The French Chef (1962–1973): Season 1, Episode 7 - Fruit Tarts - full transcript

ANNOUNCER: The following program
is made possible

with the assistance of a grant
from S&H Green Stamps.

JULIA CHILD: This is a French fruit tart.

I'm just finishing it off with a little bit of apricot glaze.

It's fruit on a lovely custard filling

with a beautiful, crunchy, buttery French crust.

This is the recipe we're going to do today on The French Chef.

[theme playing]

Welcome to The French Chef.

This is Julia Child.

Today I'm really going to show you how to do French tarts--



simple, lovely desserts.

And any of you who watched how to make French pastry

on our quiche show last time

is now a whiz at making French pastry crust.

But if you didn't happen to see that show,

you can make the crust out of any favorite pastry dough recipe

of yours.

But add... it should be a sweet dough,

add two tablespoons of granulated sugar

per cup of flour.

I'm now going to do a cherry tart flambé.

These are canned Bing cherries that have been soaked--

or, as the French say, macerated--

in brandy and sugar and lemon juice.



I'm going to mix them into this custard filling,

which I'm going to show you how to do,

and then dump them into our tart crust.

And we are then going to flame it just before serving.

There.

I'll put one or two cherries just on top of it like that.

There couldn't be anything simpler than that.

I'm going to put it to the side here.

Then, just before serving, we'll flame it.

And I'm now going to show you how to make the custard filling

that goes into these fruit tarts.

I have here five egg yolks,

and I'm going to beat gradually into them one cup of sugar.

I'll give all these proportions in case you want to...

in case you want to take notes.

When you're ever adding sugar to egg yolks,

you add it very gradually.

Because if you add it all at once,

sometimes the egg yolks turn a little bit granular.

You can do this in an electric beater if you want.

But I think it's just as easy to do it by hand.

There, we've got one cup of sugar and five egg yolks.

And you beat it with a wire whip until it becomes thick and pale

and forms what they call the ribbon.

You see it drips heavily off the whip like that

and forms a little bit of a ribbon there.

And then we're going to beat in flour.

This is two-thirds cup of sifted all-purpose flour.

Didn't get quite all of it in there.

This is the kind of...

this is really I guess what you'd call a boiled custard

in American terms.

In French it's called crème pâtissière,

or pastry cream.

Then we have two cups of hot milk.

And note we pour very gradually in, just a little bit at first.

Any time that you're adding anything hot to egg yolks,

you have to add it very gradually

because you don't want the egg yolks to curdle.

So at the very beginning, it goes in slowly.

It's still sort of thick.

And when the egg in the bowl feels warm,

then you can add it in a little more... a little faster.

I really can't see any reason for using an electric mixer

with this because this is so easy.

You've only got two things to wash.

There.

So when it's good and beaten up there,

then we pour it into a heavy-bottomed saucepan.

This is a French copper restaurant saucepan

that I'm using.

But you want to be sure that you have a heavy-bottomed pan

because you don't want anything to burn.

Got a little bit of flour stuck on that.

And then put it over moderately high heat

and use a wooden spoon.

And you stir it until it begins to come up to the boil.

When you have flour and egg yolks together in a liquid,

it then doesn't...

the egg yolks don't curdle and you can bring them up to boil.

It always takes a little bit of time to come up to boil.

You could do this in the double boiler,

but I don't see any reason to

because it just takes so long to do.

The thing is you have a heavy-bottomed pan.

Another type that I like very much is stainless steel

with a thick aluminum bottom,

because that holds the heat very well

and things don't burn on it.

I'm going to turn the heat up just a little bit more.

And it's all right as long as you just keep stirring it

like this because you don't want anything to stick.

There's another typical French custard sauce

called a crème anglaise.

And that one has no flour in it

and you have to be very careful when you're cooking it

that the sauce doesn't come anywhere near the simmer.

Now this custard cream is going to thicken up.

And as it comes to the boil,

it's going to get a little bit lumpy.

And then we just beat it with our wire whip,

and the lumps don't... the lumps disappear.

You can use this pastry cream just as it is

for the bottom of a fruit tart

or if you beat some stiffly beaten...

I mean fold stiffly beaten egg whites in it,

you can use it as a filling for cream puffs

or for some awfully nice desserts

called crème plombires,

in which it's the pastry cream flavored with rum or kirsch

or whatever you like.

And then you put some little sponge cakes

that have been soaked in liqueur in the bottom

of a little dessert cup and then pour your pastry cream over it.

It's a lovely dessert.

