Tomato and Leek Tart and Desert Manna

Tomato and Leek Tart

2 cups seasoned bread crumbs

¾ cup almond butter

scant 1/4 cup butter

2 cups sliced leeks

Olive oil

1 T flour

1 cup crème fraiche or sour cream

8 oz. peeled, sliced tomatoes

½ cup grated gruyere cheese, or swiss

Mix crumbs, almond butter, butter and pat into 8 inch tart pan to form crust. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 min. Meanwhile, cook leeks 5-7 min in a drizzle of olive oil, until tender. Stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Stir in crème fraiche, boil to thicken for several minutes. Spoon into crust. Lay tomatoes over the top, sprinkle with cheese. Bake until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

If you’ve never cooked with leeks before, make sure you slice them open and rinse them well; they often have sand and dirt trapped between the layers (umm, crunchy). Speaking of sand crunchy veggies, my Dad was always bringing ‘unique’ things home and throwing them on the kitchen table for my mom to figure out how to cook. One day it was faqa’, a truffle that suddenly appears in the Dahna desert after a rain. They resemble ugly potatoes and, like leeks, have to be cleaned carefully or else they’ll provide a hefty crunch, and a trip to the dentist, to your evening meal. After scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing and rinsing and peeling and scrubbing and rinsing and chopping and rinsing, my sisters and I decided that only people who had been wandering in the desert for 40 years would consider this to be manna from heaven. Its name appropriately sounds like something you yell at another driver on the interstate.