In which I bake a tart and cry about The Closer.

Only one more episode.

Tonight the historian and I watched the next to last episode ever of The Closer, a show I have loved from pretty much day one. Sometime ago, Kyra Sedgwick, the eponymous and legendary interrogator, decided that she would bow out of the show in this, its seventh season. So, like every other fan of the show, I have relished and fretted over every one of these last episodes. I have, of late, dug up interviews with Sedgwick and the producer of the show, reviews of it, profiles of the actors, discussions of its plot twists. My daughter in Louisiana has also been a fan for a long time; we have been comparing notes over the last year at least over each episode and the overall arc of the show for the past two seasons. I will really miss it.

One thing I realized during this period of last-ness is how much I cherish a drama that's reliable, but how much more I cherish a reliable show that counts on you paying attention. This isn't, writing-wise, at the level of Mad Men or The Wire. But over the past season, or season and a half, the writers of the show have asked the viewer to reconsider her feelings about the characters and even, I would say, the satisfactions of a police procedural that depends upon our identifying with a police interrogator whose will to close the case, and deep intelligence, lead to unorthodox methods. The reconsideration asks us to view the character's unorthodoxy as possibly unethical, and gives her ample opportunity to consider and reconsider her own actions.

I love a show that picks up a thread that seems to have been dropped, and weaves it back into the fabric of the plot, and by so doing, turns the entire premise and its pleasures on its head. I will really miss The Closer. I might feel a little foolish for saying so. But I will, I will.

In its Platonic dream of itself, my tart looks like this.

Which is how I came to shed a tear or two into the tart dough I made. We had some apricots that needed to become a tart, or be eaten, or they would turn inexorably into sad, sad wasted fruit. I bought those apricots at the farmer's market at least two weeks ago, and tonight was the time to pick them up from their cold oblivion, and let them fulfill their destiny as pie.

And while the dough was chilling, relaxing, in the dark of the refrigerator, I watched the episode again. In case I missed something the first time around.

Quince.

This is a quince.


From this photo, you can deduce that the quince is fuzzy, but you probably you cannot tell that it is hard. Like unto a rock, albeit a rock with a lovely perfume.

I found this out when I embarked on a quince tart today for my writing group. Luckily, I had my chef's knife* back, from when I left it at the cabin in, like, July. I hewed the hard fruit into quarters, after having washed its fuzz away, then cutting it into lovely slices, which I then cooked for awhile in a maple/butter caramel sauce**. The thing about a quince is, you have to cook it to make it edible.

After bathing the quince slices in caramel, I arranged them in a pretty-ish concentric pattern in the fancy tart dough. I lightly poured a little of the caramel over the quince and put it in the oven to bake, whereupon I went to work a little more on my poem, whereafter I kind of forgot about the quince tart.

It baked a little past the point I would have likely taken it out had I not forgotten about it--maybe five to seven minutes longer--but that all turned out for the good: the quince turned pinkish, which it is supposed to do; the crust was perfectly crisp and buttery; the whole thing smelled divine. I whipped some cream with vanilla and a little sugar, and served it up, and it was about the prettiest and most delicious thing ever divined by persons with an interest in tarts, such as myself.

This is a quince tart, half-eaten:

*Here is the trajectory of my chef's knife this summer and beyond:

1. it drove with us from Salt Lake to Idaho, where we used it to make all kind of dinner and deliciousness.
2. we left it in the knife drawer. Perhaps others used it, who can say?
3. we came back up to Idaho and left it in the knife drawer again.
4. I asked my mom and dad to bring it back with them when they close the cabin for the winter. Which they did.
5. awhile later, I went down to Utah County for a visit and a birthday pedicure. I developed a quick-release cold, so the sneezing &c. therefrom prevented me from remembering to take home my knife.
6. my sister brought the knife up to me when we had breakfast, but I left it in my daughter's car when she dropped me off.
7. FINALLY on Halloween, I retrieved the knife and brought it safely home,

where I could use it to make quince tart.

**--ingredients of the maple/butter caramel sauce: maple syrup and butter.