Pumpkin and Date Tart with Bourbon Gelato

Name: Pumpkin and Date Tart with Bourbon Gelato
Yield: serves 8 to 10
Ingredients: 1 extra-large egg yolk; 2 tablespoons heavy whipping cream; 1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting; 1/4 cup sugar; 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small chunks, plus more for the pan and the parchment paper; 5 extra-large egg yolks; 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon heavy whipping cream; 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg; 1/2 cup pumpkin purée; 8 to 10 plump Medjool dates; Bourbon Gelato (page 311); Bourbon, for drizzling; Toasted Walnut Biscotti (optional; page 324)

January 26, 2012

When you’ve worked with food as long as I have, and have come up with as many desserts as I have, you get to a certain point where many of the dishes you construct are compilations of things you’ve done previously. When we opened Mozza, I had done a cream-filled date tart that I really loved, so I urged Dahlia to rearrange some of its components, and to her credit she came up with this sophisticated rendition of pumpkin pie. We serve it with walnut cookies that are a twist on a Greek walnut cookie that I included in a previous book. Pumpkin purée is one of the few canned items that I endorse, the reason being that it is totally pure—there are no weird ingredients in it, just pumpkin. Also, from my experience, roasting a pumpkin and puréeing it myself doesn’t yield more delicious results than canned. You will need an 11-inch flan ring (a straight-sided bottomless tart ring) to make this.

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