The Louisville Chef

When I whipped this up in scrambled eggs the other morning, I thought how great this would be in a tart, so here you go. Easy and perfect for a quick dinner.

Ingredients

1 Piecrust, either home made or store bought 4 oz of asparagus spears, cut into 1-inch pieces 4 oz of Black Forest Ham, cut into 1/2 inch pieces 4 Eggs ¾ cup and 2 Tbsp of Heavy Cream, or Whipping Cream 5 oz of Gruyere, shredded Salt and pepper to taste Parchment Paper Dried beans, approx 2 cups
Begin by blind baking the crust. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, use a fork to gently prick the crust on the bottom and on the sides.
Cut a piece of parchment paper so it overlaps the crust slightly and lay it onto the unbaked crust, and fill with dried beans. Push them so you have more beans on the sides and less in the middle. Then bake for 10-15 minutes.
After baking, remove the crust and lift off the parchment paper and allow the crust to cool. The beans can be stored and reused. They will be hot when they come out, so handle with car…

Now that autumn is just around the corner, I wanted to share a great tip with you about storing tomatoes. One year I planted 3 San Marzano tomato plants and I had so many tomatoes, it was impossible to cook them all. I was still getting baskets of tomatoes in late September, so I had to find a solution.


After picking another basket of beautiful San Marzanos, I just took them and put them into a gallon freezer bag and put them into the freezer. No washing, no fuss and they were still warm from the garden. 


About two weeks later I remembered them and was expecting the worse, but when I took them out to make a sauce, they were perfect. I put a little bit of lukewarm water on them and the skins came right off and I then chopped them and made a wonderful sauce. They had lost none of their flavor. 


The only important thing to remember, is that this will only work for tomatoes you plan on using for cooking, as the texture will not be suitable for slicing.


I picked my last batch in early October …