronounceable with three consonants) were divine.

I came to Prague with a list of restaurants that I really wanted to eat at, including one of the Michelin award-winning restaurants, some that Martha Stewart had recommended in her March issue, and a vegetarian restaurant called Radost FX that I swore my best friend I would eat at, and ate at absolutely none of them. Instead, I ate at all the touristy shit places, and touristy shit was certainly what I got.