Thinking about French Leave: Alsatian Leek and Onion Tart, or 'Tarte Alsacienne'

 

 

In a couple of months I'll be off to France again for a some sun, good wine, good food and returning home with a motorhome full of French goodies and I'll be honest I am already in the mood for it. Although, it has to be said that the first part of our holiday is in south west France and I am a bit concerned that the weather is at least as bad if not worse as than it is here just now. Anyway, there is a bit of time for that problem to sort itself out and in the meantime I am going to be getting myself in the mood with the odd foray into French cuisine which if it's any good will no doubt reveal itself in some guise on this blog.

 

Being that I am on one hand quite predictable and on the other hand just a bit random I thought I would pick 'quiche' (how 'cliche') from the complete opposite area from where I am visiting, from Alsace in north east France. This recipe is based on the one from my 'Best Ever French Cooking Course' cookbook with the odd tweak, mainly turning this recipe from 'tartlette' to 'tarte' as I am not one for little quichy things. The whole tartlet thing strikes as too much pastry and not enough filling. Anyway, I'm rambling; here's the recipe:

 

Alsatian Leek and Onion Tart, or 'Tarte Alsacienne' adapted from 'The Best Ever French Cooking Course'.

 

Makes a 9 inch tart approx

 

For the pastry:

 

6oz plain flour

3oz cold butter

1 egg yolk

1/2 tsp salt

2 - 3 tbsp cold water to bind

 

(or buy some shortcrust pastry - you'll need about half a block)

 

For the filling:

 

1oz butter

1 onion, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1lb leeks, cleaned and thinly sliced

2oz Gruyere cheese

3 eggs

1/2 pint double cream

salt and pepper to taste

 

Method:

 

Make the pastry by blitzing or rubbing together the flour and the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the salt and then the egg yolk. Use the cold water to bind the mixture, adding the water sparingly.  Roll into a bowl and put in the fridge for half an hour to rest.

 

Or, use ready made shortcrust pastry.

 

 

 

When rested, use the pastry to line a prepared loose bottomed tart tin (my rectangular is 13 x 4 inch) and the same kind of quantity fills about a 9 inch round pan, ish)

 

Prick the base and return to the fridge to rest once more (for about 20 minutes).

 

Preheat the oven to 190c/375f  and put a baking tray into the oven to heat up.

 

 

 

Line the pastry case with greaseproof paper/foil and baking beans.

 

Put the pastry case in the oven and cook for about 8 minutes or until the edges of the pastry look golden. Take the baking beans out and return to the oven for another 2 or 3 minutes to dry out the base of the tart. Transfer to a rack to cool and reduce the oven temperature to 180c/350f. and begin to make the filling.

 

 

 

In a large frying pan, melt the butter over a medium heat and then add the onion and the thyme and cook for about 3 - 5 minutes until the onion is just softened but not coloured.

 

 

 

Add the leeks and cook for 10 - 12 minutes until they are soft and tender.

 

Once softened, place the onion/leek mixture into the base of the tart.

 

 

 

Sprinkle the cheese over the onions and leeks and put the case onto the baking tray so you can transfer the full case into the oven easily once the cream and eggs are added.

 

 

 

In a bowl, beat together the eggs, the cream and the salt and pepper (to taste). Pour the mixture over the onions, leeks and cheese. Don't overfill.

 

 

 

Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes until set and golden.

 

Transfer the tart onto a wire rack to cool slightly. When cooled, remove the tart from the tin.

 

 

 

Serve warm, or at room temperature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just add baked beans - Roast Potato and Spring Onion Tart

 

 

And there was me thinking that roasties were just for, well, roasts. Actually, we have roast potatoes reasonably often as Lola and Finn adore them. They eat them like a donkey eats strawberries and on each occasion I never cook enough of them. I look at the pan of peeled spuds and think to myself that this time I have done it; they won't eat all these. But they do. I admire their stamina, frankly, 'cos after about three I am potatoed out.

