Leek and onion tart

In the middle of making a leek and potato soup earlier today I realised that we had too many leeks and a spare bag of onions that needed using up so I did what any sensible chef would do, I checked the internet for some ideas.

Bill Hughes’ recipe for leek and onion tart hit the spot and I didn’t let the fact that I was temporarily mushroom challenged deter me. The daisy mantra: if in doubt, double the leeks!

Ingredients :

• 2 oz (50g) butter
• 2 leeks sliced (the whole leek)
• 2 medium onions sliced
• 4 cloves garlic chopped
• 6 mushrooms sliced*
• 4 eggs
• 75ml double cream
• 4 oz Cheddar or Gruyere, grated
• Shortcrust pastry
• Dried parsley (optional)
• Seasoning

* If you don’t have any mushrooms use an extra leek or onion.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190C (375F, gas mark 5).
2. Roll out your pastry and line a lightly buttered quiche dish / flan dish, pushing gently into the ridges and trimming off any excess.
3. Melt the butter in a heavy frying pan (or wok) and sauté the leeks, onion and garlic until soft.
4. Add the mushrooms and cook until dark and the flavours start to mix. Season well, taste and adjust seasoning until to your liking.
5. Add the mix to the bottom of the pastry case, spreading evenly.
6. In a bowl, beat the eggs lightly (like making an omelette) then add the cream. Make sure the mix isn’t too thin, it should be gloopy.
7. Spread the grated cheese over the leek and onions, then fill the pastry case with the egg mixture. Season again and sprinkle some dried parsley over the top.
8. Bake for about 30 mins, checking that the top doesn’t burn as you get near the end of the cooking period, but cook well as the pastry on the bottom should be soft but firm.

We’ve just had a slice of tart and a bowl of soup for supper (leek nirvana!) and I’ll definitely cook it again, maybe together with a nice tomato salad. Yum.

As you’ll see from the pictures, I seem to have over compensated for the lack of mushrooms and ended up with too much mixture for the flan tin so I used a little more pastry to line a small dish and put the overspill in there. Double yum.

Later that same evening…

On reflection it might have been a little rash to eat two leek dishes together. It’s like downtown Chicago here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 9:36 and is filed under Food, glorious food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.