Tarty Tuesdays: Bacon and Tomato Tart

Sometimes I wonder why I bother posting some recipes:  they’re so simple, and their ingredients are so few or unremarkable, that in an increasingly sophisticated foodie world they are likely to make the casual blog browser shrug and go “Meh,” before surfing away.

Here’s the thing, though:  good ingredients only need simple a treatment.  Good ingredients can make a simple dish taste absolutely divine.  In this case, just one ingredient:  beautiful tomatoes.

Unless you grow your own, beautiful tomatoes that smell and taste as God intended are as rare and precious as truffles.  When you see them, you bow your head, say a little prayer of thanks, buy as many as you can, and get them home with all due haste.  Slice them up thick for a mayo-slathered sandwich, or drench them with olive oil and perfume them with basil.  Or just bite into one like an apple, perhaps powdering each bite with a drift of sea salt.  Any leftover ‘matas can go into this tart, which is far greater than the sum of its parts.

A bit of a leap of faith is necessary here, because I really can’t tell you how special this tart - which was demolished in one sitting by a small number of diners that included tiny, picky eaters - is.  You’ll just have to find great tomatoes, make it and eat it.  Then you can tell me.  

BACON AND TOMATO TART 
(6-8 servings)

Ingredients:

1 x recipe Nidia's Tart Crust, or enough shortcrust pastry for a single crust

600g. small, ripe tomatoes, blanched and peeled

salt

2 tsp. olive oil

1 1/2 onions, sliced

300g. bacon, diced

4 large eggs

250g. cheddar (white cheddar in the US), grated

1/4 cup homemade mayonnaise or cream

freshly ground pepper to taste

fresh oregano leaves, to taste

What you do:

1.  Preheat oven to 180oC and lightly grease tart pan.  Line tart pan with pastry.  Quarter tomatoes and remove seeds.  (I did this straight into a plastic container.  The seeds have gone into the freezer for the next time I make sauce.)  Sprinkle with salt, toss, and place in colander to drain while you make filling.

2.  Heat oil over medium heat and add onions. (I also add the bacon rinds at this point for extra flavour and moisture, and remove them when they’ve finished rendering, whereupon hungry vultures - my sons and husband – descend and demolish them.)  Sweat until translucent.  Add bacon, and increase heat to high.  Sauté, stirring occasionally, until bacon begins to brown.  Set aside. 

3.  In a bowl, combine eggs, cheddar, and mayonnaise or cream, and season with lots of freshly ground pepper – you won’t need salt.

4.  To assemble tart, line tart pan with crust.  Spoon in bacon and onion, then evenly spread cheddar mixture over the top.  Press tomato quarters, cut side down, into cheddar mixture.  Scatter over oregano leaves.  Bake for 45 minutes, until set and golden.  Allow to settle for a few minutes before unmoulding and serving.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Tarty Tuesdays: bacon, apple, and Tasmanian Blue pie

Yes, I have been writing, and yes, I have been cooking, but I have not been writing about cooking.  It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy, even if some of my endeavours have been… shall we say… frivolous.

Japanese-style potato salad with a garnish that made strange but perfect sense.

Although I was dragged kicking and screaming back into the training kitchen at work, I was delighted to suddenly remember that teaching people how to cook means I can now buy cooking-related stuff for teaching resources and claim it on my tax.  So yes, OK, I bought a gadget that turns a boiled egg into a bunny, but I’ve also been buying things that are entirely useful.

Let me introduce you to Harold.

Harold – or, as it is properly known, the Harold Pie Crust Maker – has come into my life to end another cooking-related bane:  Rolling Pastry Into a Perfect Circle.

'Allo, 'Arold!

Oh, it’s a pain.  Not just the mess – mess I can cope with, as befits a woman who has messed up her kitchen doing everything from shucking 200 corn cobs for freezing to making her own tofu every week – but getting the circle right, without tearing-and-patching, without wonky bits, and without having to trim.  Harold puts an end to all that.  Pop your ball of pastry or dough in the floured bag, zip ‘er up, and roll away.  A minute or two later, you have your perfect circle.  Last week when I was on holidays and playing Happy Hausfrau and making stuff to pop in the freezer, I made five 35cm crusts in 15 minutes, which included the time spent making the pastry.

