If you live in North America, the odds of you spending this summer in France are close
to zero. But if you take a bite of this tart with caramelized onions, gruyere, and cherry
tomatoes and close your eyes, I promise that the French countryside will come to you. It’s
like the scene in Ratatouille where Anton Ego gets transported to his childhood. I’ve
been making this tart every single summer for the past 18 years. Very few dishes have
endured this long in my kitchen. Most of them evolve and change and get better with time
or get completely replaced by new ones. But this tart has remained completely unchanged
because you can’t mess with perfection.
I’ve been to France so many times, I’ve lost count. But this tart was NOT something
I’ve ever had in France, even though it really tastes like France to me. I had it
in the upper west side of New York. A friend of mine from high school was dating a guy
whose Mom was a huge francophile. She was an amazing cook. She had us over for dinner
one night and served us this tart. I’ve had many similar tarts in France, but none
were executed as well as hers.
So, all of this is before I worked in a restaurant or taught any cooking classes. I had a lot
of passion, but very little skill. So mastering this tart was my mount Everest. I didn’t
have a recipe, but the components were obvious. The two big ticket items were caramelized
onions and pie dough. At the time I didn’t know how to make either one, but as you can
see with time I learned. And you can learn too!
This is a 2 day project. On the first day, you make the pie dough and caramelized onions.
On the second day (or a few days later), you roll out the dough and prebake it empty. Then
fill it and bake again.
You can use any pie dough that you want. If you have a recipe that works well for you,
stick with that. I have several pie doughs on my channel. The one I’ll be using today
is, in my opinion, most reliable and easiest for beginners. It’s the vodka pie dough
that Kenji Lopez-Alt developed at Cook’s Illustrated. If you are new to it, I have
very detailed videos that explain this technique (linked below), but here is the summary.
Put 212g of unbleached all-purpose flour into the bowl of a food processor. Add 2 tsp of
Diamond Crystal Kosher salt or 1 tsp of Table salt and 2 Tbsp granulated sugar and mix for
15 seconds. Then add 284 grams of unsalted butter sliced ¼ inch thick and chilled. That’s
2.5 sticks. Give it about 15 one second pulses. The pulses should feel pretty long, like “one
mississippi”, “two mississippi”. Unlike all the other pie dough recipes you’ve ever
seen, the only mistake you can make here is to not process the butter enough. Most pie
recipes ask you to stop when the butter is the size of peas. Not this one. Go all the
way to a finely grated parmesan stage. Now measure out 142g of flour in a bowl and add
the processed flour butter mixture to it. This extra flour will create layers. Toss
these two mixtures thoroughly. There is no worry about over-mixing at this point. Until
you add the liquid ingredients, the gluten doesn’t start to develop. I mix for 45 to
60 seconds.
Now add 57g of very cold water mixed with 57g of very cold vodka (cheap unflavored kind,
don’t get creative on me here). And mix using cutting motions with a large spoon.
When the liquid is absorbed, squeeze the dough with your hands until it comes together into
a lump. Try to use more punching and pressing motions, rather than folding motions to reduce
how much gluten you develop. Form it into a log and cut in half. Move half of the dough
out of the bowl and form the dough remaining in the bowl into a disk. I like to kind of
wipe the bowl out with my dough. Don’t worry about little cracks. That’s normal. Place
the dough onto a piece of plastic and wrap extremely tightly. Then press down on it.
This will eliminate some cracks. Don’t worry about little cracks on the side. We’ll take
care of them when rolling. Now repeat the shaping and wrapping procedure with the second
piece of dough. Place both disks in the fridge overnight and upto 5 days, or freeze for future
use.
Another thing you want to do on day 1 of this project is make caramelized onions. I have
a video that covers them in great detail, it’s linked below. In the video I caramelize
3 Lb of onions. If you want to make exactly what you need for an 11 inch tart, use 2 lb
of onions, but leftover caramelized onions never hurt anyone.
On day two, the first thing we need to do is roll out the dough. Place it on a well
floured surface, sprinkle with flour and bang it from one side to another. Rotate 90 degrees
and bang again. Keep rotating and banging, being careful to keep the thickness of the
dough even. This makes the butter pliable and rollable even though it’s completely
cold. Letting pie dough warm up before rolling can result in very sticky dough, so I prefer
to work with it straight from the fridge. If you end up with cracks on the edges, squeeze
them with your hands. The sooner you fix the cracks, the less problems you’ll have later.
