Cheese and Onion Pie

[kitwilliams]

Can any of you offer me an awesomely tasty and traditional Cheese and Onion Pie recipe? I assume it would be quite simple but I've never made one, only eaten some delicious examples which I'd like to recreate. Onions and cheddar in a flaky crust. Is it as simple as it sounds or are there some tricks to a superlative one?

Thanks.

[Carolyn Tillie]

Also known as Pissaldiere (with anchovies, I believe).

I make a basic Pate Brisee that is blind-baked in a tart shell. On top, I add caramelized onions (not quite as dark as those making them in the Onion Confit thread. But I DO caramelize them with several hefty sprigs of Thyme.

Dump into tart crust, top with favorite cheese (I use gruyere). I also add Nicoise olives and occasionally a few mushrooms. Brown until cheese melts (about 15 minutes).

Pretty easy and ever-so fabulous!

[jackal10]

While pissaldiere is excellent, an English cheese and onion pie is the other way up, with the pastry on top. Sometimes a plate pie with pastry and bottom, or even a cheese and onion pastie, with the pastry folded round the filling and crimped.

Basic filling:

8oz/250g cheese such as a sharp cheddar, grated

Large onion or two, softened in a little butter

1 lb'500g potatoes, peeled, cooked and cubed or even mashed

salt, pepper and a little mustard Season well, but remember the cheese is quite salt.

Mix the filling together, put in pie dish. Top with pastry. Brush with egg glaze, bake until brown - 20 min 400F. Good hot, warm or cold.

You can use any sort of pastry - ordinary short crust, or even shop bought flaky puff pastry turned with some cheese, except that flaky tends to rise a bit much, but is spectacular. Rough puff is good.

If you are doing a plate pie with top and bottom crusts, you can omit the potato.

Some add eggs and cream to make a quiche like filling, but I think that is wrong.

You can add leeks, but that can make the filling watery. Bacon if not veggie...

Short crust/ Pate Brisee: 6oz/180g flour 4oz/ 120g unsalted butter.. pinch salt

Whizz together until crumbs. Add 2 tbs water and poulse until it forms into a ball. Let rest for half an hour. Or buy the ready made.

Rough puff: Same proportions Make the pastry as above with half the butter. Cut the rest into small cubes and and mix with the pastry. Give the pastry two or three turns - roll out, fold sides to middle, rotate by 90 degrees, roll out again, fold again.

Edited March 10, 2004 by jackal10 (log)

[Marlene]

psssst. RecipeGullet.........pass it on.

English Cheese & Onion Pie

(if the recipe is good enough to post here, it's good enough for the archive meaning in compliance with copywrite etc )

Please post your recipes in the Archive and provide a link in the thread.

This has been a public service announcement.

[jackal10]

Point taken.

Does eGRA have "basic" recipes already, like pate brisee, pate sablee, puff pastry, etc?

[Jonathan Day]

Pissaladière is delicious, but it isn't a cheese and onion pie. In the shops in southern France, its place of origin, pissaladière is baked flat, on a large sheet pan rather than a tart shell. The baker cuts you whatever size you want from the sheet.

Sometimes pissaladière is done using bread dough, sometimes using a short crust. Anchovies are strictly traditional (see below) but are sometimes omitted. Onions, of course, and usually some olives. The onions can be browned before it goes into the oven, or not. No cheese, though.

The term comes from pissalat (Niçois peis salat, salted fish). Very strictly speaking, this is supposed to be made by macerating baby sardines (poutine) with salt and herbs. Fresh poutine, by the way, arrive starting in the early summer; you can cook them like elvers or scramble them into eggs -- wonderful. Only the communes of Antibes, Cros-de-Cagnes, Nice and Menton have the right to gather the poutine, so it is a very local dish.

Nowadays, pissalat itself is rarely prepared -- but this is why anchovies typically go into a pissaladière.

[Marlene]

Point taken.

Does eGRA have "basic" recipes already, like pate brisee, pate sablee, puff pastry, etc?

I don't think so. At least not in any search I tried.

[Adam Balic]

Pissaladière is delicious, but it isn't a cheese and onion pie. In the shops in southern France, its place of origin, pissaladière is baked flat, on a large sheet pan rather than a tart shell. The baker cuts you whatever size you want from the sheet.

Sometimes pissaladière is done using bread dough, sometimes using a short crust. Anchovies are strictly traditional (see below) but are sometimes omitted. Onions, of course, and usually some olives. The onions can be browned before it goes into the oven, or not. No cheese, though.