I took two of them out today, and set about making an awesome vehicle for the Heritage Blue cheese that had reached peak ripeness and wouldn’t see another few days.  I remembered, back in the 80s, making an apple, bacon and blue cheese tart out of Australian Gourmet (before it wedded Traveller), but I couldn’t be fizzed leafing through back issues, so I just decided to make it up as went along.  

Just before the tossing the bacon back in the pan.  Tossing things together for a minute or so over a higher heat is what Marcella Hazan calls "insaporire" - "make tasty".  It's almost always a good idea to toss things with the sautéed aromatics before going ahead with the recipe.

Blurry pic, but it's clear just how delicious this is going to be.  See the little fresh thyme leaves?  Doesn't it make you wanna go out and plant some herbs?  Well, it should.  No, really:  YOU SHOULD.

Then along came my professional photographer husband and took the only good picture of the batch.  Sigh...
Anyway, if your filling is too thick to pour, you can slacken it with milk, but just a tad.  A couple tablespoons to a quarter cup, tops.

It was a tight fit, so I didn't crimp together top and bottom.  The pie held together fine, and had extra give which was awesome since the filling had a soufflé thing going on and rose quite high during baking.  It fell dramatically when I took it out of the oven, but it's still higher than it started out.

Because as you know, you don’t really need a recipe to make a tart.  For that same reason, I'll also tell you that this pie is also very, very delicious made with pears, or pears and apples half-and-half.

  

BACON, APPLE, AND TASMANIAN BLUE PIE

Ingredients:

250g. bacon, cut into thin strips

1 onion, thinly sliced

2 stalks celery, finely chopped

2 apples, peeled and finely chopped

Fresh thyme

140g. Tasmanian blue cheese, such as Heritage, or other smooth and rounded blue cheese (stay away from the harsh Danish stuff)

4 eggs

300ml. sour cream

Freshly ground pepper

2 x recipe Nidia's Tart Crust, or enough shortcrust pastry for a double crust

2 tbsp. dried breadcrumbs or flour (opt.)

Eggwash

What you do:

1.  Preheat oven to 180oC.  Grease tart pan or brush with Baker's Secret.  Lightly oil a heavy sauté pan.  Cook bacon over low heat until it is soft and fat has rendered out.  Do not allow to crisp.  Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2.  In same pan, sweat onion, celery and apples until tender but not mushy.  Add bacon and thyme, and toss over medium heat for a minute or so.

3.  In a medium bowl, mash blue cheese, then add eggs, sour cream, and freshly-ground pepper to taste.  Combine well.

4.  Line tart pan with crust, and sprinkle with breadcrumbs or flour.  (This step is optional, but you may want to consider it since the filling can get juicy due to variables in the bacon and the fruit.)  Spoon in bacon mixture and spread evenly.  Pour over blue cheese mixture, spreading it as evenly as you can.  Top with second crust.  Brush with eggwash, and bake until crust is golden and filling is set.  

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Tarty Tuesdays: ugly but good pie

I hadn’t seen my fake mother, Lee, since my wedding last Valentine’s Day.  Lee is still grieving – as is right and good – for the daughter who left this world just a week after that.  But her new home, with a 180o view of the sea just a stone’s throw away, is teeming with life, and that is also as it should be, because Lee and her husband, much as this loss has razed them to the ground, are full of life themselves.

In her backyard, she showed me the contemplative garden where all the plants that they received after their daughter’s death went.  There’s a seat there, and many flowers, and also a beautiful plum tree so laden with fruit that its branches stoop under the weight.  Their son has helped them prune the other fruit trees and put in raised beds for their vegetables.  There is nothing that impresses me quite so much as a veggie patch, and this was a fragrant, colourful beauty:  forests of chard, a minefield of purple beetroot, and tomatoes worthy of that scene in The Godfather.

Lee and I talked, and talked, and talked, and cried some, and the next day, when I was ready to come home, she walked me out into the garden with a large, flat basket, and picked me tomatoes, chard, many plums, and apricots.  I had a three-hour drive back home and My Baby and I were going away for the weekend the next day to another place also three hours away, and I knew some of the things Lee gave me would not last that long.  When I got home, I turned the chard into an early (and ersatz) Torta Pasqualina to take with us for our hosts, and I gently stewed the sweet ripe apricots until tender and put them in the ‘fridge for… whatever, whenever.

When I came home, we ate the tomatoes the way my mother called “split tomatoes”:  cut in half, scored lightly, sprinkled with salt, oregano, and good olive oil.  So good.  Then I made much plum jam.

