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3/4 cup amaretti cookies

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup almonds

6 Tablespoons butter

 

Place cookies, sugar and almonds in food processor and pulse until fine crumbs form. Add melted butter and whir a few seconds longer to blend. Press into 9″ tart pan and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

 

6 or 7 nectarines

 

1 1/2 tbsp all-purpose flour

3 tbsp unsalted butter

1 large egg

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp Chambord or brandy

1/4 tsp salt

 

Make and pre-bake a tart shell according to a recipe of your choice.  Set aside to cool completely.  Melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat, whisk occasionally until butter solids begin to brown, about 5 mins. Remove from heat, set aside.  In medium bowl, whisk egg, sugar, lemon juice, Chambord and salt until light in color and double in volume, about 2 minutes. Add flour and reserved brown butter, whisk until well combined.  Slice nectarines into 1/8 inch slices. Make roses by loosely coiling a thin slice of nectarine for the center, then wrapping each additional slice around it, offsetting each slice from the previous one. Make and transfer enough roses to fill tart shell, filling any gaps with extra nectarine slices.

 

I pitted the nectarines, split them in half, then sliced each pitted half with a mandoline. You could use a knife too, but it’s harder to get slices with a uniform thickness. If you make the slices too thick, they’ll be resistant to curving into a circular shape. Too thin and they disintegrate or they’re a mess to handle. The nectarines should not be dead ripe, but not rock hard either. Somewhere in the middle is perfect. Once you have slices, then cut them in half down the middle. Work on one nectarine at a time to get the hang of it. Don’t slice all of them at once. Using a knife, make a little hole in the center. This will make it easier to roll nicely. You’ll see what I’m talking about once you start making the roses. OK, now take one little slice of the nectarine and coil it around on itself. Stand it up on end. The moisture in the fruit will help the slices stick to each other. Take another slice and wrap it around the last one you rolled. Continue with this procedure. Keep going. You’re getting there. Ah yes. That’s it. Now place (carefully) each rosette on the cooked pastry shell.

 

Whisk filling briefly, pour evenly over fruit, using a spoon to fill empty spaces. Bake at 375F, rotating tart halfway through, until filling has slightly puffed, about 40 mins. (When tart came out of oven, I brushed the rosettes with a little melted apricot jam, and filled in the empty spaces where the filling looked sparse. Actually I think you could eliminate the filling entirely and this tart would taste delicious with only the rosettes and apricot jam.)  Cool on wire rack. Makes one 9 inch tart.