Mango-Lime Tarts with Shortbread Crusts

I use the filling for these little tarts in all sorts of things--good for pies, tarts, parfaits, pastries. You really can't go wrong with a combination like mango and lime.

for filling:
1 cup mango nectar
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup lime juice
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 cup orange juice
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
6 ounces frozen or fresh raspberries plus a bit of sugar for puree
whipped cream and sliced strawberries for garnish

for crust:
1 cup butter
2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To prepare crust, preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Lightly grease six tart pans and set aside.

Cream butter and sugar, add vanilla then flour and salt until dough sticks together. Divide the dough into six pieces and press each into a fluted greased tart pan. Prick each crust with a fork and bake at 325 for 40 minutes or until the crusts begin to turn slightly brown.

Let crusts cool completely and remove them from the tart pans.

Then for filling combine the nectar, sugar, lime juice, cornstarch, orange juice and eggs in a large sauce pan and whisk together. Cook over a medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to boil. Once it does, reduce the heat to low and cook for two more minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat and add butter, stirring to melt and combine.

Pour the mixture into a glass bowl and cover the top with plastic wrap until it's cooled a bit. Spoon the mixture into the baked shells, top with whipped cream and fresh strawberries with a drizzle of pureed strawberries underneath.

***

Okay we've watched a couple of movies in the last month or so--if you're wondering if you should put one of these guys in your Netflix queue here's one opinion on the matter:

Catch and Release. Bad, very bad--stinky in fact. Jennifer Garner has a sweet image somehow (even after all those abominable Electra stints) but she's just irritating in this drama-romance about a woman whose fiance is killed and she's left to pick up the pieces. It starts out quirky-sweet and goes downhill from there as she uncovers what kind of a jerk she was engaged to and shows how well she's learned her lesson in picking out men by making more of the same mistakes again--only for some reason they expect us to cheer her foolishness. We turned it off and never found out if she turns out to be as dumb as she was indicating--maybe she redeemed herself at the end but odds were against it. For a grade I'd give it a D-.

P.S. I Love You. Poor Andrew's been at the mercy of my video choices lately and has been a good sport about all the romance I've been dishing him but neither one of us liked this one either. It wasn't as bad as Catch and Release and it had a fun premise (a woman's husband dies and she learns to cope through letters he's arranged to have delivered after his death) but I found Hilary Swank to be irritating in a romance, she ought to stick to boxing. If the movie had had more of her fun husband in it I would have probably liked it more but I found her depressingly annoying and her flaky friends/family more so. Her husband's just died for goodness sake! Give her at least a week before insisting she get over it and find someone new! Harry Connick Jr., while always a thrill, was less appealing here, I didn't like his character and he was just thrown in randomly like shot gun pellets, not hitting any particular target or objective at all. Had potential but probably would have been better with Gwyneth Paltrow as the main character and without Lisa Kudrow (included in the cast for random Phoebe-ness). I'd give it a D+, a C being mediocre or average of course, but then what do I know? I didn't really care much for Becoming Jane which shows how flaky my movie tastes can be.

Breach. Really liked this one and liked it alot. I only had heard that it was a thriller and not until it was in the DVD player did I realize it was the dramatized story of Robert Hanssen, the most successful spy in the history of the U.S. The cast is excellent and though the movie moves slowly (probably because I was expecting a political thriller more along the lines of The Bourne Ultimatum or something--another Chris Cooper film) it isn't plodding or tedious. It's methodical and builds the characters and situations slowly but convincingly. You come to realize at certain points why the director led you along in certain ways and how he manipulated your emotions. The fact that it was based on a true story made me enjoy it more, somehow knowing that something really happened makes it all the more interesting, though I'm sure there are plenty of parts that were strictly Hollywood moments. An A- definitely.

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