The plums were on the greenish side, so the jam has a fabulous set and a gorgeous tart twang.  Then, I remembered the apricots.

I have some miniature pavlova shells that were tempting, but no.  What I really felt like was an apricot pie, but I wanted something lighter than the usual pie.  Then I remembered the fresh strawberry pie from a beloved book I have called American Pie, by Teresa Kennedy, and hey!  Adaptation ahoy!  For my pastry I went to Nidia's, and this is where the ugliness comes in.

The recipe is for a beautiful, light, perfumed, cookie-like crust.  But mine turned out decidedly ugly.

Crust got da uggles!

Granted, I didn’t let the dough chill for the requisite hour (it’s a nightmare to roll while at anything other than ‘fridge temp), so it’s probably my fault, but I pressed on regardless.  I pressed on because the raw pastry tasted amazing, cooked it smelt divine, and I also remembered a little sweet that the Italians had before the French took over the world with their macarons (go on – put on a French accent and say it – macaron).  Brutti ma buoni are freeform Italian macaroons, and their name translates as “ugly but good”.

And this, I decided, was going to be my pie:  ugly but good.  And remembering Lee’s garden, and the dolphins playing in the water in view of their backyard while we thought of a loved one gone too soon, I thought it was apt.

When you first combine the ingredients, it'll look cloudy on account of the cornflour.  Don't worry, it'll come good as gelatinization takes place.

This is the filling after it comes to the boil.  See?  Super thick.   It should glop, not pour, from the spoon, and mound slightly when it falls.

Add butter, and stir.  This will make the filling...

... gorgeously glossy.

Pour filling into crust, and chill.  Have immoderate amounts of whipped cream on standby.

PERFUMED FRESH APRICOT PIE

The perfume comes from the crust, which is spectacular.  Keep the technique for the filling in mind for adaptation, too.  It’s good for any soft summer fruit.

Ingredients:

For the crust –

140g. sugar

100g. butter

3 egg yolks

3 tbsp. port

2 tbsp. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

425-450g. self-raising flour

For the filling –

1 cup apricot puree

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1/4 cornflour (corn starch)

2 tbsp. unsalted butter

Whipped cream, to serve

Method:

1.  First, make the crust.  Cream sugar and butter in food processor until creamy.  Add egg yolks, and whizz.  Add port, milk, and vanilla, and give it a very quick whizz (mixture will curdle if you overwhizz).  Finally, add flour and pulse until a soft dough is formed.  Scrape onto a sheet of cling film and refrigerate for one hour. 

2.  Brush tart or pie pan with baker's secret or grease and flour.  Roll out dough, line pan, prick several times with a fork, and bake in a moderate oven for about 15 min., until golden.

3.  Next, make the filling.  Combine all ingredients except butter in a medium saucepan, and stir constantly until mixture boils and thickens.  It will be very thick and should mound when you drop it from the spoon.  Add butter, and stir until melted.  Mixture will now be gorgeously glossy.  Pour filling out into crust, and chill until set.  Serve with whipped cream.

Yumbo McGillicutty!

Tarty Tuesdays: Classic Tuna Pie

It’s summer in the southern hemisphere, and while that means a barbeque to many, if not most people, to me that’s just too restrictive.  Breakfast?  Outside!  Lunch?  Outside!  Dinner outside?  Heck yes!  And morning and afternoon tea too, with a paperback novel and my feet up on a neighbouring seat.

I don’t need “outdoor food” to eat out on my lovely and shady deck – I have table and chairs, after all, which surely allows for a degree of civilization even if aforementioned table and chairs were bought on sale from Bunnings – but it helps if the food is relaxed and uncomplicated.  I don’t want to worry about its presentation, or it going cold if there’s a beautiful breeze flowing.

A savoury pie or tart, served cold, is perfect.  My beautiful, salsa-dancing cousin Silvia, who is an instinctual goddess in the kitchen, has a hand that turns everything delicious.  Last time I was at hers and my aunt’s house in Buenos Aires and stayed unexpectedly to dinner, she went into the kitchen, and refusing my offers of help, turned out dish after delicious dish in record time.  Everything was worth going on bended knee for, but surprisingly, what I wanted seconds of was this tuna pie, which she informed me was “simple but so classic”.  So classic, in fact, that I was embarrassed to admit I’d never tasted it, much less made it.  But I’ve been daydreaming about it ever since, and turned one out a few days ago for our New Year’s Day picnic.  It was almost as good as hers.

