Smooth and Sweet and Light and Lovely

My son is listening to “The Girl from Ipanema” in preparation for a quiz he’s about to take for a World Music class. The dulcet Portuguese floats over to me, wrapping me in smooth sunny sound and reminding me of how much I’ve always loved this song since my mother played it for me when I was a very small child. (She also played “The Songs of Leonard Cohen” at nap time, but that’s an entirely different story.) But since at least part of the song is in Portuguese, it also reminds me of the Portuguese couple who used to come into the restaurant where I worked many, many years ago. Those were the days when I was still working Sunday brunch—a most hated shift if ever there was one—and they’d come in on Sunday mornings (the only hours of the week they took off from their small bakery/restaurant), order mimosas, sit in the sun on the patio, argue with each other in rapid, loud Portuguese, and go back to work to argue with each other some more from behind their own counter. There were never two people who worked harder than this couple. They slaved away at their restaurant, which was always teeming with people, and sniped at each other constantly. He flirted shamelessly with any female who happened to pass by, whether she swayed like a samba or not, and she glowered at him with sleep-deprived eyes. But except for those few hours on a Sunday morning, they pounded out delicious treats ceaselessly. They had some terrific pastas and salads on their limited menu, but their drool-worthy specialty (as least for me) was their fresh mango tart.

Oh, it was beautiful! Perfectly shaped mango slices arrayed in concentric circles atop a light pastry cream-covered crust. A yellow-orange sunburst on a plate. Each bite tasted—as really good mangoes will—like honeyed gold with a buttery, flaky finish. The tart was outrageously expensive (no discount for their “favorite” waitress, alas, but it I never held it against them; they were, after all, excellent tippers) and I could only afford to buy it on very special occasions. But as soon as I became even halfway confident in my baking skills, I attempted to replicate it in my own kitchen.

While it’s difficult to screw up a mango, I managed to do it. Anyone who’s ever attempted to peel and/or slice a mango knows that there’s an art to it not easily mastered (and as for those “mango slicers,” just say no—that was the most useless kitchen tool I have ever purchased; it cut me, not the mango and ended up in the trash) and it is difficult to find mangoes that are consistent in color and taste. Plus, there was the issue of what kind of crust and how to make the pastry cream. Though I still have not figured out how my Portuguese friends managed to get those perfect slices of mango on their tarts, I eventually got the rest of it together. Not too sweet. Best with mangoes that have been sampled and deemed perfect.

I think I will go find some now. 

You will need a nice tart pan if you want to make this one. This recipe makes 1 9-inch round tart, but I used my (13” x 4”) rectangular tart pan for the one above and used the leftovers for a couple of small tartlets (it took two math majors to figure out that the rectangular pan was almost 1/3 smaller than the round one).

INGREDIENTS:
For the crust:
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup almond flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

Filling:
3/4 cup (or more) Greek-style yogurt
2 tablespoons (or more) honey
1 vanilla bean, scraped
About 3 ripe mangoes (more if you’re sampling)
Fresh raspberries
Glaze:
About 1/4 cup good quality apricot preserves, heated with a little water, strained, and cooled

PREPARATION:
Combine all crust ingredients except for water and lemon juice in a food processor and process until the mixture looks like wet sand . Add water and lemon juice and process until the mixture just comes together in a ball. Press into your tart pan, going all the way up the sides.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place tart pan on a baking sheet and bake for 5 minutes. Dock the bottom of the crust with a fork and then bake another 10-15 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Cool.
Make the pastry cream by whisking the yogurt, honey and vanilla together and then spread it evenly in the cooled tart shell.
Slice the mangoes as neatly as you can (my kitchen looks like there's been a battle to the mango death after I get finished, but there are always some casualties in this business...)
Arrange the mangoes in a pretty pattern on top of the cream and finish decorating at will with the raspberries.
Use a pastry brush to gently spread the cooled glaze on the tart.
Serve as close to immediately as possible because this one will get soggy if you let it sit.