Tourte aux blettes -- sweet Swiss chard tart

[LindaK]

I’m curious if others have made or sampled tourte aux blettes—a double crusted sweet swiss chard tart that’s a Mediterranean specialty.

The other day I finally got around to making one. The concept has always intrigued me but I’ve never really been convinced that I want sugar with my chard. This summer my garden’s overflowing with chard so it seemed like the time.

Only when I started scanning my recipes did I realize how many variations existed for this tart—from mostly savory to unabashedly sweet. Raisins seem to be the one universal addition, sometimes pine nuts. Francois Payard calls for pastry cream and rum, Daniel Boulud adds cream, honey, and orange zest.

The other variable seems to be the dough. Payard and Boulud use sweet pastry dough, while others use dough made with olive oil—some with eggs, some without.

For my first try, I opted for a mostly savory version, adding a little honey for sweetness (I dislike raisins) and some pine nuts. For the dough, I went with basic olive oil dough, which I’d never made before.

I liked the end result very much, but to my surprise think that next time I’ll move further in the sweet direction. The contrast wasn’t jarring, as I’d imagined, rather the honey nicely balanced the earthy chard. Likewise, I’ll use a lighter dough, probably still olive oil-based but with eggs. I’m not quite ready for pate sucre or pastry cream with my chard.

[janeer]

I've eaten it, not made it. Somehow can't imagine this with pastry cream...Yours looks very nice. maybe a little denser than the ones I've had.Pretty tomatoes!

[LindaK]

You're right, it was rather dense. Maybe more eggs next time too. Or perhaps that what the pastry cream is for.