Nici Wickes: Leek, parmesan, and prosciutto tart

Leeks are so underrated and I have to remind myself to use them for more than just soups and chicken pies. In these tarts they are the star and as well as looking pretty they are absolutely scrumptious with soft and sweet, leeks combining with the tang of parmesan and saltiness of prosciutto. Perfect really!   

Makes 4 

 

Ingredients 

3-4 leeks, cut into 2cm thick rounds (to yield about 16-20) 

30g butter 

2 sheets savour short crust pastry  

1 tbsp olive oil  

4 eggs 

150g crème fraiche  

200mls cream  

½ tsp wholegrain mustard 

¼  tsp sea salt + pinch black pepper 

100g parmesan, grated + extra chunks for tops  

50g prosciutto  

 

Method 

1. Preheat oven to 180 C. Place oven tray in to heat.  

2. Line four 12cm tart tins (or one large 25cm) with pastry and trim edges neatly. Chill for 20 minutes.  

3. Carefully place leek rounds in a pan with butter and oil, cover and cook gently until they begin to soften and are cooked through - about 20-30minutes. Turn once halfway through cooking but do so carefully as they like to unravel! Cool.  

4. In a bowl whisk together eggs, crème fraiche, cream, mustard and seasoning.  

5. Sprinkle grated parmesan over chilled pastry bases then position cooked and cooled leeks, leaving a little space between each. Transfer tarts to oven tray at this stage to avoid spillage later. Pour egg mixture around the leeks, until each case is full. Top with scrunched up prosciutto and extra cheese.  

6. Gently slide back into oven and cook for 30-35 minutes (longer for large tart)  or until pastry is golden and filling is just firm.   

7. Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes and serve.  

 

Nici’s note:  

Prosciutto (and pancetta for that matter) can seem expensive but a little goes a long way in recipes such as this as the flavour is very intense.  

Always remove tarts from fluted tins whilst still a little warm as they come away from the tin easier when pastry is not completely cold.   

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talk SIB.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, Cook, Nikki wixs is in the house, Kilda.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Yes, Morena, I am in the house with the most
amazing tart this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, you know, I love a task. I sort of
just I love a sorry Nikki, and I love I love.
I love the three key ingredients if you can, I
mean leak, as I've said many times, the most underrated
of winter vegetables, Parmesan and proscuto. So you got a
little bit of umami in there, and then you've got
you've got presco beautiful kind of salty cut through. It

(00:44):
sounds amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Saltin as I know. And I guess I wanted to
segue kind of from your ocr chat because when you
look at those two of those ingredients are really expensive,
Parmesan and proscucto. I mean, if you're trying to pay
your mortgage off, sometimes you have to kind of you know,
some of these luxuries go by the way, but Leek's
are super cheap at the moment. When I created this
recipe last week for you, I they were two dollars each.

(01:07):
They're now down to one dollar. You get a lot
of run for your money out of leagus. I stupidly,
till very late in life, used to use not the
whole leak, but up till when it starts to get
really green. And now I just use the whole lot.
The rest of it gets saute, gets put in soups,
et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, you know it's great.
And what I also say is one of my notes

(01:28):
as part of this recipe is pascuco. Yeah, really expensive,
but you don't use a lot of it. You know.
It's in same with parmesan. They're very pungent, very strong.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It follows that it follows the jackt hand rule of turito,
and a little cha goes a very long way.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
It's so true. I mean, you could probably use use
chetah for this, and you could probably use bacon. But
you know, even if you do, here we go, still
call it this exactly. I do worry about all that
cut bacon, all right, here we go. Look, this makes
quite a sizeable large tart. Or I happen to make
four sort of tarts that were about about seven inches

(02:09):
about twelve centimeters a cross. I've got these little fluted
tins that the bottoms come out of which is so
we've lined our pastry cases. Now we need to cook
off our leaks. And so what I do is you
after the lovely rounds sort of quite a neat round
of leak, so chop some of those. I've used about
three or four leaks. They were probably a bit thinner
than maybe the big fatty ones, but you want them

(02:31):
in about two centimeter a lot thick rounds. Pop those
in a pan with some butter and some oil. I
do use a feed bit of butter here, thirty grams
of butter and a good tablespoon of olive oil, and
just set those cooking. You cover them if you like,
and they probably take about twenty or thirty minutes jack,
So you could put those on even before the pastry
goes in. When they're sort of halfway through cooked. You know,

(02:52):
at about maybe ten to fifteen minutes, you could turn
those over, but you don't want them to unravel, if possible,
and then you're going to cool those and a big bowl.
What we're going to do is we're going to whisk
in four eggs one hundred and fifty grams of sour
cream or cream fresh in about two hundred mills of cream,
so these are rich, beautiful tarts. Half a teaspoon of
whole grain mustard. I don't think you'll need too much

(03:15):
salt and pepper in there, but a little bit of
each you'll be will be good. Sprinkle some grated parmesan
and whisk all that together. Sprinkle some grated parmesan in
the bottom of each of the pastry cases that have
been chilled. Pop the cooled leak rounds on there for
about four in each tin, or obviously all in a
big tin, and then transfer those to your oven tray

(03:36):
that you've been heating in the oven. And then pour
the egg mixture into those cases whilst they're on the ovene,
and then slide it back in the oven, ever so gently,
putting a bit of precuto and extra cheese on top.
Cook them for about thirty thirty five minutes. Jack that
proscuto will go nice and crispy on top. Your pastry

(03:57):
around The edges should look beautiful and golden, because we
preheated a tray in there on one eighty degrees celsius.
The bottoms should be beautiful and firm and golden as well.
I'm leave to cool for about five to ten minutes
and pop them out of there and.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Eat very good. I know how to do that best.
We don't need any instructions on that one, but for
all of the rest of the detail from your recipe,
you can go to news Talks eDV dot co dot nz.
Thank you so much, Nikki, We will catch you again
next week. Yeah. The website is the best place to
go for everything from our show on Saturday mornings.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.