Recipe: Pissaladière or Onion tart provençal-style

Pissaladière is one of the culinary speciality of Nice, where Claudia was born, and her favourite. Often nicknamed "onion pizza", this very simple recipe is indeed to Nice cuisine what pizza is to Italian cuisine.

However there are no tomatoes in the recipe of pissaladière, just a lot, and more, of onions! The onions are the key ingredient: thinly cut and stewed until they release a sweet flavour.

The name of this dish comes from "pissalat", or salted fish in Nice dialect, and evolved into "Pissaladiera". Pissalat originally designated a type of salted fish mash or puree made from anchovies and alevins of sardines, but nowadays young fish is protected by fishing laws so it has been replaced by pure anchovy puree. 

Ingredients:

1 roll of puff pastry (in France rolls come in circles; but the shape doesn't matter as long as it fits an oven)

1,5 to 2kg of white onions

Anchovy paste (usually comes in tubes,  1/4 of tube is enough, keep the rest in the fridge)

12 anchovies fillets in oil

3 garlic cloves, 

Thyme 

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

A handful of black olives, if possible strong taste (those of Nice are preferred)

Recipe

In Nice traditionally, the puff pastry is hand-made ahead of the cooking time, but an organic ready-made puff pastry roll is a good substitute.

The most important aspect is of course to cook the onions properly. Slicethe onions thinly, not in cubes, more like slightly thicker than minced onions.

Cook them in a pan with three garlic cloves still in their skin and a bouquet of thyme. Stew slowly until the onion becomes transparent and juicy, for about an hour. ¾ in the cooking time, add anchovy paste to salt the onions and give it its specific taste. The onion should never caramelise, careful supervision is best to obtain a sweet puree or compote.

Start the oven at 180 C.

When the onion is cooked, take the garlic and thyme away, taste to adjust salt if necessary, add pepper. Unroll the puff pastry on a cooking tray, cover with onion mix almost reaching the edges of the pastry.

Display the anchovy fillets in checked pattern on top of the onions: traditionally we form diamonds with a black olive marking the middle.

Put in the oven for half and hour until the pastry is cooked and the onions slightly caramelised. Enjoy still warm with a refreshing glass of chilled rosé wine from Provence.

So simple, yet divine... can be a starter or a meal depending on how many you serve.