Flamiche

A leek tart whose whole difficulty is the water inside the leeks, squeezed out in a cloth before they go in.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (crème fraîche).

Ingredients

For the case

• 1 batch pâte brisée, as on its own page, blind-baked and sealed

For the filling

• 1.2 kg leeks, white and pale green only
• 50 g butter
• 200 ml crème fraîche
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• a grating of nutmeg
• salt and white pepper

Method

1. THE LEEKS ARE SQUEEZED DRY IN A CLOTH BEFORE THEY GO IN. This is the one step that decides the tart. A leek is mostly water and sweating it only moves that water into the pan; tipped into the case it carries on coming out in the oven, under the custard, and collects as a grey pool at the bottom that soaks the pastry from above. Cooked, cooled, then wrung out in a tea towel, they give up another hundred millilitres or more, and you can feel how much it was.
2. WHICH IS A DIFFERENT PROBLEM FROM THE ONION TART ON THIS SITE. There the water is in the custard you pour, and the answer is to seal the pastry. Here it is inside the vegetable, and no amount of sealing helps, because it arrives after the seal is underneath it.
3. THEY ARE SWEATED, NOT BROWNED. Gentle heat, lid on, until they collapse and stay pale. Caught and coloured, leeks go bitter and stringy, and the point of this tart is that it is mild.
4. AND THE GREEN TOPS ARE NOT USED. Tough, fibrous and they turn the custard grey. Keep them for stock.
5. Pâte brisée made as on its own page, lined into a 24 cm tin, blind-baked and sealed with egg white.
6. Leeks split lengthways, washed thoroughly between the layers -- grit hides there -- and sliced into 1 cm half moons.
7. Butter in a wide pan with a good pinch of salt. Leeks in, lid on, over a LOW heat 20 minutes until completely soft and still pale. Stirred now and then.
8. Tipped into a colander and COOLED 15 minutes.
9. Then turned into a clean tea towel, gathered up and SQUEEZED HARD over the sink. Keep squeezing until no more comes.
10. Crème fraîche, eggs, yolk, nutmeg, salt and white pepper whisked together.
11. The squeezed leeks stirred through the custard -- here they go in mixed rather than layered, because they are dry enough now to hold together.
12. The case set on the oven shelf and the filling spooned in and levelled.
13. Baked at 180C for 30 to 35 minutes until set with a faint wobble and lightly coloured on top.
14. Rested 15 minutes. Good warm, and better than most tarts cold the next day.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes