This cheese and bacon tart recipe is too good to ever change
This recipe took a long time to get right. Now it is perfect.
I lost my job as head pastry chef at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal Melbourne when the restaurant closed in early 2020, and promptly slid into an early midlife crisis. After years of long nights and antisocial work rosters, it was the perfect time to throw in the towel with hospitality. I applied for account manager positions in the food sector, recruitment jobs, and I even entertained the idea of going to university. Then in March 2020, when the pandemic set in, I was still unemployed. Eventually, I found myself applying for anything that was going, which turned out to be a job at a supermarket. There’s nothing like being well outside of your comfort zone to make you realise how good you had it. Over the months that I restocked and organised confectionery and cat soup (literally soup for cats) on supermarket shelves, I found myself realising the kitchen was where I belonged. Meanwhile, my partner Catherine suggested we do some baking as a fun lockdown activity. I started playing around with different techniques and recipes, but tarts became the go-to.
This tart took longer to get right than any other on the menu. The first versions were way too intense; incorporating all the required, but heavy, elements of a tart and achieving a balance of flavour and a final product that was portionable at room temperature was almost impossibly hard. It needed to be textural, not just a tray bake held together by a ‘bunch of knackered eggs’. But something that required hours of setting was not going to be feasible in the production kitchen. After many iterations, here is the final recipe – it’s so good that it seems unlikely it will ever change again.
For something sweet and perfect, try my vanilla custard tart recipe.
This is an edited extract from Tarts Anon by Gareth Whitton with Catherine Way. Photography by Armelle Habib.
Cheese and bacon tart
Ingredients
- 1 x baked shortcrust pastry shell
- Chives, finely chopped, for garnishing
Leek and bacon cake batter
- 200g leek, sliced into 2mm rounds
- 200g smoked speck, cut into 1.5cm cubes
- 30g maple syrup
- 30g soft brown sugar
- 90g natural almond meal
- 35g plain flour
- 2½g baking powder
- 5g salt
- 90g eggs (about 2 eggs)
- olive oil, for frying
- Brown butter (see below)
Gruyere custard
- 110g gruyere cheese
- 85g egg yolk (5-6 egg yolks)
- 250g pure cream
- 2g salt
Method
- Preheat the oven to 165C. To make the leek and bacon cake batter, place a large pot of salted water on the stove and bring to a boil. Blanch the sliced leeks in the salted boiling water for 15 seconds. Drain and refresh in iced water, then squeeze out the water from the leeks.
- Add some olive oil to a frying pan and heat on high until it starts to smoke. Add the speck and cook until caramelised, then remove from the pan and discard the oil. Place the same pan over medium heat and add the maple syrup and the brown sugar. Bring this to a thick and bubbly caramel then return the drained speck pieces. Cook for one minute or until the edges of the speck start to look a little candied. Drain any excess caramel and set aside.
- To make the batter, weigh the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir them together. Add the eggs to the mixing bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and mix on low speed until combined (or do so by hand).
- Melt the brown butter in a saucepan. You want this to be warm enough so that the liquid doesn’t cool down too quickly, but cool enough so that it doesn’t develop any burnt characteristics. If the butter is too hot, it can also fry the egg mixture as you add it, so a thermometer is useful (roughly 100C). Once the butter comes up to temperature, slowly pour it into the whisked eggs while mixing. Ensure the mixture is well emulsified, as this will ensure the butter doesn’t bleed out later, giving the cake a greasy texture. Then add in the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Vigorously mix the leek and speck into the cake batter by hand so that the mixture is evenly distributed.
- To bake: Pour the batter into the pastry shell. Bake the tart for about 18 minutes, or until the crust is an even golden brown and the centre of the tart is firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool inside the tin. Using the back of a spoon, press down firmly on any areas where the cake has risen unevenly, so the surface is flat.
- Gruyere custard: Grate the cheese and mix with the egg yolks in a measuring jug, then set aside. Bring the cream and salt to a boil in a saucepan over medium–high heat, then pour it over the egg and cheese. Using a hand-held blender, blitz the custard until it is smooth and glossy. Pour the custard on top of the cake layer, and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until it is set.
- To finish: Allow to cool at room temperature, then remove the tart from the tin. Using a hot sharp knife, portion the tart into slices. Sprinkle an even layer of the cut chives over the top of the tart.
Brown butter
500g unsalted butter
Place the butter into a medium saucepan over medium heat. Once completely melted, allow the butter to simmer gently until it begins to foam. Continue to cook, stirring with a whisk on occasion to prevent burning on the bottom of the saucepan. Once the butter starts to expand, small flecks of browned milk solids appear and the fizzing sound of the butter stops, remove it from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
Strain through a fine sieve to remove the milk solids (this is optional, the milk solids won’t change the flavour or texture of the tart). Store this in a container in the fridge until needed.