Comté Cheese Tart

There is a restaurant in London that I love called Noble Rot (there are three locations). I have been there for dinner a few times and love the creative food. I didn’t know they served lunch until one day I was in the area looking for another restaurant which turned out to be closed. Walking back up the street, I fell over. Just face planted on the pavement for no apparent reason. Very kind passersby offered help but I scrambled up as fast as my arthritic knees would allow with protestations of being fine and a chuckle about clumsiness and walked off, determined to restore some sort of dignity. As a determinedly marched past Nobel Rot, I saw they were just opening, so I ducked in, trying to make it look like that was my destination all along. No doubt, no one was watching me by then and everyone had gone back to their normal lives, but still. Shaken and embarrassed (but with only a scraped knee thank goodness), I sat down to a lovely glass of vouvray and ordered a comté tart. It was served with a small salad and pickled walnuts and immediately made my list of my top dishes. So simple but so flavorful with the texture of a cloud that just melts in your mouth. The lightly dressed leafy greens and tangy pickled walnuts set it off perfectly. It soothed my battered pride and set me on a course to recreate some simulacrum of it at home.

Bake in my home kitchen, I looked up the recipe on the internet and very helpfully found an old newspaper article with the very recipe from the restaurant. I immediately set out to make it, but my first attempt was not what I was hoping for. I followed the recipe precisely (even the pastry) but my cheese was something of a stingy mess and it lacked the light as air texture. My second attempt was very weird in that the tart just didn’t set. It took like an hour and half in the oven. I still don’t know why. So I revisited it and came up with the closest approximation I could possibly achieve. Blending everything in the blender to a smooth custard creates that light-as-air filling with strong but subtle flavor. And it really could not be easier, while the reward is spectacular. I am sure the one at Noble Rot has some magic cheffy secret I couldn’t unlock, but this is a damn good version.

I sometimes make my own pastry, using this recipe, but I frequently use DuFour frozen all butter pie rounds (pie crust, not puff pastry), which I find in the freezer at the Fresh Market. Comté cheese is really the main player here so do search it out. It’s a French Alpine cow’s milk cheese, nutty and earthy and really delicious. I find it at the good cheese counters at Kroger, Sprouts, Fresh Market and Whole Foods. If you really can’t find it, a mix of gruyere and fontina will work. Grate it before you put it in the blender to create the smooth filling. When you pour the filling straight from the blender into the crust, there are likely to be some air bubbles on the top. I use the back of a spoon to lightly pop them so the top has a smoother finish. It should turn a lovely golden brown with just the slightest jiggle in the center. Let the cooked tart rest for a bout 15 minute before slicing and serving. I simple tangle of greens in a classic vinaigrette is a great accompaniment to this (and if you have access to pickled walnuts, add some of those too!).