March 27, 2013
Rob
2

Tourte aux blettes – Swiss chard pie from Nice

Last month I registered on the Daring Bakers website.

It is a community of people passionate  about cuisine and pastry: every month there is a challenge with a theme and participants can bake and proudly post the results on their blogs.

Ruth from Makey-Cakey was our March 2013 Daring Bakers’ challenge host. She encouraged us all to get experimental in the kitchen and sneak some hidden veggies into our baking, with surprising and delicious results!

As soon as I read “hidden veggies“, I thought of the famous (at least here) Tourte aux blettes, the traditional Swiss chard sweet pie from Nice, so I decided to give it a try.

Tourte aux blettes - Step 24

Although the original pie usually resembles granny’s apple pie in shape (therefore with tart dough covering completely the filling), I decided to make a crumble version: sweet tart dough for the bottom, and streusel topping for the top part.

Tourte aux blettes - Step 28

The pie contains Swiss chard, pine nuts, dried raisins and apples. The smell of chard was not so pleasant for me,  but the taste was very sweet and buttery. Even if you don’t like Swiss chard (like me!), you should definitely try this!

Tourte aux blettes - Step 25

 

Tourte aux blettes façon crumble – Swiss chard crumble pie

Print recipe

Ingredients

2 tablespoonsOlive oil

Tart

200gSweet tart dough

Filling

1Swiss chard
2Eggs
30gDried raisins (Sultanas)
30gDried raisings (Golden raisins/Corynthe)
70gPine nuts
40gGrated cheese
160gBrown sugar

Topping

400gCrumble

Directions

1
Leave the raisins in some water (or rhum, better) for at least 15 minutes, then drain them before using them in the recipe. In the meantime, take all the leaves out of the Swiss chard and wash them.
2
Put the leaves one on top of the other and roll everything...
3
... then "slice" the roll to obtain 5mm stripes (serious chefs call this "chiffonade").
4
Wash the stripes 2-3 times to remove the bitterness, then place on a sheet of paper towel
5
Beat the two eggs with a fork, then add the oil
6
Incorporate the cheese, sugar, raisins and pine nuts and stir together
7
Add the Swiss chard chiffonade and make sure that it is well coated with the egg mixture. Set aside.
8
Peel the two apples with the peeler...
9
... then cut them in quarters, remove the seed part and slice them thinly
10
Roll out the tart dough, prick it with a fork or the specific tool and put it inside the ring (roll it around the rolling pin to facilitate the task)
11
Put a finger near the ring on the inside and start folding about 1cm of dough in. Do the same with the rest of the tart dough.
12
Pass the rolling pin on the tart ring to cut the excess dough. Now you can lift the folded part of the dough so that it forms a nice border that can be decorated as you want (e.g. diagonal lines with a knife).
13
Put half of the filling in the tart
14
Cover the filling with the sliced apples
15
Finally add the rest of the filling
16
Cover the tart with the streusel topping for crumble
17
Bake at 180° for 40-45 minutes until the top is lightly golden.

Note

This recipe was an experiment and although it was quite good, maybe I exaggerated with sugar and the amount of streusel topping. If you have a higher mould, that would be perfect as well.

If you want to make the original "pie" version, double the quantities of sweet tart dough.

Update: in the comments below, the owner of the blog with the original recipe suggested the use of small chard from Italy or Nice without the white part at the end of the leaves for an even better taste! Thanks L@urence!

 

Credit for the original/traditional recipe to the blog Variations Gourmandes.

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