How to cook the perfect onion tart – recipe | Felicity Cloake
‘Onion tart’ hardly describes this sumptuous mess of creamy sweet onions studded with bacon and slumped into a shortcrust case
Described by chef Simon Hopkinson as “a classic amongst tarts”, this deliciously sweet recipe from Alsace-Lorraine is somewhere between a quiche and a flammkuchen, a tangle of buttery, slow-cooked onions barely held together by a rich egg custard. When I first came across it, in an Alsatian restaurant perched rather incongruously on the side of an Alp, I thought an onion tart sounded rather dull. I’m not too proud to admit I was wrong: thanks to the alchemy that occurs when this most common, yet least lauded of vegetables is given time to fulfil its potential in the flavour department, this is a dish that’s far more than the sum of its parts.
Though it’s by no means the only onion pastry in the French repertoire – Provençal pissaladière and Flemish flamiche spring to mind, but there are no doubt others – it’s my new favourite. More summery than Lancashire butter pie and less antisocial than pickled onion Space Raiders, this is a great, vegetarian-friendly centrepiece for a spring lunch, though, frankly, I’d snap it up at just about any time of day, or indeed year.