Starters

Let's begin with a Danish Bistro joke:

"Nogle tager det tungt, andre tager det letter!"

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Tartelette means a small tart in French.

In French cuisine, tartlets are also used for desserts.

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Different Styles

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Tartlets vs. Croustades

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Traditionally, tart shells are made with puff pastry without sugar, but modernly with filo pastry, which has less fat.

Filo pastry is a common term, while fillo pastry better refers to the word's Greek origin, which means leaf.

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Croustades are made with a lentil/shortcrust pastry with a high sugar content, suitable for cold desserts.

​Croustades are made by dipping a crust mold into a liquid batter and then dipping the mold into boiling oil.

A kind of deep-fried pancake, if you will.

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Some people don't like puff pastry, and mostly just think it's too dry, which is why you need plenty of tartlet filling to make it bearable.

Giant tartlets are overrated. There's too much filling for too little shell.

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Danish Styles

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Festive Tartlets (Festtarteletter) vs. Luxury Tartlets (Gourmet style)

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​The difference between festive tartlets and luxury tartlets lies primarily in the quality of the ingredients and the refined filling, where luxury often involves homemade stock, sous-vide chicken, fresh asparagus (possibly white), and perhaps filo pastry, while festive/traditional tartlets typically use standardized chicken and asparagus filling in crispy, perhaps larger, tartlet shells for a classic taste. Luxury is about elevating the Danish classic to a gourmet #level with better ingredients and more modern preparation, while festive version is the familiar, easy version.

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Classically, the filling consists only of chicken and white asparagus, while some interpret it as green asparagus.

The fact is that a white bechamel sauce, chicken and white asparagus alone look pale on the dish/serving.

This is where the carrots and the fine peas literally come into the picture.

Regardless of whether you like white or green asparagus, chefs get a kick out of it if it is not hand-peeled to perfection, so that it shreds and gets stuck in your teeth.

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Traditionally, 5 ingredients is a basic recipe in all kitchens around the world.
Here it gets a little interesting, because if asparagus is preferred, then carrots and peas are omitted, which I do not agree with. Add it for color and taste.

 

Tartlets with shredded chicken fricassee (brined in salt), fine peas and diced carrots.

Remember to use the water from the glass asparagus.

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Full-fledged

 

If you want to bake the tart shells yourself from scratch, there are techniques like blind baking, or the art of laying the dough across the top of a pie pan instead of down the bottom of the pan and pressing the dough into place with another pie pan, as if you were stacking them for storage.

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Tartlet fillings​

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• Chicken in asparagus (with or without stewed peas and carrots)

• Smoked pork loin (hamburgerryg)

• Diced ham instead of smoked pork loin (røget svinekam)

• Shrimp in asparagus (buddy system)

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Ready-made chicken stock from the supermarkets doesn't taste like much. It's probably better to make it yourself. If you want to make your own chicken stock from scratch, you can boil a soup chicken for 45 min. and after cooling remove the skin, which is not used for tartlets with a chicken fricassee.

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You can start with an Italian soffritto (Mirepoix in French) consisting of onions, carrots and celery, typically leeks are also added in the Danish way.

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If you prefer to use fresh peas instead of frozen peas, they must be blanched in boiling water for exactly 10 seconds!

 

If you prefer to cut the carrots into small square cubes yourself, there are techniques for that too.

Large carrots make it easier. I recommend using a fork to hold the carrot while cutting out a bed side, which side must be turned down to continue cutting. It is not only child-friendly, but also risky to cut vegetables this way!

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Bechamel sauce

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With whole milk instead of cream (forbidden tech).

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Alternatively, to a bechamel sauce, you can use ready-made asparagus soup in metal cans, from the supermarkets.

The hand-peeled asparagus in glass jars is like licking the window to taste it. Next time I will try sliced asparagus in metal cans.

If you use a whole can of asparagus soup and a whole can sliced asparagus, do not add to much water from the can!

You might consider lemon juice and white wine to go in as well.

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The problem though with ready-made asparagus soup in metal cans,

is that it burns to the bottom of the pot, so keep the temp. low and remember to stir constantly. 

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Portion

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3 tartlets per person sounds like a good starting point, but tartlets are served both as a starter, lunch, main course, and are classic for holidays like Easter, Christmas, and with smoked pork loin (hamburgerryg) instead of chicken fricassee. It sounds obvious in the days after the Danish tradition with servings on New Year's Eve with leftovers, it could also be with diced ham instead.

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Ready-made tartlet shells without filling have a shelf life of approx. 1 week after opening. This is where portion calculations come into play.

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To calculate a recipe, I base it on

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20% chicken fricassee
20% sliced ​​white asparagus
20% frozen peas
20% diced carrots
20% bechamel sauce

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Whether you want to calculate it in weight percentage or volume percentage.

