Almost every small restaurant in Alsace now serves
tarte
flambée, or flammenkuchen, but back
in my student days in Strasbourg, it didn’t even exist as restaurant
fare. I learned about it
when I was invited by some kind local people working through the tourist office
(“invite the foreign students”) to an evening at their home. I’ve no idea where I was or even
the names of my hosts, but we spent the whole night eating wonderful tartes in
the family kitchen, while our hostess rolled the dough and fired one after the
other in her own wood-fired oven.
We ate and drank local wine and learned French drinking songs, and that’s
what I always remember when I think of tarte flambeee.
So what is it?
Looks like a pizza, sort of, but the crust is lighter. Traditionally the dough is topped
with crème fraiche, onions and lardons.
Variations add swiss cheese, mushrooms, goat cheese, lots of other
things. Traditionally it’s
either a ‘test the oven temperature’ dish or a ‘use up the leftover dough’
dish. Not just for
Christmas, though the Christmas market stalls had their own version on
baguette.
We had to have at least one in Strasbourg. Here it is, with Ed enjoying:
No comments:
Post a Comment