Onion Tart with Bacon

I can guarantee, you would not expect the outcome below, unless you are familiar with my tendency to improvise without a clue. This may highlight how I classify myself as a challenged chef. The recipe was clipped (as usual) from the Virginian Pilot newspaper.

I started with the dough. I managed to get a couple of bubbles in my yeast mixture and added all of the ingredients for the dough. I may have gotten tired kneading the dough after a couple of minutes and called it good. I set it aside in a bowl covered with a dish towel and let it rise. While the dough was rising, I re-read the rest of the recipe. This is where things started to go south. I realized I had not been able to find caraway seeds or crème fraiche at the grocery store. I looked up substitutes on Google and cumin came up. I had ground cumin at home so I decided that I’d use that in lieu of caraway seeds. The substitute for crème fraiche is sour cream, but I don’t particularly care for sour cream so I didn’t have any of that either. Since we had time before the dough was ready, my two year old and I set of for the grocery store.

We got to the grocery store and went to the dairy section. Nothing. We asked a guy working in the dairy section and after showing him what we were looking for on our phone, he consulted in the back and sent me to the fancy cheese section. After reviewing their selection and asking the manager, it was revealed that they don’t carry crème fraiche. Since this was the third major grocery store in the area and the previous two didn’t carry this either (I checked earlier in the week) it was time to make a substitution call. Since I don’t love sour cream, I went with mascarpone as my game time decision.

We got back to the house (after a melt down tantrum over not buying the yellow cheese and a two for one deal on 12 packs of canned soda that makes my pantry look like I am hoarding soda for an apocalyptic event) and checked on the dough. It had approximately doubled in size so I got moving on the topping. I started cutting up the onions. 3 large onions results in enough onions to fill my largest skillet. I cooked them until they began to brown and added the cumin. It still seemed like a lot of onion.

I took the bacon and put it under water and simmered. This is kind of gross. The bacon exudes an odd foam onto the water’s surface. I drained the bacon and cut it up into one inch pieces. I got the dough rolled out and onto a baking sheet, which I then rolled a bit more to get the approximate diameter, although mine was more round than oval. I mixed the ricotta with the mascarpone and spread it on the dough, which worked just fine. I started piling up the onions and after getting about ¾ of them on the pile, abandoned the rest. There were just too many. I topped the onions with the bacon and added some mascarpone on top. I tried drizzling over the top like the recipe said, but it isn’t a liquid so glopped is more accurate. In the oven it went for 33 minutes.

The results: mediocre. There were still too many onions (which seems strange given it’s an onion tart) and the onions were kind of bland. I used white onions since the recipe didn’t specify but perhaps yellow would have been an improvement. The bacon wasn’t crisp so I think frying the bacon instead of giving it a bath would have been a better option. The mascarpone worked fine though and there was plenty leftover. It said on the package that it makes a great bread spread and I had never had it so I gave it a try. HELLO! My new favorite obsession! It is so delicious. Forget the onion tart, I just want mascarpone and bread. My two year old didn’t love the tart, and doesn’t like the mascarpone on the bread, but thinks it tastes good by itself. Smart girl.