This recipe comes from The Hawthorn Series Step by Step French Cooking which must be out of print because I can not find reference to it online anywhere! Here are some of their other little books. So cute and I picked mine up at Value Village for $2! I changed a lot of the original recipe to make it my own.
The Recipe
The Pastry: Place 2 cups of flour in a food processor.
Add 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp of cold pats of butter. Process until crumbly.
Add 2 tbsp of fresh lemon juice and 2-3 tbsp of ice water. As usual, I had to add more water before my dough would come together.
Process until it just barely comes together. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
The Filling: I used 2 slices of turkey bacon but feel free to use real bacon! I thinly sliced mine.
Thinly slice 5 leeks that have been thoroughly cleaned.
Cook bacon until crisp. I had to add some canola oil to mine since turkey bacon is so lean. Add leeks and cook for 5 minutes. Again, because it was so dry I added a couple of pats of butter. Season with salt and pepper.
Add 1/3 cup of flour. Cook for a minute.
Then I added 3/4 cup of skim milk plus 1/4 cup of light cream.
Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Cool slightly.
As I was letting that cool I got out the dough. I cut off approximately 1/3.
I rolled out the 2/3 of the pastry to fit in the bottom and up the sides of a 9″ quiche dish. I placed the pastry in the dish.
To the leeks mixture stir in 2 lightly beaten eggs, 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese and some more freshly ground black pepper.
Add filling to pastry.
Roll out the other 1/3 of pastry dough. Cover the filling and fold over the edges of the pastry dough on the bottom. Pinch together. Brush the top with an egg wash.
Deeply slice slits on the top and bake in a preheated 400F oven for 30-40 minutes.
You want the pastry fro be nice and golden brown.
Foodie Results
This tart is unbelievably delicious! It is very rich and so flavourful, what an absolute treat. All the foodie joys of a quiche but with even more pastry. Yum!
I made it on Friday so we could enjoy it all weekend and it only lasted until Saturday. We enjoyed it with beautiful salads on the side one day and soups on the side the next.
Sadly, as I was making it I heard about the attack on Paris and my heart goes out to all those affected. Vive La France and damn the bastards.
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