Cheese Soufflé Tart

It was the crust, it was all about the crust and not about anything else. I made the cheese soufflé tart because I wanted to learn about making the crust, and you know, I did learn, but I didn't think the tart itself was all that outstanding. Oh sure, I was reassured by Tom that it was pretty tasty, but I expected it to be a bit more special than it turned out and I was a little disappointed that it wasn't. The crust, although not my dream crust, turned out better than I expected, so I guess it was all good in the end.

I was a little put off from eating the tart because the crust came out soggy in the middle, something which I don't like in a crust. Had I read the "Tips For Filling Tarts" section of the book before I made the tart I would have seen the tip on sprinkling cheese over a partially baked crust (for a savory tart), apparently the cheese forms a layer when it melts that acts as a barrier between the pastry and the filling thus ensuring a drier crisper middle crust. Funny thing is, I did sprinkle cheese on the crust because the recipe said to, but now I can see that I misread the recipe, thinking the cheese was supposed to be sprinkled on before the dough was partially blind baked. I suspect, but will reserve judgment until I've cooked a bit more from this book (The Baker's Bible edited by Deborah Gray), but I suspect and have noticed that the directions for recipes in this book tend to be a bit on the vague side, I hope that's not the case though. The edge crust did turn out flakey, and dry (that would be dry in a good way) and me thinks that with a little tweaking of butter here and the addition of a little more salt there, and a little more browning when I partially blind bake, I may actually have a recipe for a quick crust I can turn out in a pinch on a day I want to bake but don't feel like doing anything too elaborate. At the very least, I learned how to make a master crust recipe for Pâte Brisée Riche and that's kind of cool.

The soufflé filling was a simple one, consisting of 1/4 stick of butter, a small onion, 1/4 cup plain flour, 1 1/4 cups of milk, 2 seperated eggs eventually using both the yolk and the white, 1 tbsp dijon mustard, 1 1/4 cups grated chedder cheese and a pinch of cayenne. After mixing all the ingredients as per the instructions I poured the mixture into the tart pan and baked for about 30 minutes until the soufflé was puffed and golden. I hate to say this, but there was nothing really special about the soufflé filling that really grabbed me and made me say "WOW, this is good stuff!" . I served it with a salad of baby greens, toasted walnuts, goat cheese and pears, which I had tossed in an orange juice/white wine viniagrette. I could have eaten just crust and salad for dinner and would have been a pretty happy gal, for what it's worth, the tart tasted better the next day, who knows, maybe it just needed time to mellow out a bit.

Written by Deb on December 30, 2003 12:56 AM