Scallop and Onion Tarte Fines

French Fridays with Dorie

The choice to select these Scallop and Onion Tarte Fines to once again jump back in to the French Friday with Dorie milieu is as puzzling to me as the tarts themselves. While reading this recipe I could tell even then that these odd little pizza-like creatures would be somewhat unremarkable. A product considerably less than the sum of its parts.It is, however, in our Dorista pledge to not be prognosticators and pick off only those recipes we know will be the incredible winners our family devours (and there are plenty of these here) but rather we promised to open ourselves up to the kind of weekly adventures that come from cooking our way through an entire cookbook. You know going in there will be some clunkers.

Not every stop in a journey has to be something you wanted to see to be worthwhile, right?

When you committed to that “see the USA” road trip vacation last summer with your family you knew that not every stop along the way would be a Disneyland and a Grand Canyon. You have a duty to stop at Aunt Rita’s out of obligation even though you know her guest room is going to smell like cats. And there is no avoiding spending a few hours at the Weeki Wachee Springs State Park to watch the mermaid shows because, well, just because.

You do these things because you’re obligated. You made a promise and now it is your duty. Sure, you could have managed to see a bright side and find some sort of enjoyment out of the obligation. Her house may smell like cats but Aunt Rita is also the only one you know who brings out a tray of boilermakers with her chips and bean dip before dinner. Where else are you going to get that? All said, this doesn’t mean you necessarily want to every return.

Once you’ve seen one mermaid show, how many more do you really need to see?

Scallop and Onion Tarte Fines

This is more or less how I felt about this week’s French Friday with Dorie exercise. While not being as bad as I was imagining it to be the most enjoyment came from seeing it the review mirror and knowing that I had done my duty by making it in the first place and I wouldn’t have to go back for seconds if I didn’t want to.

I had no aversions to a single item on the ingredient list. Onions, bacon, puff pastry, and scallops. In other incarnations I could get more than my fill of any of these and experience pure bliss. But together as they are here? Meh.

Perhaps it was the way the scallops are to be sliced horizontally and cooked almost as if they were an after thought atop the onions and puff pastry that sets me wrong? I thought perhaps my culinary ennui might be due to the lack of a featured herb tasked with pulling it all together for me but no, this wasn’t it. In fact, if anything I enjoyed the how the extreme sweetness derived from the ever-so-slowly caramelized onions danced a tango with the extra pepper I added as compensation. You don’t need scallops at $18.99 a pound to play this particular game.

So this week I will forgo the recipe. I didn’t make any adaptations at all other than a few extra shakes of pepper and for what it is worth, I’m not really all that motivated write this out into my own words. For those of you interested slicing up some scallops and making these Scallop and Onion Tarte Fines you can find the recipe here.

But you aren’t going to make it anyway, are you?

Care for a boilermaker?

This Scallop and Onion Tarte Fines was an assignment for French Friday’s with Dorie, a cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s culinary tome “Around My French Table”. We generally avoid including the recipes in our posts. However, wherever there has been a significant adaptation by me or where the recipe has already been publicly posted by Ms. Greenspan or her publishers or by hundreds of other bloggers, or it is, in fact, not much of a recipe at all, I will either include it here (adapted) or provide a direct link to it. Please feel free to contact me via the link provided on my page if you need any assistance finding a French Friday with Dorie Recipe. You should buy the book though.

It will change your life as it has mine.