Tartines

There used to be a sunny lunch spot at Toronto’s Holt Renfrew store that served a full tartine menu for lunch. The rustic tartine bread was flown in from Paris, thinly sliced, toasted, and served as a canvas for a beautiful array of sandwich options: cold Nordic shrimp and dill tartines, roasted mushroom tartines, you name it.

My tartines feature Blackbird Bakery rustic sourdough bread and I’m cleaning out the fridge to make tartine two ways: (1) a blue cheese, acorn squash, swiss cheese, apple, and crispy sage tartine, and (2) a blue cheese, bacon, and lemon-dressed arugula tartine.

Let’s start with the squash tartine. I had split and roasted an acorn squash earlier in the week and stored it in chunks in my fridge. Normally that would go into a squash soup or maybe a casserole, but I wondered if I could find a way to incorporate squash into a sandwich, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I take the squash out of the fridge and put it into my food processor along with salt, pepper, and 2 cloves of roasted garlic, which was also sitting in the fridge waiting to come in handy. Now you could go the more traditional route, flavouring the squash with nutmeg, cinnamon, maybe even a hint of brown sugar but I’m looking to tone down the natural sweetness of the squash. So I’m using bossy ingredients, like roasted garlic in the puree and blue cheese in the tartine.

I started pureeing the mixture, slowly drizzling olive oil to loosen up the puree (I used about 3 tbsp of olive oil here).

The squash is perfectly pureed and gets spooned into a bowl that will go into the fridge for when I’m ready to make my tartines. The leftovers will get incorporated into mashed potatoes later this week.

I’ve got a lovely hunk of Gorgonzola cheese in the fridge that needs to get used up, so that’s going to be the base for both tartines. In the squash tartine, it’ll blend with the other ingredients. In the bacon tartine, it battles crispy bacon for stardom.

To my my blue cheese spread, I put equal amounts of Gorgonzola and cream cheese (about 1/3 cup each) into my food processor, add the juice of half a lemon, and blitz it until the cheeses are blended and I’ve got a spread consistency.

In a jar that goes. It’ll sit in the fridge until I’m ready to make my tartines and leftovers will be spread on crackers or celery sticks. It’s a lovely thing to have on hand.

I’ve got leftover bacon from yesterday’s brunch, so that will get used for my bacon tartine. You could also crumble some into the squash puree but I’m wanting a vegetarian tartine.

I’ve also got arugula that needs to get used, so I dress it in a simple lemon and olive oil vinaigrette and set it aside. That tart, peppery salad will bring a cool contrast to the richness of my blue cheese and bacon tartine.

From the fridge, I pull out slices of swiss cheese and some sage leaves—both vital ingredients for my squash tartine.

Here’s my tartine mise en place.

One last prep for my tartines: On medium-high heat I fry up the sage leaves in about 1/4 inch of olive oil until they’re crispy. They go onto paper towel to absorb the oil and get salted with fleur de sel. Crispy sage is really delicious.

Time to build my tartines. Bread goes in the toaster until it’s golden brown and firm enough to host the ingredients.

Blue cheese spread goes down on both toasts.

Squash puree goes down on one toast, bacon on the other. Top the squash puree with two slices of swiss cheese. That’s ready to go onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and under the broiler until the swiss cheese melts and the bacon crisps up (3-5 minutes depending on your broiler—keep close watch).

Out of the broiler they come.

Now to add our toppers. I mound the lemony arugula on top of the bacon tartine. Thinly sliced apple gets fanned out on top of the squash tartine and that gets crowned with some crispy sage leaves—bringing crunch and cool contrast to the squash cheese combo.

Pretty.

The bacon tartine is a study in contrasts. I’m actually not a fan of eating an arugula salad on its own, but it sings when paired with the bacon and blue cheese.

The squash tartine becomes transformed into a balance of blue cheese, roasted garlic, swiss cheese to hold it all together and add nuttiness, and the freshness of sliced apple and crispy sage sends this tartine to perfection. It may not be a Holt Renfrew restaurant, but this dish feels restaurant worthy.

— Trish Hennessy