Tart in Ymbre Day

Typically for me, of course, I had to make the first blog post a medieval dish! This is one of my favourite recipes of all time, and comes from a 14th Century English recipe book called the Forme of Curye. The original recipe is:

Take and perboile oynoun & erbis & presse out the water & hewe her smale. Take grene chese & bray it in a morter, and temper it up with ayren. Do therto butter, safroun & salt, & raisouns corouns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

So... what does that all mean? Angharad ver' Rhuawn, known mundanely as Terry Nutter, has luckily made a redaction of the recipe, using elements of a similar recipe from the 15th Century - combining recipes and changing them was very common in the middle ages - especially since as you can see, no quantities are listed! The result of her efforts is as follows:

4 onions
6 eggs
3T butter
1/2 lb havarti, grated
1/2 lb muenster, grated
3T sugar
1/4 cup currants
1/4 tsp ginger
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp dried sage leaves
1/4 cup parsley
1 deep dish 9" pie crust

1. Parboil onions (about 10 minutes).
2. Remove onions from heat, drain, and chop.
3. Chop parsley.
4. Mix all ingredients.
5. Pour into pie shell.
6. Bake at ~180deg for 50 to 55 minutes (top will be
brown; a knife inserted into the top should come out clean.

I usually leave out the currants (currants in a cheese pie??), and add some saffron if I'm feeling indulgent, though it's not really necessary. It's also worth experimenting with the quantities of spices and herbs, and the types of cheese (I usually just use LOTS of Edam, cos it works well and is cheap). For the pastry, I like to use bought and rolled puff pastry or similar, and for the pie dish, I use an 8" cake tin with a drop-out bottom. This makes a tall, rich, cheesy, oniony pie, with a slightly foreign sweet-savoury taste.

That's enough from me - hope you enjoy making the tart, and I hope to get your recipes soon!