Elizabeth vs Nigel - pastry, onions, cheese

"my favourite savoury tart. It made it's first appearance in Appetite and I make it to this day." Nigel Slater

A few weeks ago now, in a guru week, I made Elizabeth David's Tarte à l'oignon from, I now find, her book French Country Cooking. It's not her recipe in French Provincial Cooking which has no cheese. Equally delicious, but different. The fact that this particular tart contained cheese - not just cheese sprinkled over the top reminded me that, for some time now, I have been meaning to make Nigel Slater's Thin, simple, cheese and onion tart which I found in A Cook's Book, so I did. Also gorgeous but different. Elizabeth David on the left above, Nigel Slater on the right.

It got me to thinking I should write a post about the many different ways - and there are hundreds out there - of making a cheese and onion tart, but I saw quite quickly that this would become a much larger project than simply comparing the two above - and their imitators - like me. So I'm reserving the internet world for another day - except when it comes to Elizabeth and Nigel. So let's start with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has two recipes - maybe more - for Tarte à l'oignon and many bloggers and magazines have had a go at the one in French Provincial Cooking, - which has no cheese. I have made that, or variations thereof many, many times but it doesn't contain cheese, and it was the cheesy one that I chose to make. As you can see from my photograph, it's really just a mass of caramelised onions in a shortcrust pastry shell. The onions are mixed with 2 eggs and 45g of grated Gruyère cheese, then baked as for a quiche. No cream and no cheese on top. I have to say I was worried that it would just be fairly uninteresting, but no it wasn't. It was really, really nice - a four star dish. Maybe not quite 5. And yes you have to feel like peeling heaps of onions - 1kg! and then cooking them for ages and ages.

By the way I used half and half brown and red onions, which just shows, that these days everyone seems to stray from recipes as written. Indeed are encouraged to do so. Anyway - it's simple but you probably need resistance to crying over onions, and also to patiently waiting for the onions to caramelise.

You can find the actual recipe for this Tarte à l'oignon on the Lost Angeles Times website - halfway down a long page after a long talk about peeling and cutting onions. No picture though.

The only other reference to this recipe that I found was by Felicity Cloake in her article on the perfect onion tart - but she discarded it because of the cheese. Now I know that Elizabeth David is now ancient times, but I really did wonder why more fans - and there are many - particularly among chefs - had not reproduced this tart. I shall certainly be making it again some day. It was subtly delicious. Very much worth the effort, and good enough for a dinner party too.

However, when it comes to Nigel there are many adaptations. Ever since I bought A Cook's Book a couple of years ago I have been meaning to make his puff pastry based cheese and onion tart, mostly because of Jonathan Lovekin's evocative photograph in the book. So when I made Elizabeth David's recipe I saw this as an opportunity to compare an old and a middle-aged guru (Nigel's not so young anymore), taking on those three things - cheese, onion, pastry.

In this case the pastry is puff - bought from the shop, which Nigel doesn't even bother to roll out, but I decided to scrunch it into a ball and roll it out as a circle rather than a square. I have no idea why. Fundamentally you roll out your pastry, top with your softened - not caramelised onions, tuck in cheese - the recipe calls for taleggio - you don't grate it on top, scatter the top with thyme leaves and bake for about a quarter of an hour. So quick, so simple, so utterly delicious and light.

I was worried that not cooking the pastry in advance would make it soggy, but no - use a fan setting with the heat coming from the bottom and it will be deliciously crispy. No eggs, no cream, so very, very, simple. I, like Nigel, will be making it fequently. Elizabeth's I shall maybe just keep for special occasions but only because of the slicing and cooking of the onions. In Nigel's recipe a few of the onions were charred at the edges, but this just added an extra bit of crunch to the mix. I confess I ate half of that smallish tart. David was more restrained and left a small slice which made a delicious lunch for me the next day. I now see that I also strayed from his recipe in that I sliced the onions thinly rather than thicker segments.

The internet world loves this recipe too. I found a myriad of variations, that did not credit Nigel, and maybe indeed they did make up their own versions, but there were also lots of followers who did acknowledge their debt. Here are three.

