Maker's Table

Steamy

Onions. Butter. Heat.

Rustic Onion Tart

It never wins prizes for its looks, but this rustic pastry with caramelized onions, Gruyere, and bacon always wins hearts. When I serve it as a main course, I usually make one large tart, but since this was to be an app, I made two narrower tarts that could be cut into equal sections. Beware: there might be butter.

Tarte à L'oignon—Rustic Onion Tart

Pastry

2-3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 pound butter, chilled and cut into cubes
1 egg
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/2 to 3/4 cup ice water

In the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade, pulse the flour and salt briefly to combine, then add the butter and pulse several times until it resembles very coarse meal.

In a small bowl, beat the egg with the vinegar and 6 Tbs of water. Drizzle this over the flour mixture and pulse again. Add water, 1 Tbs at a time, pulsing until the dough starts to clump; don't let it come together into a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it together deftly into ball, taking care not to overwork it. Flatten slightly into a disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate.

Filling

1 Tbs butter
1 Tbs flour
1 cup milk
1/4 tsp salt
4 slices thick-cut bacon
3 medium or 4 small onions, coarsely diced
1/3 pound Gruyere cheese, grated
1 Tbs chopped fresh thyme
Cracked black pepper

In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the flour. Cook, whisking, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the milk gradually and cook, whisking, until it comes to a boil. Whisk in the salt and remove from the heat to cool.

In a large skillet, cook the bacon until it's crisp, then remove to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 Tbs of fat from the pan and return it to the heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden and just beginning to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Add the thyme and cook another minute more. Remove from the heat.

Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Remove the dough from the fridge and ready a baking sheet no larger than 12 x 16 inches. If you're making one large tart, roll the dough into a rectangle a little larger than the sheet. Carefully lay the pastry on the sheet. If you're making two long tarts, divide the dough and roll it into two narrow rectangles about 8 x 14 inches; lay these crosswise on the sheet.

Spread the dough with the white sauce, leaving a 1 or 2 inch margin for the crust. Layer the onions onto the sauce, then crumble the bacon and scatter it over the onions. Top with the grated cheese and cracked black pepper. Fold the edges of the dough over the filling, making a 1 to 2 inch border of crust.

Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the filling is bubbling and browned. Cool briefly, then cut into sections and serve.

Roasted Delicata Squash

 

Tonight I roasted delicata with garlic and oil, an easy fall staple. Roasting brings out squash's sweetness and mellows the garlic, and delicata's skin is so thin you don't need to peel it—it adds a little snap to the finished dish. The result is a little sweet, a little salty, a little pungent, with a creamy, buttery texture that seems richer than it is. A great side dish for grilled steak or chicken or fish.

Method

Trim the stem and blossom ends from two delicata squash, then cut them lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Cut the squash into 1/2 inch segments and toss with olive oil, two or three cloves of minced garlic, salt, and cracked black pepper. Roast for 30 minutes at 400˚F, stirring halfway through.

Harvest Meal

 

Tonight's ingredients, all now underway. Carrots, leeks, and herbs from my garden. Beans local. Cranberries regional (and organic). Chicken that led a happy life. Rejoice.

Refritos, Northern Style

The other day I scooped up a load of shell beans grown on a local farm. They may have been cranberry beans; they weren't labeled, and it's been a dozen years since I grew them myself, so I'm not sure. The glossy beans popped easily from their thin, leathery pods. Some were nearly burgundy, others pale green.

I simmered them for about forty-five minutes with bay and a little olive oil. Once they were tender, I drained them and sautéed with garlic and lots of cracked black pepper.

They were wonderful: lightly browned and crisp on the outside, creamy and sweet and earthy on the inside. Served with a drizzle of fruity olive oil, crusty bread, and salad, they made a perfect fall meal.

Pesto

Basil plus garlic equals pesto (four pounds).

Abundance

We'll have frost tonight, twenty-nine degrees. That will be the end of the tender crops: peppers, beans, eggplant, basil. So it was a day of harvest, of processing food for the winter. Resting now in my freezer are four pounds of pesto. There are herbs hanging all over the house, a fridge full of fruit, bowls of peppers that might get a little more ripe, a little more sweet, even though they will no longer enjoy benefit of sun and fresh air, even though they've been plucked from the mother vein.

There's something deeply engaging about experiencing abundance. Some atavistic pleasure center fires when I confront a stock of fruit or seed or root. And it's even more pleasurable when the abundance has sprung from my own labor, my own hand and soil.

We're wired to love harvest, it's in our blood. It's how we have always survived.

From Soil to Table

I dug these carrots and leeks about fifteen minutes ago. In another fifteen, I'll have them prepped and laid into a baking dish with chicken, lavender, and rosemary. In about an hour in a half, they'll become part of me, of us. Rejoice.

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Shallots

The shallot harvest. Earth, air, sun, water, and time converted one pound of shallots into two and a half. Maybe next year I'll shoot for five.

Onion Harvest

The onions were ready today. They lifted easily from their moorings, a sure sign of ripeness. I pulled them all and laid them out to dry in the bed where they'd grown. We're in for a rare and precious stretch of clear, dry weather, perfect for their two-day cure. After, I'll pull them inside. I haven't decided whether to braid them or lay them on screens, as the old farmers counsel.

It takes a lot of room, harvest. It takes a lot of time. It yields great reward.