La Tarte aux Myrtilles

The fat for pastry making in this part of France depends largely on individual taste – goose fat, butter and oil all have their supporters. Open tarts are filled not only with prunes but with all the other fruits as they come into season. Plums, especially the green-yellow reines-claude or greengages, apricots, apples, pears all make fine tarts, and sometimes the fruit is given an extra lift by being first macerated in alcohol. In August in the hills of the Auvergne and the Pyrenees