And for cream puffs, you do the same thing.

If you wanted a richer filling, you could, after it was chilled,

you could fold in some whipped cream.

Now this is beginning to come up.

You'll notice that that's beginning to lump there.

And that's perfectly normal.

That's just what it does.

But we'll get all the lumps out when we beat it

with our wire whip.

It's beginning to thicken now.

You can see it's beginning to coat the spoon.

It's now time to give it a good whipping up.

I'm going to turn the heat down a little bit.

You see that all the lumps are going to come out of it.

These wire whips are awfully useful

because you can beat with one hand

and do something else with the other.

You see that's really getting thick.

And at this point is when you want to be very careful.

I'm going to turn the heat down to moderate

and take it off the heat for a moment and beat it hard.

You see that's just as smooth as it can be.

And then you want to cook the flour.

And this is also the tricky part

because you want to be very sure that it doesn't scorch

on the bottom.

See how thick that is?

But we want to be sure to cook the flour

but not to scorch the bottom.

That's one reason why you want your heavy pan.

You want to cook it for about two minutes this way.

And if you ever run into any trouble of a custard like this

beginning to scorch on the bottom of the pan--

you can see it when you do that--

immediately remove it to another pan.

Don't try to fool any more with it.

Just scrape it out, leaving any burned part on the bottom.

If you have a heavy pan like this,

you shouldn't have any trouble.

Now we're going to flavor our pastry cream.

This one we're going to put some vanilla in.

Pastry cream always has vanilla.

And you can do it just with vanilla.

For these proportions,

you would use a tablespoon and a half of vanilla.

But we're going to put in some cognac

because it's a little more fun and more French.

So we will have two teaspoons of vanilla.

And then about three tablespoons of cognac.

You could use dark rum or kirsch or any one of the liqueurs.

Orange liqueur is very nice, too.

You don't want to thin it out with too much,

so I'll just start with two tablespoons and then taste it.

You know, when you're using liqueur,

you don't want to overdo on the liqueur.

You just want to have a nice flavor of it, but not too much.

And then also it's going to have a little softened butter in it.

And what's... I'm going to taste it now

to see how it is, whether we've got enough liqueur in it.

I think so, that's very nice.

Now, it's interesting, I've tasted it

and it hasn't got the butter.

Now I'm going to put in about

two or one-and-a-half tablespoons of softened butter.

And then taste it again.

That's one of the interesting uses the French have of butter.

They usually always butter a sauce after they've made it.

And it gives it that certain French taste that you don't get

in any other cooking.

The French call it onctueux.

Unctuous doesn't sound good in English, but it does in French.

Now, when you taste it, it just has just sort of a velvet...

it's amazing what difference that little bit of butter does.

Now that's all made.

And if you were not going...

if you were going to make it ahead of time and chill it,

which you would for a cold tart,

you'd scrape the sauce off the side of the pan.

Then... you don't want a skin to form on it.

You take your butter and you just put a little butter

on the top of it like that

so that it goes all over the top of the sauce.

More butter doesn't hurt it at all.

And that will prevent skin from forming.

You do that with any kind of a sauce that you make

that's flour based.

You wouldn't have to if you stood over it and beat it

until it cooled, but that would take you about all day.

So I'm going to put that to the side and let it cool.

And then we're going to make some other sauces

with crème pâtissière.

Now here is a bowl of custard sauce

that's all made up and cool.

And we're going to make a very simple, nice fruit tart with it.

Before I go on, I think I better go over the proportions

with you again for this.

Now this, the amount that I made over there

makes two-and-a-half cups.

And you have five egg yolks, one cup of sugar,

and two-thirds cup of flour and two cups of hot milk.

And you beat the sugar gradually into the egg yolks,

then you beat in the flour.

And then you gradually beat in the hot milk.

And then you stir over moderately high heat

until it comes to the boil.

And you remember that it, as you saw, it gets rather lumpy.

But you just take it off heat

and beat it hard with a wire whip

and put it back on the heat and cook very slowly.

Be awfully careful that you don't scorch the pan.

You have to get the flour cooked.

Now we shall start with our fruit tarts.

Now this, in this pan, is apricot glaze.

And it's one of the most useful things in French cooking.

In fact, I don't think they could ever have French pastry

if they didn't have apricot glaze.

And all it is is apricot preserves, or jam--

you just buy a jar of it--

and you heat it and then you push it through a sieve

with a little wooden spoon

because it always has a little bit of skin in it.

And then you... per cup of strained apricot preserves,

you add two tablespoons of sugar and then you heat it again

until it boils up and becomes sort of thick like that.