Part of the reason why Silvia was able to make the pie so quickly was the fact that she had store-bought discos de tarta on hand, but even without it, it’s still super-quick to make.  Nidia’s Tart Crust, below, is made in about two minutes with a minimum of fuss and mess (funnily enough, it is also the closest recipe to store-bought disco de tarta pastry that I have yet made) and makes for a pie that’s delicious hot or cold and will cut beautifully.

As an aside, I’m a huge fan of cut-and-come-again things during the summer.  Because of the heat-induced sluggishness, you want to take advantage of the times when you actually feel like cooking to cook something you can keep for when you won’t.  A whole ham – ubiquitous at this time of year – kept ready to go wrapped in damp muslin in the fridge, a boned, stuffed and roasted cold chicken, a hunk of muffuletta or pan bagna, a tart… these are things that can be waiting for you to approach knife in hand.  And go on – take that slice outside.  The cicadas are singing, the dog-eared paperback novel is waiting, and the world can just wait for a while. 

     

CLASSIC TUNA PIE

Ingredients:

1 x recipe Nidia’s Tart Crust (see below)

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 red pepper (capsicum), cut into fine dice

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1 x 425g. tin tuna chunks in brine, drained

1 cup fresh or frozen peas

1/2 tsp. oregano

Salt, pepper, and chili to taste

3 eggs

150ml. light cream, or half-and-half (milk and cream)

Eggwash

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 180oC.  Brush inside of tart/flan pan with Baker's Secret or line with baking paper.  Make up Nidia’s Tart Crust.  Roll out 2/3 of it and use it to line pan.  Prick several times with a fork, brush with some of the eggwash, and place in ‘fridge while you make the filling.

2.  Sauté onion and red pepper in olive oil until soft.  Transfer to a bowl and add tuna and peas, and season with salt, pepper, and chili to taste.  Spoon filling into tart crust.  Lightly whisk together eggs and light cream or half-and-half, and pour over filling.  Roll out remaining pastry and use it to top pie, crimping the edges together.  Cut out a vent with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors to allow steam to escape, and brush with egg wash.

3.  Bake in lower shelf of oven for ten minutes (this is for the base to firm up nicely), then transfer to highest shelf and bake until golden – 25-30 minutes approx.  Cool at least to warm before serving.  

NIDIA'S TART CRUST

Oh, we do get in a rut with our pastry, don’t we?  It’s puff and shortcrust, shortcrust and puff.  Yes, they are versatile, but they’re not always what you want.  First and foremost, both pastries are very, very rich, which might make a pie or tart out of the question for you, but also might not suit a more rustic filling, or suit an occasion, such as a picnic, when you want something a little sturdier.

Nidia, from Recetas Simples y Deliciosas, has a wonderful recipe that not only fits the bill, but is also done in two shakes.  There’s no cutting in butter, no working with ice-cold ingredients, no worrying about working the dough too much, and no banging around.  You can make it ahead of time if you like, but it’s so quickly and easily made that you’ll probably find it’s not necessary.  And because it’s a cross between pastry and dough, it is also – joy of joys – fairly low in fat.  All up, this recipe is reason enough to make pies and tarts on a regular basis, I reckon.

Thank you Nidia for letting me repost the recipe, this time in English.

Ingredients:

250g. plain flour

1 tsp. salt

1 egg

1/4 cup (60ml) milk

3 tbsp. (45ml) vegetable oil

Method:

1.  Combine flour and salt in a bowl.  Make a well in the middle and add remaining ingredients.  Gradually mix flour into the well to obtain a soft dough that does not stick to your hands.  Wrap in plastic and allow to rest for 30 minutes if you have time, but if not, proceed with the recipe.

Tarty Tuesdays: Soufflé Tomato Tart

Savoury tartas, tarts, are popular in Buenos Aires, where I was born.  Every cook has his or her own versions of the tart (my mother’s was an onion one to go on bended knee for) and no wonder:  a tart can be posh, a tart can be homely, a tart can use just about anything in the pantry, ‘fridge or freezer, and a tart can be one of the quickest things to put together, particularly if you pick up a packet of pastry discos from the cold case at the supermarket.

But most of all, a tart is simple.  It has just three components, so repeat them after me, and remember them, because while there will be recipes here and elsewhere, a savoury tart is something you don’t need a recipe for:

- Base

- Filling

- Binding for the filling

The base is easy.  It can be pastry, bought or homemade, but it can also be thin slices of sturdy vegetables like fried eggplant, or a cooked rice crust, or just about anything you can think of that will hold a filling.

