Yuzu Curd Tart with Fresh Fruit and Flowering Mint

I’m really not a gadget person. I don’t have a lot of pots and pans or electronics. I’m not very technical. That being said, I do have a sous vide and I love it for steaks, chops that need to be tenderized, shrimp and lobster tails.

And now, curds. The texture of a curd made in a sous vide has a silky quality that is difficult if not impossible to achieve on a stove top. You do have to wait. It takes an hour to cook as opposed to 15-20 minutes in a heavy pot or a Bain Marie. I think the texture is worth the wait. The original recipe was on the Chef Steps website and was for a lemon curd which is just as amazing. I substituted Yuzu and I altered the way the ingredients are processed before being cooked. In my eyes, that gives me bragging rights.

You can fill little tarts with this curd, layer it between sponge cake, serve it with fresh fruit, make a pavlova or stand at the kitchen counter and eat it with a spoon.

The following recipe makes about six 3″ tarts or one 9″ tart

INGREDIENTS FOR YUZU CURD

• 175 grams sugar
• 75 grams of first press Yuzu juice
• 75 grams Yakimi Orchard Yuzu puree
• 200 grams unsalted butter, melted and cooled but still liquid
• 129 grams egg yolk (about 8)
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon asorbic acid (you can usually get this wherever they sell preserving supplies)

pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS FOR YUZU CURD

1. Set your sous vide circulator to 167 degrees
2. Mix sugar, butter, salt, and asorbic acid together. Wisk into egg yolks
3. Place mixture in a plastic zip lock bag and slowly lower the bag into the water with the top open until the water reaches the bottom of the ziplock mechanism. Be careful not to get water in the bag. Slowly zip up the bag and let it drop into the water.
4. Cook for 60 minutes
5. Empty contents of bag into a high sided bowl and use an immersion blender to mix the mixture for 1 minute. It will lighten in color and become homogeneous.
6. Place curd in a container. Rap it on the counter a few times to get rid of any air bubbles or you can pulse a blow torch briefly across the top and that will do the same thing.
7. Lay some plastic wrap right on top of the curd to prevent a skin from forming. Chill a few hours until it’s cold and firm.

PATE SUCREE

Use your favorite or try the one I have posted on this blog

INGREDIENTS FOR TART

2 pints raspberries

2 mangos, preferably Champaigne Mangos, cubed small ( they should yield to slight pressure and the skin should be tight and smooth and yellow for the Champagne mangos)

tart glaze ( use the one I have on the blog or your favorite).

Yuzu curd

DIRECTIONS FOR TART

1. Fill your tart/tartlettes with the curd leaving yourself 1/8″ rim. This allows the glaze somewhere to go other than down the sides of your crust. I like using a piping bag with an 808 tip or just cut the end off the bag.
2. Place a perimeter of raspberries around the outer edge
3. Fill the center of the raspberries with the cubes of mango
4. Glaze lightly, making sure you cover the fruit as well as the cream. You can test the glaze by heating it u til it’s a liquid consistency and painting a spare raspberry with a brush dipped in glaze. If it pearls up or dries gloppy, thin your glaze with water. You want the glaze to just stick to the fruit.

for the 9″ tart, I used one pint of Strawberries and about three Champagne mangos. Cut the mango off the center seed, lengthwise in two cheek. Then, peel off the skin with a very sharp paring knife. Next, cut each half lengthwise in very thin slices. The thinner the slices, the more flexible they will be and the more rose like. The rest you can infer from the picture.