For tonight’s Dinner: How ’bout a LEEK TART?

breaking eggs

lovely creamy custard poured into the cooked leeks and bacon

Emmenthal Cheese (swiss cheese) poured on top – or you can put it in the custard

My beautiful Leek Tart

Dinner is served!!

This is really really good.   It’s not the EASIEST, well, no, that’s not right – It IS easy, just takes a bit of time to do the crust by hand because I don’t have my food processor with me.  If I had the food processor, that flour and butter and ice water would spit out a crust in like 3 seconds.  I had to use the ‘ole fork and knife method since, that is all I had. That being said, It made a very good crust.

Here’s how it goes – you will not regret making this !!!

Creamy Leek Tart with Emmenthal Cheese

For Tart:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 oz  (1/2 stick) butter

3 Tablespoons  ice cold water or ice cold vodka

(vodka makes crust flaky) –     as you can see I had no rolling pin, but those liter water bottles work great!

makeshift rolling pin

Use a tart pan if at all possible.  Otherwise, you can use a shallow pie pan.

For filling:

1 tlb goose fat (or Olive Oil)

6 ounces slab bacon rind removed

Green part from 2 1/2 pound leeks, some white

is fine, but is more pungent then the green part.  I mixed mine.

Clean and dice the leeks

sea salt  – ground pepper

5-6 large eggs

2/3 cup whole milk and 1/3 crème fraîche  (if no crème fraîche   where you live, use sour cream)

or 1 cup crème fraîche (which is what I use, makes it very creamy, but solid.

Line tart pan with pastry, chill for 30 minutes

Melt fat with bacon in large skillet  (I use lardons here because they’re plentiful )

cook until bacon is golden but not crisp

add leeks, stir so they are coated with fat and cook, covered until tender – 15” stirring occasionally so it doesn’t stick to bottom of pan.  Season with sea salt and pepper.  Remove from heat.

In medium bowl whisk together eggs well, then whisk in milk and cream or just crème fraîche.  Season with salt and pepper.    Add Emmenthal grated cheese (3/4 cup) or swiss grated cheese.  Stir well.  Sorry about no exact measurement on Salt and pepper.  We use less salt than most, and pepper – well, we like pepper.

Arrange cooked leeks and bacon evenly over pastry. Pour custard mixture over it.  Place the tart on baking sheet and bake in bottom third of oven until top is golden and puffed and custard is cooked through – 25-35 minutes – 400 degrees.

Remove from oven.   Serve immediately  with green salad.

Bon Appetit!

Marti in Cassis