Sugar Plum

NYT Cooking

Rustic Plum Crostata With Lemon Thyme

Whether you call it a crostata, a galette or a rustic fruit tart, this juicy, messy confection has a charm that lies with its flavors rather than its looks. It hits the same luscious, buttery, jammy notes as a fruit pie, but instead of being neatly trimmed, crimped and latticed, it features hasty folds and raggedy edges: perfectly acceptable points of style. Unlike jewel-like tarts crowned with perfect fruits, crostatas do just as well with weeping, bruised specimens, as long as you cut out any obviously funky bits. And crostatas are easy to improvise. You can use whatever fruit you have, making this a handy recipe to pull out when the result of your farmers’ market shopping exuberance begins to wrinkle and fade.