Bruno’s Onion Tart

 

Continuing with our exploration of Bruno’s Cookbook by Martin Walker and Julia Watson, Len decided to make a rather complicated recipe: Red Onion Tarte Tatin. 

A classic French Tarte Tatin is a sweet pastry made with apples: a renowned dish where cooked apples are baked under a lid of flaky pastry and then flipped over for serving, so that the crust remains crisp. Walker explains that “it occurred to Bruno … that the method might be applied just as successfully to most vegetables.” Specifically, Bruno used this idea for baking with the abundant red onions that he grew in his garden. We were lucky to find beautiful red onions at Whole Foods, as we don’t have a garden — anyway, it’s fun to read fiction about one’s dinner. (p. 22)

Len has been wanting to try making simple flaky pastry (pate feuilletee facile) for quite a while. It uses flour, frozen butter, and ice water to make a flaky dough. Several other recipes in Walker’s book also use this preparation. If you watch the Great British Baking Show, the contestants constantly use this preparation for what they call “rough puff,” that is, a dough that is not repeatedly folded and layered, but that’s brought together quickly and only handled a little bit.

Grating butter for the pastry to make Bruno’s onion tart.

Roasting the onions — first on the stove-top, then in the oven.

Top the roasted onions with the pastry.

Beautifully brown, just out of the oven. The pastry is crisp and flaky.

Before serving, this tart is inverted on a plate, so that the onions are on top of the pastry,
and it’s garnished with goat cheese. The red onions become very dark, but are not charred.

Blog post and photos © 2023 mae sander