Frangipane Melba Tart and Failure
Let's get sad
Epic fail
As a perfectionist in recovery, failure has not historically been a comfortable topic for me. So, naturally, it’s a goldmine of the squirmy, self-revelatory content that you, dear reader, have come to love and expect. I feel on the other end of some Saturnine cycle and I think it’s time to perform the autopsy on my perfectionist era. I want to explore failure from many different angles, and write about how my foundational failures have come to circumscribe the non-failure I have become.
So let me now introduce part I: my failure to be happy.
It’s me, sad boi
My earliest memories are of being unhappy and fearing death. Yes, I am the original sad boi. It’s not chic to be depressed now, but I feel confident that the morbid pendulum will swing back in my direction and I will, one day, be cool again. But I digress. I’ve been depressed for most of my life and, for most of that most, I haven’t known what to do about it.
I’ve been in and out of therapy for almost two decades and have a sense now of what works and doesn’t work on me. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) does not work on me. If you give me, a perfectionist, a self-monitored procedural intervention my priority will be to prove to the therapist that I have mastered it, collect my gold star, and be on my merry way. The self-sabotaging neural pathways that I’m supposed to be re-paving will just cement themselves further as I follow the procedure to the letter, eschewing actual self-inquiry for the jumping through of a hoop. I’m aware that I’m straw man-ing CBT, but I think it needs to be taken down a peg or two; I’m punching up.
Sad boi —> Victorian lady
I discovered fairly recently that what I actually need is someone to sit with me, wade through the leech-infested waters of my psyche, and analyze my thoughts and feelings like I’m a Victorian lady perpetually on the verge of fainting. This is an incredibly effective intervention for me because I labored for so long under the notion that if anyone knew me the way I knew me, they would be as disgusted with me as I was with myself. When I verbalize what I’m thinking and feeling and the listener doesn’t run away screaming, it affirms that I am, perhaps, not a garbage monster.
This is of course an unsustainably dramatic self-concept (read: Victorian lady) but that’s the recursive loop of this pernicious trap. Anyone who has ever been depressed will know this myopia: when you feel bad, you don’t want to be cheered up because to be confronted with cheery stimuli just makes you feel even shittier for failing to be cheered by it. When I feel depressed, I want confirmation that the world is indeed depressing. I did not listen to Evanescence in high school because I thought they were an incredible band (sorry) but rather because they seemed to externalize, and thereby confirm, my suspicion that everything was sad and terrible.
Sad boi —> Victorian lady —> Tacky bitch
My least favorite part of depression it that it is deeply, desperately boring. I feel trapped in my own skull, and when I’m depressed it’s both cramped and tacky in there. I can’t look beyond it, I don’t want to feel better, and I believe I deserve whatever badness I feel, thus entombing myself in a negative feedback loop.
While I have been reticent to think of depression as an illness, it is literally that. My fear was that this self-admission would disempower me. To some extent, it has. But my positionality relative to it didn’t change, just my understanding of what is and is not realistic to expect of myself. In fact, the excoriating light of realism has chased away some of the shame and guilt depression inspires in me, so ultimately I count this as a win. I see myself more clearly now, which is slightly horrifying but mostly refreshing.
It’s fine, I’m fine
Being unwilling bedmates with depression also means that I have been insulated from the culture of toxic positivity that permeates the wellness fields to which I belong. When I was a serious student of western yoga being tempted by the unparalleled high of inserting your elbow into your own asshole or whatever, my depression specters would anchor me in reality. My current job puts me in contact with the realm of alternative medicine, which is just as reasonable, socially conscious, and well-measured as you would expect (read: congee Karen). My mood might be subterranean, but at least I’m on earth.
But the greatest gift my failure to be happy has given me is this: I have no expectations that my life will be happy. Reading that back, it sounds so desperately bleak and, frankly, Evanescence owes me royalties. But it’s one of the most liberating perspectival shifts I’ve ever experienced. I see so much disappointment over life trajectories that are judged to be suboptimal. I can’t help but suspect that the default expectation we have for most pursuits is that they contribute to our overall happiness. If you’re delusional enough to think that’s a realistic expectation, please stop reading because I have nothing you want or need and furthermore I’m (conditionally) very happy for you. I’m not advocating this to anyone, but I will say that I have paradoxically become happier since jettisoning any expectation of happiness. So there is a light in the darkness, too.
I now present to you a recipe that I have been developing for weeks that has yet to come to a place that perfectly satisfies me. But if I don’t liberate it from my imagination now under the pretense of conformity to a theme of failure, it might not see the light of day at all. All hand-wringing aside, it is, in my humble opinion, absolutely delicious.
The recipe
Frangipane Melba Tart
Auguste Escoffier was a foundational figure of French cuisine and thus, by proxy, the cuisine of the Western world. He has yet to be cancelled. There are allegations of embezzlement committed against other rich white men, so… eh?
