Ingredients
Pastry:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 extra-large eggs
- 12 tablespoons sweet unsalted butter, melted and liquid
- 12 ripe figs
- 8 ounces prosciutto di Parma, sliced paper thin
- Cracked black pepper
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 2 ounces extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Butter a baking dish and set aside. On a pasta board, or large, clean, wooden cutting board, make a mound out of flour and make well in center, just like making fresh pasta. This can also be done in a large mixing bowl. Place the sugar, eggs, and melted butter into the well. Using a fork, mix the ingredients, bringing the walls of the flour into the well bit by bit, and forming a mass of dough.
Once the dough has come together, knead it for 1 minute until a medium ball has formed. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and roll each into a ball. Wrap each dough ball in plastic. Refrigerate the balls for 15 minutes so that the dough has a chance to rest.
Meanwhile, cut the figs into halves. Remove the pastry from the refrigerator and roll each piece into a 4 to 5-inch circle, about 1/4-inch thick. Carefully place the rounds in the prepared baking sheet. Arrange the fruit cut side up in the center of each pastry round. If you desire, you can fold the tart edges in over the fruit to form a kind of shell, or else let the fruit come near the flat edges of the tarts, forming a flat, disk-like tart. Bake the tarts until the pastry is golden brown, about 20 to 22 minutes.
Remove the tarts from oven, lay 2 thin slices of prosciutto over each, and sprinkle them with cracked black pepper, fennel seeds and the extra-virgin olive oil. Serve immediately.











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By jmpiazza_11185689
East Aurora, NY
on October 09, 2008
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Still quite good, but on the show, there were significant differences:
Mario did not use eggs in the dough. Imagine my surprise when the glop I got was nothing like the dry mass Mario made.
He sprinkled a bit of chopped rosemary before adding the figs, then drizzled with olive oil (extra virgin, of course then put it in the oven.
Finally, after removing, Mario ground a bit of black pepper (not cracked on the tart, and served the prosciutto on the side, not on the tart.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the flavor of the fennel seed -- it was more subtle than I expected -- and how well it how worked with the rest of the flavors.
I had trouble finding good figs; the ones I could get were too soft and not very flavorful. But, as Mario says, try to find quality, fresh, local food. Now if only I can get my hands on a good fig for comparison.
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