A nut tart to celebrate the start of the heating season

Temperatures are finally cooling down. I just noticed that our radiators are warm this morning, which means the heat has kicked in with the thermostat set, as usual, at 65ºF (18.5ºC). The outdoor high this afternoon will be about 62ºF, they say. By the way, the French authorities have asked people to lower their thermostats because of the current energy crisis. I think most keep their thermostat set at a higher temperature than we do.

Yesterday I made a pie. It was based on a recipe I happened upon a week or two ago, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's Swiss and it's called an Engadiner Nusstorte. Engadine is a region in Switzerland, apparently. Nusstorte means "nut pie" and from what I've read it can be made with just walnuts or with a mixture of nuts. Here's a link to a recipe in English. There are many more on the internet.

The crust is what I call a "cookie crust" and others call a "shortcrust." In French, that's a pâte sablée. I made a pâte sablée but then I decided to modify the recipe a little. I definitely wanted to make the pie with mixed nuts, and I found a bag of those at the supermarket. It wasn't something I expected to find, but it was perfect — 180 grams of unsalted, no-sugar-added hazelnuts, pecans, almonds, and cashews. I added a few walnut meats that we had in the freezer.

Actually, what I made was not a nut pie but a nut tart. In didn't put a top crust on it. I also didn't make caramel as the recipe says to do. I didn't want to wait for the caramel to cook, darken in color (with the risk of burning it), and then cool down enough to be poured into the cookie crust. I happened to have a bottle of Lyle's Golden Syrup, so I used that instead. That syrup and the nuts reminded me of a pecan pie (tart, really) that I've made for decades using maple syrup.

So what I made is basically a pecan "pie" using mixed nuts. And it's delicious. I based it partly on this recipe, using mixed nuts and pâte sablée. That dough is easy because you don't have to roll it out. You just put the ball of dough in the pie plate and spread it over the bottom and sides of the dish using your fingers. Notice that as the pie bakes the filling really puffs up. As it cools after coming out of the oven, the filling sinks back down into the pie plate, as you see in the first photo above.