He is the originator of a great many dishes, most of which have fallen out of popularity, and is responsible for conventions of kitchen system optimizations still in use today. I must admit that the only reason I know of the particular dish that inspired this recipe is by way of Nigella Lawson, the primary creative inspiration for this quirky little endeavor I’ve embarked upon.
Escoffier created Pêche Melba, a dessert of poached peaches and vanilla ice cream topped with a raspberry sauce, to honor the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba at the end of the 19th century. It endures because of its evocative simplicity; it is summer incarnate. And thanks to globalization, it can also provide a simulacrum of summer in months when no one, by natural law, should be able to handle a fresh peach or berry. I advocate for the preparation of the original Pêche Melba and this recipe, its relative, only in the late summer when peaches and raspberries are in season. But, as has become a common refrain here, I’m not a narc.
Peaches and raspberry are given a new harmony in this tart. A simple peach jam thickened with cornstarch to provide a sturdy base is combined with frangipane spiked with pulverized freeze-dried raspberry. Where I have fallen short of my expectations is in the behavior of the frangipane topping. It’s delicious, don’t get me wrong. But I haven’t yet been able to achieve the perfect combination of oven temperature and baking time that results in a perfect one-two punch of maximum volume with ideal flavor development. It remains, however, a stunner. Drop your experiences and ideas for alterations in the comments! But, for real, it’s so good. Merci, Monsieur Escoffier.
Ingredients
Pastry dough
200g flour
1 stick unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup ice water
Peach jam
350g peaches (about two), diced
100g sugar
Juice of two lemons
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp cornstarch
Raspberry frangipane
250g almond flour
250g granulated sugar
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
Zest of two lemons
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
50g freeze-dried raspberries, thoroughly pulverized in a blender or mortar and pestle
Directions
I recommend the following order of operations: prepare the pastry, then the jam, then the frangipane. At any point of preparation you can pause and store the components in the fridge until you’re ready to continue. The frangipane cooperates best when at room temperature, so remove from the chill in advance if working ahead.
Pastry
First, prepare the pastry dough. This is Claire Saffitz’s recipe so you can watch her YouTube channel for visual guidance. Combine all ingredients save the ice water in the bowl of a stand mixer, food processor, or bowl-bowl and combine (in pulses if using a machine) until the butter is about the size of small peas but the mixture is as minimally worked as possible. Add the ice water and stir just until a cohesive dough forms. Wrap in plastic film and refrigerate for at least an hour.
After chilling, roll out the dough on a well-floured surface to about 1/8” thickness and transfer to an 11” tart pan with removable bottom (I’m an immovable bottom [sometimes]). Make sure the dough is well-ensconced in all corners of the pan and do not trim the excess overhanging dough. Rather, dock the pastry thoroughly and bake at 350º for 20 minutes. You can properly blind back the shell with a layer of aluminum foil and pie weights or dried beans if you’re feeling ~extra~. After baking, trim the edges by running a rolling pin firmly and perpendicularly against the edge of the tart pan.
Jam
To prepare the jam, combine all ingredients save the cornstarch in a small saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat. Once the mixture simmers, cook over a low flame (or whatever element you’re working with) for 20-30 minutes. The fruit should lose it’s sharp cut edges and it should be syrupy now in contrast to its watery start. Now create a slurry with the cornstarch. To do so, combine a bit of the cooked liquid with the cornstarch in a separate bowl. Whisk to combine. Add this slurry back into the pot and stir until homogeneous. Now tip this entire concoction into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Set aside; it will thicken substantially as it cools.
Frangipane
For the frangipane, combine all ingredients in a large bowl or the receptacle of your stand mixer and stir vigorously to combine, and then continue mixing until the mixture lightens in color and texture. It should resemble whipped cream taken just past stiff peaks. If you have no idea what this means, just mix it a lot and when you see it get more fluffy you’re good, my dude.
Assembly and baking
To assemble, pour the jam mixture into the trimmed, blind-baked tart shell and spread with a spoon or offset spatula to create an even layer from corner to corner. I recommend piping the frangipane mixture atop the jam, but if you’re like, “fuck it!” I’m with you - just dollop on, trying to avoid displacing the jam too much. Smooth the frangipane layer to an even plane. Attempts at surface embellishment with the frangipane will get you nowhere here - I’ve tried - as they’ll just bake out.
Bake the assembled tart at 350º for 30-40 minutes or until a golden brown hue is achieved and the surface is firmly set without wobbles. The vagaries and insults of oven consistency are such that your timing may vary. Start checking after 30 minutes and be heartened by the fact that, unlike me, this tart tolerates a good deal of over-baking, insulated as it is by the thick layer of frangipane.
Allow to cool completely, if you can muster the willpower, before removing from its pan and serve in generous wedges. If you want to whip some cream or scoop some vanilla ice cream to accompany it, I’m sure Dame Nellie would be pleased.