Two Cheese & Rosemary Tart

Dear Stephanie Alexander, I ♥ you. The Cook's Companion has never failed me. Okay there is the date scone recipe which I swear has a typo in it because the dry to wet ratio never seems to work for me no matter how many times I retry it, but ignoring that it's my old faithful. The orange teacake recipe is the basis of my cupcake recipe and am always pulling out the chocolate self-saucing pudding, sticky date pudding and banana cake recipes when I am in need of comfort desserts. Much love, from another Stephanie :)

Originally I bought some cheese with wild fantasies of whipping together a fabulous two cheese souffle, after being challenged to bake one by Peter Pad Thai, my Iron Chef judge. But that particular night I was was getting bad vibes from my kitchen (does that sound insane?) and was feeling a little tired. So I lost my nerve and went with a slightly safer but equally yummy option. Stephanie's gruyere tart caught my eye. Shortcrust pastry and melty cheesy innards, you can't go wrong with that. Obviously I replaced the gruyere with the cheeses I had in my fridge which happened to be a wheel of double cream brie and my most favourite cheddar, a Tasmanian cheese mixed with fresh wild wasabi.

Two Cheese Tart with Rosemary
(Adapted from Stephanie Alexander's recipe from A Cook's Companion)
1 sheet shortcrust pastry (I used Stephanie's recipe, will post it up soon)
250g of cheese of your choice (I used 100g wild wasabi cheddar and 150g brie)
1 cup cream
salt
freshly ground pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
2 tsp fresh rosemary finely chopped

Line a 22cm loose-bottomed flat tin with pastry and blind bake at 200 degrees C for 15 minutes and then bake uncovered for 5 minutes. Allow to cool

After blind baking

Cut cheese into tiny dice and scatter over pastry.

Warm cream in a pan over low heat and season it with salt, pepper, rosemary and nutmeg. Mix eggs and egg yolk into cream and pour gently into pastry case.

Okay so my pastry was a tiny bit wonky

Bake at 200 degrees C for 20 minutes or until the top is golden and the middle is just set. Allow to cool for a few minutes before cutting.

Mmm melty...

The tart puffed up a tiny bit and was light, airy and full of small pockets of gooey cheese. The shortcrust pastry recipe I used was so buttery and short and so easy to make that I instantly fell in love with in. I even had enough leftover pastry to make a sweet dessert, but I'll save that for another post ;)

I would definitely recommend buying some of the wasabi cheese for this tart, it was a lovely surprise of flavour to find in the tart and the rosemary matched it quite well, which was unexpected (I only added the rosemary because I have too much of it and needed to use some up).

My only complaint was that it was still a little too eggy for a tart filling, I think next time I might increase the amount of cheese and not use that extra egg yolk, so feel free to try doing that if you use the recipe above.