Eating Art: Apple Tarts

I have come to love my crust recipe for its fast, easy and flaky characteristics. So, I knew that I would be making apple tarts for dessert for our Eating Art dinner. As I said previously, I wanted to use the image by Rene Magritte as a signature dish. The painting explains right above an image of an apple that this is not an apple—after all it is a painting. Magritte points out the artifice inherent in art in his painting. So for dessert, after a meal of cerebral connections between food and art, I wanted to give my guests a similar moment—ceci n’est une pomme, ceci est une tart de pomme.

The tarts were a breeze—sliced Ohio apples, plenty of cardamom, a little Chinese five spice and a pinch of cinnamon and a tiny pinch of garam masala. Then, some brown sugar, some jaggery and some flour. This filling was lined up neatly on little rounds of dough, topped with dough, pinched, FROZEN and then baked.

To give it the right look, we topped them with green sugar, pale green (really basically white) pistachio shrikand, and edible paper with the tell-tale words.