A Jewish Twist on Tarte Flambée

If anything is typical of Alsace, it is tarte flambée, a pizzalike flat bread covered with runny white and tangy cheese (a thin mixture of farmer’s cheese, crème fraîche, heavy cream, and fromage blanc or Gruyère, depending on your preference) and a sprinkling of diced onions and lardons. Dating back hundreds of years, tarte flambée is served everywhere in Alsace, with connoisseurs arguing about their favorite versions. In the old days, the farmers would take leftover bread dough, roll it out paperthin, spread some heavy cream mixed with egg over it, scatter some lardons or ham and onions on top, put it in a hot, wood-burning oven, and—voilà!—dinner was ready. The tradition still stands today, and tarte flambée is particularly enjoyed accompanied by a green salad as a simple Sunday night dinner. At the end of a late Sunday afternoon in April, I was driving Yves Alexandre, a traveling salesman who loves to cook, near fields resplendent with signs of spring—white asparagus and rhubarb, and yellow rapeseed flowers (more commonly known in the United States as the flowers that produce canola). We stopped at Le Marronnier, a charming winstub in Stutzheim, a little town about ten miles from Strasbourg. It was here that I tasted my first tarte flambée. Most of the patrons were seated at outdoor tables in the cobblestoned courtyard with wisteria climbing over the brick walls. A marronnier, a sprawling chestnut tree, stood smack in the center of the patio. “You have to eat the tart hot,” Yves told me as tarts were being rushed to tables near us. The two Mauritian tarte-flambée bakers make a few hundred every Sunday, with a topping of farmer’s cheese and crème fraîche. This Jewish version, with leftover challah dough as a base, of course omits the ham or bacon. At Passover, Yves told me, some Alsatian Jews use matzo for their Sunday night tarte flambée.