A thin, simple cheese and onion tart on the WTF Do I Eat Tonight? website:

It was from their slim photograph that I noticed they sliced their onions rather more thickly than I did, but they were very admiring of the recipe saying:

"It’s also, being from the endlessly mutable Appetite, very adaptable since it lends itself to all sorts of cheese, onions or pastry. Try a leek and Taleggio version, a red onion and Parmesan one or, as I did tonight, just make it with whatever you have and want to use up. It is truly delicious hot or cold and even tastes okay when it’s been bent in half and shoved in a lunchbox." WTF Do I Eat Tonight?

I also did not make it with Taleggio - I see I noted that I used some leftover, dying brie from Aldi and some tasty cheddar from Coles.

Jono and Jules Do Food and Wine, however did use Taleggio, and they too had chunky onions for their Onion and taleggio tart. And you know, I just checked the original recipe and see that Nigel too said to cut into thick segments, which could well have led to less charring, although this version also looks slightly charred, Yet another example of me not reading the recipe closely enough however.

Then there's a version fron New Zealand's Woolworths Taste website and their 5-ingredient caramelised onion tart - which is:

"inspired by one in Nigel Slater’s book Appetite, is part pizza, part pissaladière. You can use red onions, leeks or fennel instead of shallots, or even tomatoes, but I like the combo of onions, cheese and salty capers with white anchovies on the side. I’m not a confident dough-maker, so I love that this is made with ready-made puff pastry, which is lighter and flop-proof." Kate Wilson

That book Appetite, by the way is not in my library. It was published in 2000 and I shall be looking for it - and all his other missing from my library books - in op shops and maybe even online, because you don't often see any other than the latest offering in the bookshops.

This may well be Nigel's favourite savoury tart, but he doesn't stop at this version. He has another which is more of a quiche - and next on my list to have a go at. This one is simply called Cheese and onion tart and is a tart with a shortcrust pastry. Eggs and cream are involved. And mustard, which he says makes:

"something of the Welsh rarebit about this tart, so feel free to use even more mustard if you wish."

Food and Travel sort of reproduced it but used goat's cheese for their Goat's Cheese and onion tart, and Shewolf in the Valley's version of his Cheese and Onion tart somehow ends up being much deeper:

It does show you, however, does it not that just three ingredients, cheese, onions, pastry can morph into so many different forms?

Cheese - A lot or a little. What kind of cheese? I saw everything from the ever so trendy goat's cheese and Taleggio, to ricotta, feta, cheddar - alone or mixed, grated or sliced, crumbled or chunks. On top, in the middle, on the base. I even saw some versions where the cheese was in the form of a sauce.

Onions - red, brown, white, spring, leeks, chives, maybe even garlic - Ottolenghi has a Garlic and cheese tart. Sliced, thin or thick, chopped - small or large, wedges, caramelised with ... or just softened. Maybe not even softened. Roast? Lots or just a few.

Pastry - there are so many kinds, and I guess you could include bread doughs - whose varieties are endless too.

As for extra flavour - well that's almost infinite in possibility.

As I said at the beginning there are so many other forms of cheese and onion tarts and yes, I will do that some other time. Tonight I'm making another kind of tart, but also a fridge raid, like the writer of WTF Do I Eat Tonight. It will involve cauliflower and paneer I think. Maybe you can crumble paneer and tuck it in between the cauliflower. Roast the cauliflower with a bit of the paneer butter masala sauce? Fun to improvise when you're in the mood. And there's still some leftover cake too and it's Friday, so a glass of wine.

Elizabeth versus Nigel? I think I will say it's a draw because even though theoretically with the same name - cheese and onion tart - they are very different but equally delicious. In different ways.

POSTSCRIPT

I keep on forgetting to do those posts year by year. So today I remember. What can I find?

July 12 2023 - Welsh Cakes

July 12 2022 - Mezcla and the chilli problem

July 12 2021 - Pasta: a small word for a universe of shapes

July 12 2019 - Pâtisserie - centuries of craftsmanship

July 12 2018 - Which comes first - the food or the implement?

I don't know what happened in 2020 - the whole of July is missing, I was away in 2017 and had not yet begun the adventure in 2016. A varied lot there for the other years though.