 

To that end, I thought this recipe would be a sure fire winner with my children and to a certain extent it was. Finn says he doesn't like cheese (Is he mine? People who know me well know that me and cheese have a passionate affair that goes back to the womb...) and then I pointed out the stringy stuff he has on pizza which he said wasn't cheese but then agreed it was and grinned. Anyway, the offending cheese, once partly covered by an accompaniment of beans (yes, baked beans - I refuse to be ashamed by this notion) ceased to be a problem. Not that it ever should have been.

 

Now, these aren't real roasties. They aren't burnished, floury, fluffed up, duck/goose/dripping affairs, but they were nice and when combined with the cheese, the onion and the cream were really tasty. But then potatoes in whatever guise are always tasty with those particular ingredients. The more I think about it, I don't know why, when I initially read this recipe several months ago, I thought the filling was incongruous for these ingredients are really meant to go together.

 

A word (well, several words) on the pastry. Popina (from whence this recipe comes) often uses a pizza dough base for some of her tarts and that is a good idea, particularly I think for some of her Mediterranean inspired tarts and quiches. I had some frozen pizza dough which I had bought when in France which I decided should really be used, and the trick I find to avoid the soggy bottom with a pizza dough is to make the base really thin and to ensure that when you cook the tart in the oven it is placed on a really hot baking tray to give it a head start. Can you tell I have had a soggy bottom before? Though so. Next time I make this though, I will use a pastry because I think it's what the filling needs. Like it needs a tin of baked beans as an accompaniment. Oh yes.

 

Roast Potato and Spring Onion tart, adapted from 'Popina Book of Baking' by Isadora Popovic

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad, and one other.

 

For the base:

 

A ready made pizza base

 

For the filling:

 

500g baby new potatoes, halved

4 tbsp olive oil

bunch of spring onions, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

70g cheddar, grated

170ml double cream

1 egg

salt and pepper to taste

 

Method:

 

Put the potatoes and oil in a roasting tin and season well. Toss the potatoes until evenly coated. Cover the tray with tin foil and roast in the preheated oven for 20 mins. 

 

Remove and leave to cool for 10 mins.

 

Reduce oven temp to 170c/gas mark 3. 

 

Add the potatoes to the rest of the filling ingredients and combine carefully, so the potatoes don't disintegrate too much. Taste for seasoning.

Sadly blurred but you get the idea...
 

Press the pizza dough into a prepared (loose bottomed) tart tin (mine was a ten inch one)

 

Spread the filling over the base of the tart, ensuring even coverage. 

 

 

Place into the oven on an already hot baking tray. Bake for 25 - 30 mins or until the filling looks golden. (I threw some foil over the tart when it looked cooked so that it could stay in longer and hopefully eradicate any chance of soggy bottom). 

 

Leave to cool for 5 - 10 minutes as the filling will be too hot to taste. Serve with, if you're normal, a green salad maybe, I don't know. If you're Northern, open a tin of beans.

Not a looker, but tastes pretty good! Pear and Nutella Tart (or Tarte Poire et Nutella)

 

 

 

Why the French in the title? Am I showing off? Yes No, it's because I have been mooching through the Marmiton website again for reasons such as practising my French and looking for inspiration for a store cupboard pudding, and this is pretty store cupboard to be fair. And it's also really tasty, despite it's what I will describe as 'piebald' appearance, reminiscent of the gypsy cobs of my youth and my history, for part of my ancestry is a little exotic and there is a wanderlust which I cannot deny. Where was I? Oh yes. Piebald. I think that it will be some complicated chemical reaction which I don't understand between custard and Nutella which means that the filling looks blotchy but as I like custard and I like Nutella I really couldn't care less. It tastes lovely. But then I defy anything to taste awful if it has Nutella in it. I mean, how is that even possible?

 

This pudding is very easy to knock up if you have some ready made pastry, which I did because of my pastry 'stash' in the freezer. I used French pate brisee for this tart and it worked wonderfully well. And as for the Nutella, well at least this time I had an excuse to eat a spoonful or two of it because of the premise that I was baking with it, rather than my being stood with the cupboard open, tablespoon teaspoon in hand, surreptitiously getting a Nutella fix. Result!

 

 

My spoonful! And it was enjoyed!