When you have a disk that is about ⅔ of an inch thick, you can start rolling. After
every single roll, rotate the dough. This accomplishes 2 things. It keeps the dough
even and it warns you of sticking before the situation is hopeless. Keep rolling and rotating
and don’t be afraid of adding flour. This flour is on the outside of the dough. It won’t
make it tough. If you encounter sticking, unstick your dough with a pastry scraper,
move it to the side and re-flour your counter. Once the dough gets big enough, you won’t
be able to cover all the territory with one roll. You’ll need 2-3 rolls before rotating
the dough.
When your dough is about ⅛ of an inch thick, check if it’s big enough for your tart pan.
My tart pan is 11 inches in diameter.
I think we need it just a tad bigger. It’s always safer to make it too big than too small.
Ok, now we are big enough. What I am looking for is close to an inch overhang. Fold the
dough in half. Brush off extra flour. Fold it in half again, and brush again on
both sides.
Now place it into the pan and unfold shifting it as necessary to center it.
Don’t stretch the dough to fit it into corners. Whatever you stretch now, will shrink back
in the oven. What you want to do is lift and mold the dough into the corners.
Now take kitchen shears and trim the edges leaving ¾ of an inch overhang.
You can collect the scraps, form them into a little disk, chill them and then roll them
out to make a little galette. Fold the overhang back into your tart pan and press it into
the sides of the pan.
If you feel that the dough in parts is too thin, bulk it up with your scraps, by folding
them inside.
If possible, I like to refrigerate my dough for 30 minutes before baking. Place it onto
a parchment covered half sheet and chill while preheating the oven to 350F.
You want to place the racks in the bottom third and upper third of your oven.
My dough has chilled and it’s ready to bake. Before we fill it, we’ll bake it empty to
make it nice and crispy. Line it with another piece of parchment and fill with a couple
of pounds of dry beans or some other weight. The beans can be reused hundreds of times,
so don’t buy new beans for each tart. This will prevent the center from bubbling up and
the sides from collapsing. Push the beans into the corners. Then roll up the parchment
to protect the edges of the dough from burning. Some parts of the dough won’t be covered
with parchment, so I like to take pieces of foil and tuck them around those parts. You
can hold down the foil with the beans. Place it in the bottom third of the oven for 40
minutes
or until the edges look like this -- set and starting to turn golden. Keep in mind that
all ovens are different. Go by looks, not by time. Have a large metal bowl or a skillet
handy to place your beans. Grab the parchment corners and get this whole thing out.
At this stage the dough is completely set on the outside, but not on the inside, so
it can still bubble up. To avoid that, poke it gently with a fork. You want to compress
it, but not make holes in it. The fork should never touch the pan on the bottom. Place the
tart back into the oven for about 10 minutes or until the top of the dough is golden and
dry to the touch.
While our tart is finishing baking, let’s grate 110 grams of gruyere. I like to splurge
on slightly aged one. It is a bit pricey, but you only need a little piece. Since some
of it will be rind, plan on buying a chunk that’s ¼ to ⅓ Lb. We’ll also need 1
Lb of cherry or campari tomatoes. If using cherry tomatoes, cut them in half. If using
campari tomatoes, cut them in half and then cut each half into 2-3 pieces depending on
the size of tomatoes. Scoop about a tablespoon of oil out of caramelized onions and add it
to tomatoes. Add a little pinch of salt and toss to combine. You can certainly grate the
cheese ahead, but don’t prep tomatoes ahead or they’ll release a lot of juice.
Cover the bottom of the tart with caramelized onions. By the way, make sure you follow instructions
in my caramelized onion video on removing excess oil from the onions after you make
them. If your onions are too greasy, the fat will leak through the dough.
Then sprinkle with cheese
and top with tomatoes. It works a lot better if you start on the outside and work your
way in. If you have different colors of tomatoes, you can make a fun design. Turn up the oven
to 375F and place the tart in the upper third of the oven for 30-40 minutes or until the
cheese melts and tomatoes are golden brown on top.
Cool for at least 15 minutes or until you can comfortably handle the pan. To unmold
the tart, place an inverted bowl on the counter. Put the tart on top and let the outer ring
drop. Then pick up the tart and move back to the baking sheet, or a cutting board if
you are ready to serve. It re-warms extremely well, so there is no need to bake it at the
last minute. Keep it at room temperature until you are ready to rewarm and serve. But make
sure to serve it the day you bake it. It will taste stale by the next day.
I know this was a bit of work, but I promise, the results are worth it. As always, all the
measurements and the recipe are in the description below.
Here are more thought provoking culinary videos for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.