cheese and potato, could it be better?

Alas, again there is the burden of having only my recipes here, although hopefully this will change very, very soon. There will be four recipes coming your way, all care of some of my favourite bloggers, but to start with is a Blue Cheese and Red Potato Tart, care of Smitten Kitchen. I use Deb's recipes a lot. She's great, even if she does have a babyfood section.

I must say that I did change her recipe around. If you follow the link above, you'll find her recipe for no rest, no blind bake pastry. It didn't work for me, it was a horrible, crumbly, dry mess. What do I do in these situations? I turn to Stephanie Alexander of course, and the pastry recipe is hers. This made too much for this tart, but that's OK. I made jam tartlettes to get me through the long, cold weekend.

Stephanie Alexander's fabulous shortcrust pastry
180g unsalted butter (room temp)
240g plain flour
pinch salt
3 tbspn water

Chop the butter into smallish pieces and rub roughly into the flour on a clean workbench. Add the water into a well in the center of the dough, and as Stephanie puts it:

"use a pastry scraper - being mindful of the technique used to mix cement - to work dough into a very very rough mess of buttery lumps".

You will be tempted to add more water. Don't.

Use the ball of your palm to smear the dough out over the bench. It will come together to form a moist ball of pastry dough. Cling film, rest in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes and then blind bake for about 20 minutes.

For the filling, care of Deb from Smitten Kitten.

One note: This is not a quiche. The filling will remain soft and custard-like after baked, not firm up like most egg fillings. I liked this texture; it was a little different but wanted to give a heads-up that the recipe hasn’t gone wrong if your potatoes can still be nudged a little after baking.

1 Tart Shell
about four or five small red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 cup heavy cream
1 large egg yolk
125gm blue cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoons finely chopped herb of your choice, I used rosemary. Thyme would be nice too.
Fine sea salt for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 180°C. In a medium saucepan, cover potato slices with water by two inches. Simmer, uncovered, until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain. If the potatoes don’t seem very dry, pat them dry with towels.

Arrange potato slices, overlapping slightly, in concentric circles around the tart pan. Sprinkle blue cheese over potatoes. Whisk cream and egg yolk together and pour into tart shell, then sprinkle tart with herbs of your choice and salt.

Bake tart on a baking sheet until bubbling and golden brown, about 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan on rack and serve warm or cold.

I re-heated this at work, which frankly made the pastry a wee bit soggy, but still, it all got eaten. Would make a lovely spring or early lunch with a big pile of salad