The Fruit Tart I Keep Coming Back To

In this week’s post: A gorgeous, no-fuss fruit tart that's one of my go-to summer desserts (save this one), plus a recap of my trip to Corsica and Paris, July offerings, and more.

Hello my loves,

We’re back home from a week in Corsica, capped off with two days in Paris. As sometimes happens when I sit down to write this newsletter, my fingers feel clunky. I’d much rather have you here at my kitchen table, where I’m sitting with a cup of tea, bleary-eyed from travel but content, looking out at our back garden, sodden with rain from last night’s storm. If you were here I’d pour you a cup and cut you a piece of the gluten-free, olive-studded focaccia I brought home from Paris. But here we are, on opposite screens, and these clunky fingers will have to do. So today, I’m sharing the cliff notes version of our trip, blurred by jet lag, imagining you here with me.

I’d actually never thought much about Corsica — as a place or destination — until my friend Jess told me about her trip to Sardinia last year, just south of the island (you can take a ferry between the two). My interest was instantly piqued: a chance to brush up on my very, very rusty French, with an excuse to stop in Paris for a night or two on the way home.

I’ll admit, a small, eensy weensy, part of me doesn’t want to tell you about Corsica at all. It was that good. Honestly, it was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been, with mountains rising straight out of the Mediterranean. There weren’t many American tourists (the first three nights, we saw none). We flew into Ajaccio (connecting through Paris) and spent the night at a hotel near the airport. That night we had one of our favorite meals of the whole trip at A Nepita: tuna tartare with wasabi ice cream, roast veal over pomme purée, and pavlova with thick cream, berries and sorbet.

The next day we drove north, stopping in Cargèse for lunch at A Volta, which had stunning views and juicy, flaky whole grilled fish. We continued on to Piana, where we had a hotel booked for two nights, and… got a flat tire along the way. It was a major headache in the moment — Enterprise insisted on towing the car the next day, and we spent hours on the phone with no idea how we’d get to Calvi, our next stop. However, it ended up being a total blessing (more on that in a minute).

A server at our hotel finagled us a ride to our boat trip in Porto — our only scheduled activity of the whole trip — to explore the cliffs, caves, and volcanic formations of the UNESCO World Heritage site. It was one of our favorite parts of trip, especially swimming into the caves, which were powerful and soft at once, multicolored from different stones, and magical in a visceral way.

Carless, we walked across the street from our hotel the second night to dinner at Les Roches Rouges — another favorite meal, technical and artistic in a way that surprised us, like the tomato salad (pictured below) where the “tomato” is actually goat cheese wrapped in tomato jelly.

The flat tire turned out to be a blessing in disguise: after much begging, Enterprise arranged a car service for us to Calvi. The drive was insane — narrow roads, cliffs straight into the sea, jaw-dropping and terrifying in equal measure. We were grateful to have an experienced Corsican driver and stopped more than once to settle our stomachs. Since we had to rent a new car in Calvi, we also changed our flights to fly out of Calvi instead of driving the three hours back to Ajaccio (which wouldn’t have occurred to us if we hadn’t lost our original car). It ended up feeling like a gift from the universe. The experience required an interesting mix of surrender and determination, and if you were here I’d tell you all about how my inner voice guided me (and finally helped me land in trust)… but that’s for another morning.

Calvi sits right on the water and is more touristy than Piana but stunning all the same — mountains rising from the sea, one with small pockets of snow even as temperatures sat in the high eighties and nineties. We spent four days there: exploring the citadel (the walled fortress climbing up from the city), swimming, jumping off rocks into the sea outside our Airbnb, eating an unreasonable amount of gelato (Milani was our favorite), and resting — I got through two novels during the trip: this, which felt perfectly suited to the landscape, and this, which I loved.

We hadn’t made dinner plans in Calvi, but tables were fairly easy to come by as long as we arrived by 8pm. Our favorite was U Fornu, all traditional Corsican food built around local ingredients (interestingly, our least favorite meal was a the fanciest). We also spent a full day on the Calvi beach, where restaurants rent chairs and umbrellas right on the sand (we rented a “bed” which was much cheaper), allowing you to break mid-day for a proper sit-down lunch, feet still in the sand. Europeans really do know how to beach it right.

From Calvi we flew to Paris and stayed in the Marais — my first time in the neighborhood, which is vibrant (and packed), and full of good shopping. We ate gluten-free pastries from Copains every single day, and had memorable dinners at Chez GrandCoeur (an upscale brasserie), Tasca (an entirely gluten-free Italian restaurant near the Eiffel Tower — the homemade fettuccine was our favorite), and Auberge Nicolas Flamel (with a three-course set menu that changes daily and genuinely great gluten-free bread).

Speaking of gluten-free: dinners in Corsica were mostly GF-friendly, though it’d be trickier if you have celiac, since cross-contamination doesn’t seem to be on most kitchens’ radar there (that’s not an issue for us, thankfully). Our favorite lunches of the whole trip were picnics on our Airbnb patio: local cheeses, sausages, and tomatoes so juicy they didn’t need anything else.

If you’re a paid subscriber and would like my full itinerary with the links to where we stayed and the restaurants we ate at (with my notes), just send me a DM or start a paid chat thread, and I’ll send it to you! You can also comment directly in this post. ❤️

Throughout our stay in Corsica and Paris, we kept seeing tarts that looked like today’s (originally published two years ago but still my summer go-to), but this is the far easier version. If you’ve been here on Mind, Body, Spirit, Food for a while, you know my cooking runs simple: nothing arcane, nothing that eats up a whole day in the kitchen, just food that lands you in your body and (hopefully) sparks joy. I originally called this one a “cheater’s French tart,” but it isn’t cheating at all — it’s its own form of delight.

Instead of using pastry cream, the no-cook filling is a mix of cream cheese (giving it subtle cheesecake vibes), creme fraiche (lending an ultra silky texture) and vanilla paste (for rich vanilla flavor). A simple graham cracker and almond crust provides crunchy contrast, although you could go for a blind-baked pasty crust instead. Use any fresh fruits you love — berries, peaches, plums, mango, kiwi — anything juicy and brimming with life. The fruit gets brushed with apricot jam, the secret to its glistening appearance (and yes, that’s what fancy French patisseries use too). You can get the recipe below.

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Come cook with me! I’m so excited to offer online and live cooking classes this summer, which are kicking off this week.

• Kripalu Online Summer Series | July 15th, 6:00pm ET: In this 3-part online series, I’ll be sharing practices and recipes to nourish all of you. We’ll explore themes of intuition, intention, exploration, expression, and more, with vibrant recipes that make the most of the summer season. Register here.

• BlueCashew Kitchen Homestead (Kingston, NY) | July 16th, 5:30pm ET: Join me for an intimate hands-on cooking workshop, where we’ll make a summer feast, then sit to enjoy dinner together. Register here.

• CookStack Collective Online Cooking Class | July 17th, 7pm ET: In this month’s CookStack Collective class, host Rebecca Blackwell will be sharing three summer meals that are perfect for picnics, beach days, boat days, and potlucks. The free class is available for paid subscribers — register here.

Below you’ll find:

• a downloadable, printable PDF of the recipe (as well as a text version)

• recipe tips

• a video

• more favorite no-cook summer desserts