Week 11 - Pies

I had a bit of trouble figuring out what to do for pie week. I pulled up lots of pie recipes, but I just wasn't really feeling inspired to make any of them. I had already made a version of shepherd's pie earlier in the year, and even though I had both puff pastry and phyllo dough in the freezer, nothing really caught my eye. I put the pie search on hold until one night when I was searching for something else on BBC Good Food, and I came across a recipe for a leek, bacon, and cheese tart. Sure, technically, it was a tart and not a pie, but close enough. It looked like other things that I've seen called pies before, and since I'm not officially participating and the goal is really to just do something new, it was good enough for broadening my horizons.

The ingredients for the tart were:

- olive oil for sautéing

- 3 strips of bacon, chopped

- about a cup or so of chopped leeks

- 1/2 cup or so of grated cheddar cheese

- about 2/3 block of garlic and herb Boursin

- one sheet of puff pastry

It's too much work to figure out how much this all cost, as the puff pastry, Boursin, bacon, and leeks all came out of the freezer and had been there for months, so I'm not going to estimate.

The steps for making the pie/tart were:

1. Over medium heat, heat some olive oil and add the bacon. Fry bacon until mostly cooked and then add the leeks and cook until softened. (Could probably skip the oil and just use bacon fat, but I thought of that after I had already poured the olive oil into the pan.)

2. Grease a baking sheet and unroll the puff pastry on to the sheet. Top with the soft cheese/Boursin, leaving edges empty.

3. Add leeks and bacon mixture, and then top with grated cheddar cheese.

4. Fold over the edges on all four sides. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

This tart was really, really good, although that shouldn't have been a surprise considering how well leeks, bacon, and cheese go together. It was also really simple to make, and confirmed to us that we should buy the frozen puff pastry whenever we can find it at Trader Joe's since they consider it a seasonal item. I would definitely make this again and also experiment with other fillings.