If you were using a candy thermometer, it would be at 225.

And then when you use it, you always use it warm,

and any that you have left over you can put back into the jar

and heat it up again.

Now, one of the purposes for the apricot glaze

is to act as a waterproofing.

The reason that you boiled it up is so that it'll thicken up

and, as it cools, it hardens just a very little bit.

It doesn't become brittle at all, but it just hardens enough

to be a waterproofing for a pastry shell

so that when you put raw fruit or pastry cream into it,

the cream won't sink through and make the shell soggy.

And you can make your shells ahead

and paint them with your glaze at any time you want.

I'm putting this back on the heat so that it will stay warm.

And now we've got our pastry cream and we just dump it in.

You want about, oh, say, a half inch in here.

And then spread it around.

I think these rubber spatulas

are certainly one of the great inventions of the world.

Now that's the beginning of any kind of a fruit tart

that you'd like.

Now this, this is a very simple one that anyone can do.

I mean naturally anyone can,

but with anything that you have in the house.

This is canned crushed pineapple.

You get the can and you pour the contents through a sieve

and there's a little syrup.

And you boil the syrup for about five minutes

until it gets heavy and slightly caramelized.

And then you put in the crushed pineapple

and boil that for about five minutes.

And it browns a little bit and just... to taste the difference,

it has such a very quite different taste

than just ordinary canned pineapple.

So I'm just going to put a little bit of that on top there.

And here we have our canned Bing cherries.

And these always taste much nicer if you soak them

in a little bit of liqueur.

Kirsch is very good with them.

Or I use cognac quite a lot.

When you... if you're going to use any of these liqueurs,

particularly in dessert,

if you don't want to spend the money to buy a really good...

I mean a good liqueur that you'd be happy to drink,

just don't use it.

Use vanilla instead because you can absolutely ruin

all of your work if you use a sort of what they call

a rotgut kind of a liqueur.

Now we're going to use bananas with this.

Bananas are awfully good with these tarts.

And we just slice up the banana.

Use our onion soup...

you remember, this is exactly the same method

that we used on onions.

Maybe I shouldn't mention onions along with dessert,

but it's one of those techniques that you use for everything.

Then you just take your bananas and lay them around that way.

If you're really artistic, you can do the most lovely designs.

You don't have to have everything in circles.

They can be back and forth.

You can just use your full imagination

when you're decorating these things.

And they're terribly good,

and people are always so delighted with them

because of that glittering aspect that they have.

There.

Now for that final one, I'll put that in under.

Now we're going to glaze the top of it with apricot.

I have here the same apricot glaze.

And it's warm.

And if it thickens up too much, you can put a little water on

so it's thin enough to dribble on with a spoon.

Very often you see these in a pastry store,

but the glaze is made out of... I don't know what,

they buy it all in a can and then it has some kind of goo

in it that makes it look thick but it has an awful taste.

Or at least I should say a not very interesting taste.

Of course, this also gives a very nice flavor to the bananas.

There.

That's very not difficult to do.

I think I'll... I have some slivered almonds

that I bought in the supermarket.

And you can just put these little almonds around

like teeth.

It's better, I think, to put them on after the glaze

because then they show up a little more.

There.

Now that's all ready to serve.

And you can make it about two hours ahead of time.

And now we're going to do one of the loveliest tarts of all,

a fresh strawberry tart.

I think this is the great tart of all time.

I'm going to put the strawberries over there

for a minute.

Get out a little of this so you can see what I'm doing.

Now I've already glazed this shell.

You can glaze it way ahead of time.

I don't think it's better... I think you shouldn't fill it

probably more than about an hour or two ahead of time.

However, I've found that when I've made strawberry tart

once in a while, whether it was...

any of the tart left over if I've made an awful lot of it,

that I kept it in the refrigerator

and it was really very good the next day out.

I was rather surprised.

But then this apricot glaze that was the waterproofing

for the tart shell, which, of course, gives the flavor, too,

kept the pastry from going through.

Now these, the strawberries, you usually arrange it

so the largest strawberry's in the middle

and just go all around and then paint it with glaze.

So I guess that's the biggest one.

This is a serpentine pattern.

And so you always start in the middle

and then go round and round.

You can go back and forth if you want to.

You want your... this custard always thickens up a little bit

as it cools, but you want to have it just about

this thickness so that the strawberry goes in

but it doesn't sink down too far.

When you're making your pastry cream,

if, when it's cooled, you find that it's too thin,

you could heat it up again and put in some beurre manié,

or flour-butter paste.

