What makes this cheese & onion tart stand out from just any cheese & onion tart is having both the cheese topping and the cheese pastry giving a crumbly cheese contrast sandwiching the soft sweet filling of the onions. I had a slice of it and the rest was passed on to the oldest daughter boyfriend’s mother who had it for lunch the next day with a salad and said it was divine…
The pastry can be made and lined in the tin ready to bake the day before. It’s the sort of tart that’s best served at room temperature.
Cheese & Onion Tart with Cheese Pastry
I use dried sage here because the first time I made the tart and used fresh sage in a fair quantity you could hardly detect it. You could use fresh thyme instead. The cheese was a strong cheddar both in the pastry and topping, but no reason you can swap the cheddar in the pastry for parmesan and top the tart with your favourite cheese.
Pastry
- 225 grm plain flour
- 115 grm butter, slightly salted is what I use
- 70 grm strong cheddar cheese, grated
- 2-3 tablespoons of water
Notes on making pastry see this post of mine here.
Filling
- 1.6 kg onions, it should give about 1.4 kg of peeled onions, sliced them fairly thinly
- 2 tsp dried sage
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- olive oil, 2-3 tablespoons (or any flavourless oil)
- freshly ground black pepper
- 3 eggs, lightly beaten with a fork
- 300ml double or whipping cream (thick cream)
- 70-100 grm strong cheddar cheese, grated
In a large wide pan, a deep frying pan with a lid would be ideal, put the oil in and add the slices of onion.
Add the salt, pepper and sage. I put the lid on the pan initially to sweat the onions first, brings out their moisture without burning and means you don’t need to watch them so closely. Make sure the heat is low and leave them like that for a good 20 minutes just stirred them a couple of times during that period.
After this time you’ll notice the volume of onions will have gone down considerably. Take the lid off still on a low heat continue cooking them until they are really soft when you taste them and sweet. This may take another 20 mins or more.
Keep an eye on them more closely so not to burn them and stir them more frequently. During this time their colour deepens a little. I’m not fussed about getting them to a dark brown. I like them a light caramel colour, as long as the taste of sweetness of the onions comes through.
Once the onions are melting soft and sweet put them in a bowl to cool down while you get on with the rest. You can make the onions up to this stage 2 days in advance, keep in the fridge covered.
I always make my pastry in a food processor. Start by adding first the flour and butter until resembling breadcrumbs add the cheese and process a few seconds more. Add 2 tablespoons of water and process for few seconds and if it’s still dry add the third. Step-by-step on pastry on my post here.
This pastry is reasonably well behaved and if you’re confident with pastry you can roll it out straight away otherwise chill it first for 40 mins before rolling out.
Once the pastry is rolled out blind bake with baking beans, at 180C fan / 200C / 390F / gas 6 for about 10-15 mins. Remove the paper or foil and put it back in the oven for another 2-3 mins to dry out a little but you don’t want to colour much as it will cook again with the filling.
Mix your eggs and cream together in a large bowl that the onions will fit into. Add the onions to this custard and stir well making sure all the onions are well blended with the cream.
Pre-heat oven to 160C fan / 180C / 350F / gas.
Fill in the case.
Top it with the grated cheese. Bake for about 30 mins but could be less depending on your oven.
The mixture should be cooked and will puff a little. Some of the cheese may not be brown in which case place the tart under the grill for a minute but keep an eye on it because it will burn easily.
Once the cheese has browned on top to your liking it’s done. Leave it at room temperature to cool.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Your cheese and onion tart looks so good, Azélia! I always used to add grated cheese to savoury pastry, because it used to make the pastry nice and crunchy with a good cheesy flavour. Lovely photos with very clear instructions.
It sure does give the pastry a crunchy texture Renee..very nice indeed.
One of my first (non-indian) forays into baking was something similar Azelia; a cheese and bacon flan with parmesan pastry. it was a Delia recipe from sainsbury’s magazine, and put me off her for life because the pastry indredients were way too little for a normal flan tin, I think it was 4oz flour, 2 oz butter, 2 oz grated parmesan. As I was a novice and didn’t realise at first, I couldn’t get the pastry thin enough without it tearing. Eventually I just thought ‘sod it’ and made more pastry, and later realised the ingredient quantities were wrong not me.
That said, it was an excellent tart.
One thing which differs (and something I still do) was I didn’t use baking beans for baking blind, just pricked the base with a fork a few times, it works a treat.
It is easy to make mistakes with ingredients when writing out a recipe…so I discover