 

Pear and Nutella Tart, translated and adapted from Tarte Poire et Nutella, from the Marmiton website

 

Ingredients:

 

A roll of shortcrust/sweet pastry (shop bought)
2 - 3 tbsp Nutella
Large tin of pears (You might have a couple over)
2 tbsp caster sugar (or to taste)
2 eggs
A glass of milk (I used about 200ml)

plus extra granulated sugar for sprinkling after baking.

 

Method:

 

 

 

Place the pastry into a loose bottomed tart tin (I used a 20cm/8" approx one).

 

 

Spread a layer of Nutella on the pastry.

 

 

Cut the pears into pieces, put them on the Nutella. (Mine were halves, so I left them as they were).

 

 

Beat the two eggs, and milk together. Add a little of the sugar to taste if you like.

 

 

 

Put the mixture around the pears (they should not be completely covered).

 

 

Bake at 180 ° C about 1/2 hour, or until the custard has set.

 

A little before removing the tart from the oven, sprinkle with sugar.

 

 

 

Speeding up history - Bakewell Tart (or pudding, if you like)

I am lucky in that being British I have gorgeously satisfying, completely stodgy puddings in my cooking DNA. Whilst sometimes it might be nice to finish a meal with something light, there are times, often when it's cold or miserable outside, that I require something a little more weighty, the kind of 'afters' that sticks to your ribs. And whilst this particular pudding might not have the sticky gravitas of Spotted Dick or Steamed Treacle Sponge, Bakewell Tart is a gorgeous way of finishing off a meal. And to think, like Tarte Tatin, it happened through mistake...

Coming back from France I brought a motor home freezer full of (amongst other things) puff pastry, filo pastry, shortcrust pastry and so on, not because I hate making pastry as such but because it's so bloody cheap compared to here and it's amazing quality. And it's easy to whip something up resembling a hearty meal when I come home from work when the pastry is already there, done, waiting to be topped with tomatoes or mozzarella or something, or wrapped around potatoes and meat to produce a pie or a pasty, both adored by Lola and Finn. I figured that I could make this tart easier by using ready made pastry. Ordinarily I would have used puff as this is meant to be more faithful to whatever the 'original recipe' was, but I used pate brisee this time and it was absolutely fine, and totally delicious.

And as my great, great grandma and plenty of her forebears are from Bakewell, I kinda feel quite close to this pudding, imagining that some of my ancestors might have been ones to try the original mistake in the Rutland Arms, nearly 200 years ago.

Bakewell Tart or Pudding

Ingredients

6 - 8 oz puff pastry (though on this occasion I used ready rolled pate brisee)3 oz butter
3 oz caster sugar
3 egg yolks lightly beaten
2 egg whites
A quarter of a teaspoon of almond essence or almond oil if you have it.
four tablespoons of firm raspberry jam
(though I have used a bit more than that - I like it jammy)
A handful of flaked almonds

Method

Preheat oven to 210 C and put in a baking sheet to warm up (the bottom of the pie needs extra heat to cook the pastry)

Roll the pastry out and use to line a greased tart tin or pie plate about 7 inches across and one inch deep with a tiny lip all the way round. Spread the jam thinly on the bottom of the pastry. It should look like a big jam tart.

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, and work in the egg yolks and almond essence bit by bit.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks, then fold into the butter and sugar mix. You might end up with a batter that is quite thick, but you should be able to pour it into the pastry and jam.

Pour this batter over the jam, scatter some flaked almonds over the top and place in the oven on the baking sheet. After about 15 minutes, check the pie to see if the top is browning. If it is getting quite dark, reduce the heat down to about 180 C. Bake for a further 20 minutes or so, but keep checking. If the batter is still too wobbly but is browning more than it should, place some foil over the top.

The pudding is ready when the pastry is puffed and the mix has risen and looks dark. The batter will yield a little.

Allow to cool slightly. The top will sink very slightly but its meant to.

Serve with pouring cream, custard or vanilla ice cream. Custard is the accompaniment of choice around here!