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Shrimp in asparagus

(1 serving - 3 pcs. luxury tartlets)

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Ingredients

0.3dl. Whipping cream (forbidden tech)
0.15dl. White wine, medium-bodied, dry
0.3tbsp. Lemon juice, freshly squeezed
0.3tbsp. Maizena cornstarch
Salt & Pepper

  

75g shrimp without shell, cooked
0.3 canned asparagus sliced
0.3 bundle dill, fresh

   

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Seasoning

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What I don't understand is why the recipes recommend freshly ground black pepper instead of white pepper for a baked white bechamel sauce?

Always with plenty of black pepper, so much so that the top is 80% black.

Other examples of where tons of freshly ground black pepper should be sprinkled on include spaghetti carbonara and homemade tzatziki.

 

One thing is for sure, there is no need for grated nutmeg in the bechamel sauce as the Italians typically do for an authentic Danish tartelette!

 

I thought sugar was added to bind the liquid in ready-made tartlet filling from, for example, Beauvais, which costs a fortune, but chefs say that it rounds out the flavor of the béchamel sauce a bit, probably after a little lemon juice is added to compensate for the fattiness of both the puff pastry and the béchamel sauce.

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Topping

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Traditionally garnished with parsley on top, alternatively deconstructed with watercress.

Some people do not interpret the garnish as a decoration with just a single piece of parsley with stem but finely chop the parsley and distribute it evenly over the entire top, more for the sake of taste than just for the look, which is also controversial, the dish should not degenerate into chicken fricassee with parsley sauce.

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If the filling is shrimp with asparagus, dill is an obvious choice instead of parsley.

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45g shrimp without shell, cooked

Dill, fresh

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Baking

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 Preheat the oven to 200°C/392°F and bake the premade tartlet shells for 5-7 min. with the bottom upside down.

That way you can keep an eye on how brown the bottom becomes. I think 7 min. is a bit too much. 

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There may be a difference between Festive Tartlets vs. Luxury Tartlets and how long baking time is needed eg. 10 min.

So, follow the instructions.

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Serving

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If you scoop the filling in yourself and have problems with the tartlet skating around on the plate, put a small drop of béchamel sauce
on the plate and place the shell on top of the drop before you fill it.

The tartlet shells hold the heat from the filling well; I recommend 4-5 min. resting time to avoid burning your palate!

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How to eat tartlets

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Entering the convey {protocol} on how to freight the cargo load into your mouth!

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Rarely two people eat tartlets the same way.

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The idiosyncratic ways

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• The caveman way

• Some eat them like an ice cream cone or like a taco with one hand, with the shell and filling in one mouthful. Others throw their cutlery over their right shoulder, grab the tartlets with both hands, and swallow the tartlets in 1-2 bites.

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• The grandma way

• Some eat the filling first with a fork, then the empty shell at last.

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• The childish way

• Some turn the bottom up and mash the whole bottom, so that it becomes a big mass of both filling and shell, and have done it since they were little, and continue to do so for the rest of their lives.

Some start by pressing the bottom down, so that there is more room for filling in the luxury tartlets.

When they are about to eat one, they turn it over with the bottom up and use a knife and fork to cut it into 4 pcs. and eat.

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• The greasy plate way

Some mash the shells with a fork or chop them with a knife while the filling is in, without turning the bottom of the tartlet upside down, and mix them around a bit so that it becomes a mix of tartlet shell and filling so that they become more bite-sized pieces.

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The mannered ways

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I've learned that you only eat poultry and fish with your fingers, so tartlets are eaten with a knife and fork.

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The shell is finely cut into pieces and then eaten with the filling. The filling is distributed so that all pieces have a reasonably even distribution of shell and filling.​

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Tartelet shells have a crinkled-cut wavy edge that makes it easy to divide them into fine bite-sized segments by cutting them in the grooves, with either the sharpest knife in the drawer or, as I prefer, with a steak knife and fork. I tilt the steak knife to an angle of 75° so that only the tip of the knife goes into one side of the tartlet shell. If you hold the knife horizontally it will mush the tartlet shell.

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[2×2]

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The tartlet is first cut in half. Whichever side falls over first is cut in half again, and then the two parts are eaten. If there is a lot of filling that has fallen out, it is eaten, otherwise the other half is turned over and cut in half.

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Divide them like pieces of a layer cake into 4 pieces. Usually if you do it right - you get 4 bite-sized pieces that lie on the tart shell with about 1/4 of the filling lying on top of the shell. Sometimes a little of the filling slips off - and then it becomes a bigger and bigger mess.

Then you have to go through a short existential crisis while you frantically get it back in place.

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In short, first place the fork in the middle of the tartlet shell, to hold it in place, then cut it into 4 pcs. as described above. Now shovel the filling on top of the 1/4 pcs. and use the fork to shovel up that 1/4 tartlet shell with filling on top!​​​​​​​​​​​​​