The filling is the main flavour of your tart.  What’s in the pantry?  A tin of tuna?  Sauté an onion, add that sucker to the pan with some chopped pimento, pepper, and paprika, and you have a classic.  What’s in the vegetable crisper?  Zucchini?  Fry them up with onion and oregano, and layer them with mozzarella over the base.  Leftovers in the ‘fridge?  Chop them up and mix them with your binding with additional seasonings and maybe some cheese, and diners won’t know that you’re showing them a rerun.

The binding is also easy although sorry, vegan friends, to get a filling that will hold together properly when cut, you need egg.  And sure not all fillings are meant to hold together, but when they’re not, I suggest a pie, instead.  Beaten egg - you don't need many, just two or three - can be poured over the filling, or you can beat those eggs together with milk or cream for a wobblier, more custardy filling.  That same filling will become feather light if, like in this recipe, you beat the egg whites first.

So give a tart a try.  What’s the worst that can happen?  Your filling won’t set?  Give everyone your best, most dazzling smile, and a spoon.

In the meantime, though, here is a recipe for one of our favourites:  soufflé tomato tart.  It smells, looks, and tastes divine, for very little effort.  The only caveat is that it is so simple that for it to be divine you must make it with beautiful ripe tomatoes that actually smell and taste like proper tomatoes.  I found these gorgeous little things at my local greengrocer and actually came to a screeching halt in front of them because smack in the middle of our southern hemisphere winter on a howling cold day, they smelt like summer.  I rushed them home and put the tart together in about half an hour, homemade pastry included, and we were eating it about half an hour after that.

Perfect 'matas

SOUFFLE TOMATO TART

Ingredients:

Pastry to line tart/flan pan, bought or homemade (see below for Fatima’s ready-in-two-minutes crust)

1 kg. gorgeous ripe tomatoes, or as many as you need for the inside of your pan

1 cup proper egg mayonnaise or cream

3 eggs, separated

200g. cheddar (white cheddar in the US) or Swiss cheese, grated

2 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Fresh herbs (opt.)

What you do:

1.  Preheat oven to 180oC.  Line tart/flan pan with pastry and allow to rest while making filling.  (If making Fatima’s crust, make it and line the pan with it before beating egg whites.  It’s best made just before baking.)

2.  Halve tomatoes if small, or quarter them if large.  Sprinkle lightly with salt.

3.  To make filling, beat egg yolks with mayonnaise or cream.  Mix in cheeses, and salt and pepper to taste.  Beat egg whites until stiff, and fold into egg yolk mixture.

4.  Pour filling into pastry.  If using halved tomatoes, arrange them on the filling cut side down, and if using quartered tomatoes, arrange them prettily cut side up.  Sprinkle with chopped or torn herbs if using.  Bake for 35 min., or until set, risen and golden.  Serve hot (although cold leftovers for lunch the next day are FABULOUS).

This is Fatima's easy crust, below.  I made it with
wholewheat flour, which made the guilt over all that cream,
cheese and egg yolks almost nonexistent.  My tart pan is
actually massive (I made 1 1/2 times the filling) and this
amount of pastry just lines it, hence no fancy crimping.

It's important to salt the tomatoes just before making
the filling, otherwise the salt will draw out too much of
the tomatoes' juices, making the filling sloppy.

This filling includes a couple of whole eggs because
I had some extra egg whites that needed using.

Repeat after me:  no Kraft!

Folding egg whites in will ensure soufflé success.

Sprinkled with fresh basil and ready to go in the oven.

The item in question.
Yumbo McGillicutty!

EASY TART CRUST – FROM FATIMA WITH LOVE

You can omit the baking powder, if you like, and use soda water instead of ordinary water for lightness.

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1 tbsp. baking powder

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup water

What you do:

1.  Combine dry ingredients in a bowl with a whisk.  Add wet ingredients and stir to form a ball.  Place ball of pastry on your pan, and spread out with your hands and fingers to cover the base and come up the sides.  (You can roll this pastry out, but I find it a bit of a pain unless it’s between two pieces of baking paper.) 

Unless there's Company, I don't bother with greasing my
pans and just spread a sheet of nonstick baking paper over
my pan before spreading it out with my fingers.
This batch was made with wholewheat flour.