A (so far) Losing Combination

After last week's grand cake success, I was overdue for an ego check, which came in the form of a tart. I was inspired by my prospering basil plants and ripe summer fruit to substitute the sweet-tart strawberry for the tart-sweet tomato. My mom pooh-poohed the innovation. I never listen to her, but this time, she was right. I'm convinced basil and strawberries could pair serendipidously, but not with feta cheese or creme fraiche.

Things went wrong how they usually do with me: I tried to cut a corner. I didn't want to make an entire pastry crust so pulled some old puff pastry out of the freezer. A good idea in theory, but the pastry (obviously) puffed up and expelled the egg-mixture all over the pan it was resting on (not the easiest cleanup). Aside from that though, the tart had an inedible quality to it. I was planning on bringing it to a party, but abandoned that idea and brought Jamaican Red Stripe instead. I tried it again the next day, hoping to pinpoint exactly what turned me off to the tart, but it wasn't worth discovering and I just spit it into the trash. Sigh. I can't wait for tomatoes.

Friday last week became one of those days on which nothing goes right, until I came back from a meeting to find Tender by Nigel Slater sitting on my desk chair. The tome is beautiful (a tome it is, the cookbook has more than 400 recipes in 500 pages). It's filled with artsy pictures of vegetables from Slater's garden in various stages of production. The photos aren't even needed with how Slater describes the food--my words feel pathetic in comparison.