For the love of tarts

Grace Beahm/Staff

Holly Herrick, Charleston cook, food writer and author, says she had a lot of fun working on her new cookbook.

Holly Herrick calls tarts "the sexier cousins of pies," but not simply because the word has a double meaning.

By their nature, tarts tend to be more petite. They're also more shapely, meaning that they can be round, square or rectangular. Many are very revealing of their ingredients, like a pizza.

And they can be either savory or sweet, which makes them attractive to a wide range of tastes.

Author Herrick expresses her feelings through more than 50 recipes in the newly published "Tart Love: Sassy, Savory and Sweet" (Gibbs-Smith, $24.99).

It's the third book and counting for Herrick, a former restaurant critic and food writer for The Post and Courier who has called Charleston home for more than a decade.

Tarts weren't always Herrick's thing. The first step in her journey was falling in love with her mother-in-law's pie pastry, which Herrick could never quite duplicate.

But Dori, as she was called, did inspire Herrick to go to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. So Herrick did become, as she says, "confident" with pastry.

After completing school, she and her husband moved to the French countryside. There, another mentor emerged and Herrick had a second realization about tarts, which she was seeing everywhere in France.

"There was a whole broad universe of savory tart potential," she says. "I made them a lot down there because it's a whole meal, with a salad."

A lot of it had to do with meeting Simone, who lived in a nearby village.

"She used her garden as a palette for her tarts. I do the same except I go to the farmers market," says Herrick.

The principal difference between pies and tarts is form, says Herrick. While the standard pie pan is a 9-inch round and a couple of inches deep, tart pans are all shapes and sizes, are more shallow and have crimped edges.

The form mandates the function and filling of tarts, Herrick says. "I like to think of it as matching the right shoe with the right dress."

For example, for one of her tarts in which apple slices overlay each other like dominoes, a rectangular pan works best. It would be tricky cutting through the fruit and crust in a round pan, she says.

As for crusts, Herrick offers her simple "master" recipes for both sweet and savory doughs and a number of tips for working with them.

They are "short" pastry with a high ratio of fat (butter) to flour, which makes for a crumbly, flaky crust. She also calls for White Lily flour because of its lower gluten content; excess gluten can toughen pastry.

Herrick says home bakers shouldn't fear making crust. The keys are cold butter, ice cold water, a light touch, and resting and chilling the dough.

"It's a little bit like learning to drive. Learn the rules, practice and you'll actually learn to enjoy it. And don't speed!"

Herrick adds pizazz to her pastry by incorporating herbs, cheese, olives and even crackers into the doughs. "It was really fun to play with that and to get those flavors in every bite," she says.

For those recipes that call for puff pastry, do as Herrick does -- don't make life overwhelming. Buy ready-made puff pastry from the grocery store.

"Tart Love" does give a nod to stouter fare as well: One chapter features a Shepherd's Pie and various meat pot pies with fall-friendly ingredients. Pocket pies such as Fiesty Fried Shrimp and Grits Pockets are covered in another -- the pockets can be fried or baked.

Quiches get their due, too. Roasted Grape Tomato and Pimento Cheese is a siren call to the South, while the Hungry Man quiche with three meats and three cheeses playfully challenges an old stereotype.

"They say real men don't eat quiche. That's a lie," says Herrick.

The author says she wants people to get comfortable with pastry and the many possibilities of fillings, and tried to make the book both practical and whimsical.

She tested all the recipes in her home kitchen and, during the process, became a totally engrossed "tart-head."

"I really had fun with this book," she says.