Tarte au fromage

Making a French cheese tart is — dare I say it? — as easy as pie. And it can also be creative if you put your own imprint on this classic dish by combining the cheeses of your choice. Of course, if you want to keep it French, then Comté is the cheese most often used over here — either on its own or mixed with another French cheese. For example, chèvre (goat cheese), Epoisses (a Burgundy cheese) or Roquefort, as shown in the photo.

Tarte au fromage / Savory cheese tart

Preparation is quick, particularly if you use store-bought pâte feuillétée (puff pastry) — although you’ll get more oohs and aahs if you make the pastry yourself, preferably a pâte brisée (all-butter savory crust). Once the pastry is in the tart pan, you merely need to grate or crumble the cheese(s), mix together some eggs, milk and cream, add a dash of salt, pepper and nutmeg, assemble the tart and pop it into the oven.

You may be wondering why I’m calling this a tart and not a quiche. Good question. The answer is that a French quiche tends to be deeper and fluffier, while a savory tarte is thinner and denser. And let’s not forget about the tourte — a French pie with a top crust.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that this is my first post in quite a while. I’ve been absent due to circumstances beyond my control — three broken vertebrae. This has limited my activities in the kitchen. I had originally been planning a more complex dish for this post, namely bo bun, a Vietnamese beef-noodle salad that is wildly popular in Paris. That will come next time. This time, I chose to make something simpler.

I guess it was a success because barely had the cheese tart come out of the oven when my daughter and her friends went on the attack. I quickly took a photo before they demolished it entirely, and also placed a slice on a plate to be photographed later, when I had time. I stashed the slice at the back of the fridge, hidden under foil, but when I went to retrieve it, it had already disappeared. Had to laugh about that…

This cheese tart is versatile. You can serve it as the main course of a light meal, perhaps accompanied by a salad; as the starter of a more substantial meal; or cut into thin slices or squares as a palate-teaser at cocktail hour. It is best served warm, and will be enhanced by wine, for example a hearty red or a fruity white from the region of one of the cheeses.

Happy cooking.