The term comes from pissalat (Niçois peis salat, salted fish). Very strictly speaking, this is supposed to be made by macerating baby sardines (poutine) with salt and herbs. Fresh poutine, by the way, arrive starting in the early summer; you can cook them like elvers or scramble them into eggs -- wonderful. Only the communes of Antibes, Cros-de-Cagnes, Nice and Menton have the right to gather the poutine, so it is a very local dish.

Nowadays, pissalat itself is rarely prepared -- but this is why anchovies typically go into a pissaladière.

Does it typically have cheese? All examples I have seen are cheese-less.

[browniebaker]

Cheese-onion-and-potato pasty = tiddy oggy.

[Adam Balic]

Cheese-onion-and-potato pasty = tiddy oggy.

Isn't a tiddy oggie simply a cornish pastie?

[jackal10]

Cheese-onion-and-potato pasty = tiddy oggy.

Isn't a tiddy oggie simply a cornish pastie?

It is in the Navy...

British Fauna

[curlywurlyfi]

I have a fond memory of an open tart made with small boiled potatoes, wilted rocket, sticky onions and hunks of melting Taleggio. But I appreciate it's not strictly a cheddar'n'onion pie. Doesn't Tamsin Day-Lewis have one, though, in The Art of The Tart (oh how I rue the day that I put my cookbooks in storage)? Something about five minutes before the end you switch up an egg and some cream + seasoning in a jug then pour into the pie through the hole you have strategically left in the puff pastry lid, then put it back in the oven for five minutes?

[PoppySeedBagel]

Oooh Curly both of those sound good. I have an excellent recipe in Anne Willan's Real Food for Rocquefort and Onion Quiche - the sweetness of the onions tempers the sharpness of the Rocquefort and it's gorgeous

[Jonathan Day]

Pissaladière is delicious, but it isn't a cheese and onion pie. In the shops in southern France, its place of origin, pissaladière is baked flat, on a large sheet pan rather than a tart shell. The baker cuts you whatever size you want from the sheet.

Sometimes pissaladière is done using bread dough, sometimes using a short crust. Anchovies are strictly traditional (see below) but are sometimes omitted. Onions, of course, and usually some olives. The onions can be browned before it goes into the oven, or not. No cheese, though.

The term comes from pissalat (Niçois peis salat, salted fish). Very strictly speaking, this is supposed to be made by macerating baby sardines (poutine) with salt and herbs. Fresh poutine, by the way, arrive starting in the early summer; you can cook them like elvers or scramble them into eggs -- wonderful. Only the communes of Antibes, Cros-de-Cagnes, Nice and Menton have the right to gather the poutine, so it is a very local dish.

Nowadays, pissalat itself is rarely prepared -- but this is why anchovies typically go into a pissaladière.

See boldfaced passage above. No cheese in a pissaladière.

[kitwilliams]

Thanks for the recipes and advice. Surprised that most Cheddar and Onion Pies have a larger quantity of potato in them than onion and the one I remember so fondly was simply onions and cheese. So have found the following and am going to give it a try (I might add a drop or two of cream ). If the results are great, I'll add it to the recipe archives, Marlene!

Cheddar and Onion Pie

And I plan on giving all the suggestions a try once I get this one out of the way and as long as the weather stays cool.

Thanks again all!

[browniebaker]

Cheese-onion-and-potato pasty = tiddy oggy.

Isn't a tiddy oggie simply a cornish pastie?

Tiddy oggy is Cornish pasty minus beef, plus cheese.

Priddy oggy is Cornish pasty minus beef, plus pork.

[ludja]

I found a new website today for UK/Irish recipes that seems to be quite complete.

After seeing this thread, I went and looked out of curiosity b/c it seems like it could be a British type of recipe. Here's the link to one that has only cheese and onions. Is is good? Seems like it would be... any way here's the llink to check it out at Foody.com cheese and onion tart

Cheers!

[Adam Balic]

Cheese-onion-and-potato pasty = tiddy oggy.

Isn't a tiddy oggie simply a cornish pastie?

Tiddy oggy is Cornish pasty minus beef, plus cheese.

Priddy oggy is Cornish pasty minus beef, plus pork.

I didn't know that there was an official recipe for CP, as it was something developed out of cheap, filling meals for miners.

Priddy Oggies were an invention of a specific individual (Paul Leyton) who named them 'Priddy' after the name of the village his tavern was in. I think that they contain several types for cured pork, pork tender loin and cheddar cheese and the pastry crust contains cheese.

Ah, just looked up Jane Grigson, 'tiddy' is a local cornish name for potato. Pasties are oggies, when some of the meat is replaced by potato they are tiddy oggies. I doubt that many cornish pasties lack potato (like a Scottish Bridie), so they are all mostly tiddy oggies.