Memorial Day Rhubarb Tart

Like most holiday weekends, we are spending this Memorial Day in rural New Jersey....OK, not exactly rural, but there are farms here, and horses.  I also now consider it my job, as unofficial ambassador of the Garden State, to let people know that there is more to N.J. than housewives with "big bubbies"(see Real Housewives of New Jersey). Although there are plenty of those too.
OK, I digress, back to the topic at hand—rhubarb.
Every year around this time, my family's neighbor hands over an armload of rhubarb stalks from her garden--there is so much of this hearty vegetable plant that something clearly has to be done to put it all to good use.

In the past, I have mixed the rhubarb with strawberries (also now in season) for the classic pie; I've also stewed it and made a compote for ice cream, and topped it with oats and brown sugar to make a crumble. This year, I decided to make a tart. Inspired by a recipe from the Rose Bakery cookbook for rhubarb meringue tartlets (and also a citron tart that I ate in Paris which was topped with a bruléed meringue roof —I will never forget it). I dusted off a large rectangular tart pan from the cupboard, washed some strawberries from the local farm, and had at it.

The first part of the recipe entails roasting the cut up rhubarb stalks in sugar and orange zest to soften it and create a rhubarb-y syrup.

Once this was done, and the mixture had cooled down, I added the thickly cut strawberries.

Meanwhile there was the pastry dough, and as I've documented in the past, pastry dough is not my forte. I never feel like I know what I'm doing. But I keep trying. I used a relatively simple recipe for an Italian sweet pastry (pasta frolla), also from the Rose Bakery book, which can be manhandled more than French pastry dough (good for me).

Rolling out proved to be a challenge--every time I tried to lift it off the board with my pin the sheet of dough crumbled into large pieces, like continental shelves cracking off and drifting their separate ways.

Yes, I floured everything. Didn't matter.

So I just ended up pressing the dough into the tin.

Next was the meringue-my favorite part:

To decorate the tart I jerry-rigged a pastry bag by scooping the meringue into a large baggie, cutting a small snip from one of the corners, and pressing the glossy white stuff out into a wavy pattern. This is what it looked like out of the oven.
Once the tart had cooled, I cut in--the filling had a beautiful scarlet color, and the meringue sat nicely above, providing a little crunch and then lightness to the melty fruit.
After everyone had had their piece, we evaluated. Belle loved the meringue--it is just fun to eat, like combining a marshmallow with whipped cream. The recipe had called for a lot of sugar in both the meringue and filling (so much so that I think it might have been a mistake in the printing) so I had almost halved it--but my mother still thought it was a bit on the sweet side.
And the pastry wasn't bad--although our rhubarb neighbor thought it was a bit too thick (true, true), could have been pre-baked a bit longer, and used even less sugar— I still need to work on my finesse. 

All in all though, a beautiful dessert, although next time I am going to try the lemon curd filling. What did you make this holiday?—Caroline