Now if you want to take a great deal of time over this,

you could match up all the strawberries.

I'm not going to take that much time

because I'm not that much of a perfectionist,

though I'd like to be.

There, doesn't that look good?

See, there's certainly nothing difficult to do about this.

When you wash the strawberries,

hull them first and then just wash them very, very quickly.

I think if you put them in a great big colander

and fill the sink full of water

and then just dip them in and out.

If they're perfectly clean strawberries

with no mud on them,

you don't really need to wash them,

and then you don't have any trouble.

And then, after you wash them,

you put them on a cake rack so that they'll drain off.

Now I'll glaze them.

And you can, if you like,

you can use red currant glaze rather than apricot glaze.

It's made just in exactly the same way.

You just get red currant jelly-- you don't need to strain that--

and boil it down with two tablespoons of sugar per cup

until it reaches this sticky consistency.

Sticky but not brittle.

And if this gets too thick, you can just put in a little water

and boil it up again.

There.

Now that's all ready to be served.

I want to show you also what you can do

with little tiny tart shells.

These were all made with the same pastry dough,

and you just make them in little tiny shells like this.

And put your pastry in and put another shell on top

and then bake them about ten minutes in a 425 oven

until the shell, the dough has just shrunk a little bit

and taken on a light color.

Now these I've already painted with the apricot glaze.

And here's how you fill them.

These are awfully nice if you're having tea.

I won't fill more than two.

And I'll put some strawberries in like that.

People just love these.

You can serve them on a little plate.

There.

Aren't those nice?

And now we're going to glaze the...

I don't mean glaze, I mean flame the cherry tart.

Here's this cherry tart that we first made that you saw.

And I want to flame it in brandy.

But first, if you're going to flame anything--

this is granulated sugar-- sprinkle some sugar on.

It's just like crêpes Suzette.

You know, if you don't have some sugar on the crêpes,

and the sugar doesn't caramelize,

it's awfully hard to flame it.

You want to put it under the broiler

until the sugar caramelizes just a little bit.

I think, actually, that could be on a one higher level.

There.

This should only take just about a minute

because you don't want the crust to burn.

But be sure that you have your broiler very hot.

And you really have to stand right over and watch it.

I know the first time that I made crême brûlée,

they said put on the brown sugar

and put it in the oven for about two minutes,

so I went off and did something else.

When I came back, it was all burnt up.

So with these things, if you can do anything like this,

you just stand right there and watch it

because it doesn't take very long.

There, that's coming.

It hasn't quite caramelized.

And, in the meantime, I'm going to heat up the brandy.

You want to use about a quarter of a cup of brandy.

And you've got to have that hot, too.

I'll stick it on even hotter.

There.

Now that's... all that sugar is bubbling there.

I'll leave it in about another second.

But you have to wait until it's bubbling.

There, can you see it bubbling?

And then the brandy's hot.

I hope it is.

Pour it on.

And then, if you want, you can take it to the table.

You really have to rush to the table.

There, she's alight.

That isn't going up into great flames because I...

you have to be careful, you don't want to burn your hair.

This gives a very nice taste.

But always remember, if you're going to flame anything,

have the top of it hot with some caramelized sugar.

Then pour on warm brandy and light it.

Keep your face away.

There, now that's burning just a little bit more.

But if you're going to carry it in,

be sure that you don't get your face in it.

There we are.

Yes, that's still flaming just a little bit.

And here are all our fruit tarts.

Here's the one that you saw at the very beginning.

And this is also a very simple one--

this has canned sliced pears, canned apricots, cherries,

and little slivered almonds there.

And here is our banana pineapple tart.

And here's our lovely strawberry tart.

And we're going to have a tea party today.

And this is a tea cozy to keep the teapot warm.

Now, I think that this has been an illustration

of how easy it is to do really very attractive desserts.

Once you master that pastry cream,

which is certainly very simple to do, and tart shells,

you could just have a whole bevy of desserts at your fingertips.

And you can use anything you can think of-- fresh plums,

or fresh peaches, or you could use the tart shell

to bake the fruits in the oven

and then glaze them when they're through, like an apple tart.

Next time we're going to do filet of sole.

That's all for today.

This is Julia Child.

Bon appétit.

ANNOUNCER: Julia Child is coauthor

of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

[theme music playing]

Accessories and furniture

courtesy
of Design Research, Inc.

This has been a WGBH
videotape production.

The preceding program
was made possible

with the assistance of a grant
from S&H Green Stamps.