Tarte Aux Blettes

We're having a very successful year so far for garden greens. We've harvested blettes (Swiss chard) several times already, and the crop keeps on growing. Ken also picked a whole mess of mustard greens and cooked them down a few days ago. We'll be batching them and freezing them soon.

Adding Swiss chard to the pie shell.

The latest chard harvest went into a tart on Thursday. We made a chard tart a couple weeks ago which was very much like a spinach quiche, only with chard in place of the spinach. It was very good.

Recently, however, I got an idea from Clotilde at Chocolate & Zucchini for a different kind of tart with less egg and more greens. I altered the recipe liberally, so let me describe it for you. I started with my standard pâte brisée (short crust) which I blind-baked, as usual.

Small dollops of tangy Belgian cheese go on top.

I prepared the chard the day before by separating the leaves and the stems, then cooking the chopped stems first with some onion, garlic, and olive oil before adding the chopped leaves. I also added a bit of white wine to the greens while they cooked. Once done, they went into the refrigerator overnight. The only reason for this was to save time by having the greens already prepared when I was ready to make the tart.

While the crust was baking, I toasted some pignons de pin (pine nuts) and chopped them finely. They got sprinkled into the pre-baked pie shell. I put small dollops of Ken's cooked mustard greens into the pie shell as well. Mustard greens are very tangy and they add a bit of depth to the flavor of the sweeter, milder chard.

The finished, baked tart.

Next, I tossed the cooked Swiss chard with two beaten eggs until it was evenly coated, then added it to the pie shell. I put a few dollops of a soft and tangy Belgian cream cheese (thanks Martine and Christian!) on top and put the whole thing in a medium oven for about thirty minutes.

The result was not only beautiful, but delicious! We ate it as a main course for lunch with a local red wine. Thanks to CHM for the photos of the pie-in-the-making!