Not a tart - A Jamie inspired cheese and bacon quiche

It should be said here and now that I don't know the difference between quiche and a tart, and I don't care massively, though you could throw in the word 'flan' and be even more befuddled should you really be interested. What I do know however is that I really like quiche (and tarts and flans for that matter) and actually so do Lola and Finn and if you can get a pastry that behaves (this one does) then this is a really easy way of creating something which is at once both satisfying and light, summery when paired with some salad and then transformed into something stodgy and Autumnal if you serve it warm with baked beans, which is Lola and Finn's chosen way of eating quiche. You may think that is so, so wrong, but Lola and Finn don't want to be right.

I decided on whipping up a quiche after a visit to the supermarket in the evening; (best time to go if you're after a bargain) and spying a cooked bacon joint being heavily reduced in price to literally a few coppers. Everything must go! I snaffled it up a nanosecond after the assistant had shot it with the reduced price gun and somehow got it home without breaking into it and tearing a strip of sticky fat and salty meat off the bone. I just love bacon!

As I had eggs to use, some wonderfully golden yolked affairs that had been brought back from France, I decided that a quiche was the way to go. preferably with the bite of some mature cheese and a delightfully short pastry which crumbled pleasingly as you pressed the tines of your fork into it. Deep joy.

I have no loyalty when it comes to quiche recipes, and indeed have been known to haphazardly hurl together alsorts of random and leftover ingredients into a pastry case, however, here is a Jamie Oliver inspired affair and it is very good indeed.

My tweaks to the original recipe. My bacon was cooked, therefore I did not need to go through the saute process with the onion. Also, I used spring onion because I really couldn't be doing with faffing with a pan for cooking a few bits of a cooking onion.

The original recipe calls for 4 large eggs; I used 5 medium eggs and it seemed to work just fine.

My fluted dish is approximately 9 1/2 inches across. The pastry covered this with a little left over. The quantity of filling came about two thirds of the way up the pastry case. I hate having quiche mixture leftover.

So, whether your accompaniment of choice is a salad or a tin of beans, this quiche is pretty nice.

Cheese and Bacon Quiche, adapted from Jamie Oliver's recipe (from his website - jamieoliver.com)

Ingredients:

Pastry:
220g plain flour
120g cold butter
1/2 tsp salt
about 3 tbsp of ice cold water

Filling:

4 large eggs (I used 5 medium eggs)

150ml double cream

100g mature cheddar cheese, finely grated

200g bacon, cut into small strips (Note: my bacon was cooked. I also used a little more than 200g because I wanted a firmer quiche. Lola and Finn prefer it that way)

1 small onion, chopped (I used 4 spring onions, white and green parts chopped)

1 tbsp chopped parsley

Salt and pepper to season

Method:

Pastry:

Place the flour and the salt in a large bowl. Cut the butter into small cubes then add to the flour. Rub the flour and butter between your fingers till the mixture resembles large breadcrumbs. Or, if you're me, put it in a food processor and process the ingredients and then carefully add a trickle of water through the feed tube and process until the pastry comes together in a bowl. Add the water, continue mixing, then knead gently into a ball. Place in the fridge for at least 15 minutes.

Grease a quiche/flan dish (approx 24cm -  mine was 9 1/2inches - see above) and preheat oven to 180C.

Roll out the pastry and lay in the quiche dish . Trim the edges. The pastry can be patched into the dish if needs be. It is quite forgiving.

Cover the pastry base with some greaseproof paper and then fill with dried beans, peas, rice or baking beans (couldn't find mine!)

.

Pre-bake the pastry case for about 12-15 minutes, then remove from the oven (remove the paper and beans).

Prepare the filling by frying your bacon and onion if it is raw. I used cooked bacon and spring onions and did not need this step.

Place the fried bacon and onion into the quiche crust and spread out evenly.

Whisk together the eggs, cream, cheese and chopped parsley. Season with a little salt and pepper. though be aware of the potential saltiness of your bacon.

Pour into the quiche dish then place in the oven and bake for approx 30-40 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving. A raging hot quiche is dangerous and verging on impossible to eat and tastes of nothing. Serve warm or at room temperature.