Total Eclipse of the Tart

With all the hubbub surrounding Monday’s eclipse, I have been taking a stroll down memory lane. Stop number one: 1979. I was in seventh grade during that eclipse, and we made pinhole cameras to observe it. I didn’t really know what I was doing so I didn’t see much of anything, but we had been so thoroughly warned by our science teacher about the dangers of improper viewing (“We’re going outside to see the solar eclipse, but whatever you do, don’t look or you’ll go blind!”) that I may have had my eyes closed. Who knows. Seventh grade was a long time ago. 

You know what wasn’t so long ago? Monday. Now I am the teacher strenuously advising my young charges not to burn their retinas. While most schools dismissed early, my district bucked the system all maverick-style and opted to supply everyone with special cardboard glasses and extend our school day so we could have a bit more quality time to enjoy this phenomenon together. It was a day. Clouds made viewing tricky and it’s possible that one student’s aggressive reaction to his disappointment made me request that he keep a civil tongue in his head. I’m not sure when I turned 127 years old, but I’m guessing that my admonition was apt during unruly reactions to the 1932 eclipse!

For weeks, I’ve been singing Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which, quite honestly, was a welcome reprieve from the Jardiance commercial ear worm. The song always reminds me of the period of my life in high school when my parents were preparing to move to Ohio, and I was staying behind with another family in Colorado for the rest of high school. That’s stop number two on the memory lane stroll.

Once I had decided on the “total eclipse of the tart” theme for cooking with Ben this week, a rhubarb tart was a natural choice.  Stop number three: summer in Ohio circa 1985. My parents left for a family reunion during peak gardening season and the task of keeping up with the produce fell to me. I looked up a recipe for rhubarb pie, psyched myself up for the event, baked it, and was pleasantly surprised with the delicious results. To me, rhubarb will always taste like self-reliance.

We used Ben’s grandmother Aldine’s recipe for rhubarb custard pie (not exactly a tart, but close enough) and just folded over the crust on top (instead of pinching it decoratively) so it would look like an eclipse or maybe a heart or maybe a total eclipse of the tart.

Pie Crust (for 2-crust pie)

2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons shortening

2 cups flour mixed with 1 teaspoon salt

4-5 tablespoons ice water

1. Cut shortening into flour until pea-sized.
2. Sprinkle most of the water into the dough, stirring with a fork to moisten ingredients until pastry almost cleans side of bowl.
3. Gather pastry into ball and roll out onto floured surface.

Rhubarb Custard Pie

1 unbaked pie shell

3 cups cubed rhubarb

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup whole milk (or mixture of skim milk and cream)

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground

1. Fill crust with rhubarb.
2. Whisk together remaining ingredients except nutmeg.
3. Pour mixture over rhubarb and sprinkle with nutmeg.
4. Bake at 375º for one hour or until set.

The crustless quiche we had as a main course can be found in our recipe index. We always keep the egg/dairy ratio, but after that, it’s the wild west. This week we added Swiss cheese, ham, and halved grape tomatoes. Thumbs up.