Tarte flambée with caramelized apples and goat cheese

Tarte flambée is a dish I cook a lot and that we really love. It's pretty fast and easy to prepare, and you only need ingredients, you probably already have at home. From the basic recipe with crème fraîche and onions you can build up your own creations and add toppings you like - it's super versatile!

I like the combination of hearty cheese and the sweetness of fruits. In this recipe, I paired caramelized apple slices, soft goat cheese and with some honey and thyme. If you don't like goat cheese, you can substitute it by some feta cheese or similar. You can also vary the type of fruit used in this recipe - pears and figs work very well with this kind of cheese, too.

course	country	time	difficulty
starter or main	France	30min	easy

If I have some meat-eaters over, I usually make a tarte with smoked salmon and a honey-mustard-sauce, which I top with some fresh arugula after baking.

Ingredients

for the caramelized apples and goat cheese variant

Yield 2 sheets
Serves 2 as main or 6-8 as starter

imperial	metric
2 tbsp		butter
4		onions, in half slices
1.5cup	200g	flour
3/4 cup	180ml	water
1 tbsp		olive oil
1/2 tsp		salt
1 cup	240ml/g	crème fraîche
2		apple, slices and deseeded
2 tbsp		sugar (white or brown)
7oz	200g	goat cheese (soft)
some		honey
some		fresh thyme

You can use any kind of onion you like. I mixed red and white onions, but you can use shallots or scallions as well.

Instruction

in a medium pot, heat some butter and cook onions on medium-low until soft and slightly browned in the meantime, mix flour, salt, olive oil and water in a bowl knead with floured hands (and add some more flour if needed) until you got a nice homogeneous dough split the dough in two even halves roll out each dough on a baking paper - it may seem like small amount of dough for a whole sheet, but the dough should VERY thin, like "see-through-thin" (see left)

pre heat you oven to max heat (should be at least 530°F/275°C, the higher the better) transfer each baking paper incl. dough on a baking sheet spread half a cup of crème fraîche on each dough and top with roasted onions in a pan, heat 2tbsp of sugar, add apple slices and cook on medium heat until slightly browned flip them over and repeat distribute the apple slices evenly over both tartes and top them with some goat cheese crumble the leftover goat cheese all over the tartes dribble some honey all over bake on the lowest rack until the outer rim is brown and crispy (5-10min depending on your heat setting) I bake the 2 sheets one after each other (by the time we eat one tarte, the next one is done), but you can bake both simultaneously on the 2 lowest racks, switching places at about half of the baking time

Serve with some fresh thyme and enjoy!