Chef Adrienne Cheatham grew up in the restaurants her mother managed around Chicago. But her dad, a Mississippi native, also wanted her to experience the South, so each spring and summer break, she went to live at her great aunt Ruby’s house in Jackson. “There was always food everywhere,” says Cheatham, now a chef in New York City and the author of the cookbook Sunday Best. “But literally nothing went to waste. Chicken bones, turnip greens, everything had a use whether it was on our table or feeding the neighbor’s pigs.” ¶ Honoring that ethos, one of her go-to ways to use what she has on hand is to create a tart with puff pastry dough. “I always have it in my freezer, no matter what,” she says. “If you get a last-minute call to visit friends, or are having people over, you can throw together a main course or an appetizer or dessert with it using whatever you have at home.” Whether you roll your own dough using Cheatham’s homemade puff pastry recipe or pick up a package at the store, these five chef-approved tarts—from a bacon-y breakfast treat to a lavender-spiked blueberry beauty to a fun riff on potpie—showcase the tart’s sublime versatility and will fire up your imagination. “This is something that can feed your family, feed your neighbors, feed your friends,” Cheatham says. “It’s really just the perfect blank canvas.”
THE PUFF PASTRY
Recipe 1
Recipe by Adrienne Cheatham, author of Sunday Best and host of the Sunday Best
