Basis receipt
(To make one average pie of 27 cm.)
200 gr of flour --- 15 to
20 gr of yeast --- 1 sprinkle of salt --- 50 gr of butter --- 20 gr of sugar
--- 1 egg --- 1 dl of milk --- (6 soup spoons of milk + 1 soup spoon of oil).
Work with a big pastry board or on a table. Sift the flour. Make a little well in the middle. Sprinkle the salt on the edges.
Dilute the yeast in a soup spoon with warm milk in which a bit of sugar has been added. Pour it in the well and recover it with a bit of flour. Leave it alone for a few minutes so that the yeast can rise a little. Whip the egg and add it in the well, with the warm milk, the oil and the sugar. Work the pastry with your hands while adding slowly and regularly the flour until the pastry gets “consistent and soft”. Beat the pastry with your finger tips so as to incorporate air in it. When that is done, incorporate the softened butter and the rest of the flour. Knead the pastry without letting it get hard and then make it rise during 20 minutes with the help of a little warmth.
Spread the pastry to the size of the platinum round cake pan and cut off the excess pastry with the pastry roller. With a fork, prick several times at the bottom of the pie. Let the pastry rise 20 minutes more. Put in whichever trimming you have chosen, and cook the whole during 15 to 20 minutes in the oven at 200° - 225°C.
After the cooking, remove the pie from the cake pan and let it cool down on a grid.
Nota Bene : When working with small amounts of flour, more or less 200 to 400 gr of flour, we suggest you get the yeast to rise separately in a bowl. The yeast is diluted in a little amount of warm milk in which one coffee spoon of sugar has been added. The bowl on which a cover has been placed must be put in a Bain Marie or at the entrance of the pre-heated oven.
THE CHEESE PIE FROM WAVRE
(Wavre in more or less 10 kms. away from Chaumont-Gistoux).
- for two pies;
Prepare the pastry with 500
gr of flour --- 500 gr. of apples, cooked, mashed and sugared ---500 grs. of
white cheese well drained --- 300 gr of icing sugar --- 6 eggs (only the
yellow)--- 50 gr of finely grinded almonds --- 40 gr maïzena --- and the 6
whites of the eggs beaten up in snow, to be incorporated. ---
When the pie is ready to be cooked, spread on the bottom of the cake pan, a thin layer of apple compote. Recover that, with the mixture of white cheese, sugar, almonds, and the eggs. Cook in the oven at 220°C during 20 to 30 minutes.
In Chaumont-Gistoux, (our village) the apple compote is replaced by apricot compote.
For a non-specialist, (that’s me!!) I think that the difficulty, or, should I say the “art” of the “tarte au fromage” is the consistence of the cheese. If the white cheese is too dry, it is complicated to swallow and you have to masticate and drink a lot of tea to get it down. Now, if the tea is too hot, that’s another problem I won’t discuss about over here!
If the white cheese is too wet, it is a catastrophe because when you cut the pie, ---- ! . It’s a mess and drips everywhere.
And, finally, if the wetness of the cheese is just as it should be, it all goes down smoothly, --- your eyes twinkle with satisfaction and you can’t help looking at the mistress of the house with a large smile for another piece of the “tarte au fromage de Chaumont-Gistoux”.