Provencal Tart with Gruyere and Herbes de Provence Recipe
I stumbled on Once Upon a Tart the first time I visited New York, and have made it a point to visit every time I go back. This place is so cute it hurts. Perfect tarts, muffins, and cookies peek at you from the front windows- I would always stock up with a box of treats to take back home to San Francisco. Usually by the time I was scheduled to fly out, the only thing left were crumbs. Go figure.
Well, lucky for us west-coasters Frank and Jerome wrote a cookbook-and it is seems to be as cute and tasty as their shop. I got this book a couple weeks ago, and when I came across some amazing deep red small vine tomatoes yesterday I decided it was time to crack the binding on this baby, and make the classic tomato tart with delicious Gruyere cheese.
It was almost 10 o'clock last night when I finished this recipe, everything went pretty much as planned. I didn't get home until 7:30, so that was part of the problem. Next time it wont take as long because I have one more ball of tart dough ready to go in the fridge.
My one problem was shrinkage. This isn't the first time a tart shell has decided to shrink quite a bit on me while it is baking. The tart doesn't even reach the top of the pan after it is done baking. I think it is time to use something heavier than white beans as pie weights.
The tart was delicious, the cheese added a nice strong flavor, and the mustard offered up a bit of a surprise flavor (but don't overdo the mustard, it can easily overpower the whole tart). The crust was nice and flaky, the semolina flour added a subtle amount of structure to the crust .
Overall, perfect with a small mixed green salad.
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To feature an actual recipe taken from a cookbook, it is best to request permission from the publisher or author. In the early days on 101 Cookbooks, I would tell people where to find the recipe, but not feature the recipe itself. Eventually I began to request permission to run the actual recipes, but this wasn't one of them. The majority of entries on 101 Cookbooks will have the recipes attached, this just happens to be one of the ones that doesn't. My apologies!
