>>I love cheesecake.

I love quiche.

This is kind of a vegetable cheesecake torte sort of thing so I'm gonna call it a savory vegetable torte.

It's beautiful and it's wonderful to use as a lunch.

It's great to use as a breakfast.

Also, if you make them smaller makes a perfect little appetizer to put out for your friends.

So we're gonna start off by sauteing a little bit of vegetable.

So I have a pan here and I'm just gonna add about a tablespoon of olive oil just enough to really get those vegetables sweated so that most of their natural moisture is out.

And then all I'm left with is a nice moist pepper and onion but not so much liquid that it comes out in my torte.

So I have a tablespoon of oil, and I want to add to that one minced, and pretty finely minced here, red bell pepper.

And I used a medium bell pepper and then about a quarter of a green bell pepper.

So I'm just gonna put that in my oil and stir that around.

And then I want to add about a half cup of onion.

You can use red onion, white onion, yellow.

You could even use green onion in this.

Just make sure you mince it up very finely.

Now I'm just gonna let that kind of sit on the heat a little bit while I get my body going.

All right, so I've got my mixer set up and what I wanna do is add two eight ounce packages of cream cheese.

These are room temperatures so they'll blend really, really well.

And then I wanna take one and a half packages of boursin cheese.

Now Boursin is an herbed cream cheese, and it's wonderful.

And this will add a lot of flavor to this torte.

So I'm gonna take about one and a half packages of that.

You could use both full packages but what I find is it's just gets slightly heavy.

It's already a heavy cheesecake and it gets slightly heavier if you add the full two packages.

Now let's just mix those together.

They blend so well because they're both at room temperature.

It's perfect.

Now what I wanna do is take just a little bit of cayenne about a quarter of a teaspoon and don't think that this is going to make it spicy.

It doesn't.

What it does is just blend in a little bit of flavor that will will pull out those other flavors.

I wanna take a teaspoon of sugar.

Not a lot, but just a touch of sugar will actually pull these vegetables into the cheese and the flavors are just better with that that hint of sweetness.

And I wanna take a half teaspoon of rubbed thyme and then about a teaspoon of salt.

Now we wanna blend that well and make sure you stir the bottom because your herbs will go down to the bottom of your bowl and you wanna make sure you mix them through.

Now, the reason that I'm putting those dry things in first is so they have a lot of chance to really meld throughout this cheesecake, and they won't be in big clumps.

Yeah, I've got a clump in the bottom of cayenne.

Definitely don't want that.

Now let's blend a little more.

And I wanna stir up those vegetables.

Make sure you're not frying them.

You really just want a saute.

And remember, if you fry, you get that brown.

With this you want that nice fresh color.

And now I'm gonna add two clove of minced garlic and give that a good stir.

So you can see that most of the moisture is starting to sweat out of this.

That color is changing.

The red has become more orange and the green is just becoming lighter.

All right, I'm just gonna give that another minute.

Now, what I wanna do is add about two tablespoons of flour.

I have four tablespoons of flour in here and we're just going to use about half of it.

This is going to give it more of that cakey body.

It's hard to do it without the flour so don't leave that out.

Now let's get down to really make sure that we've got everything off the bottom.

All right, and let's check those vegetables.

Now at this point, I think these are done enough to go into my torte, but here's a little Tassie trick.

So what we're gonna do is put these vegetables on a little paper towel.

This way they're not too moist and you get the chance to just kind of blot off that excess oil.

There we go.

Just blot it a bit.

And then let's lay them over on the plate.

And you can see how much moisture came off on my paper towels.

Now that moisture will not be down in my cheesecake getting it all soggy.

And what I wanna do with the rest of that flour is to put it on the vegetables.

Now, anybody who bakes a lot knows that if you put raisins or nuts in a cake, you want to sprinkle that with a little bit of flour before you put it into the body of the cake so that everything doesn't sink to the bottom.

Same principle here.

Now, let's take four eggs.

I want to break one egg at a time and incorporate that into my cheesecake.

Now, there's a reason that we don't want to put all of our liquid in at one time, because if you do the cheesecake tends to separate.

You'll end up with striations because it doesn't really fully mix.

Let's put in one at a time, and that way that egg can mix in.

And then the next and so on.

And our last one, and before I add that I just wanna scrape down to make sure all that cheese is off the bottom and everything is mixing through thoroughly.

There we go.

We had some clumps down there.

And then always also scrape off your paddle.

Now you notice that I'm using a paddle and not a whisk for this because I don't want to incorporate so much air in.

When you do that with a cheesecake what happens is it rises up beautifully and then it falls because it's all air in the center and the last egg.

All right, that last egg is all incorporated.

And now I want to add half cup of Parmesan Asiago or Romano cheese, pecorino, Romano.

Anything that's nice and hard will work great with this.

But I like Parmesans.

And I'm gonna add about two tablespoons of dried parsley and I have some fresh tarragon and I just wanna snip a little bit of that.

I don't wanna overdo it on the tarragon because tarragon is a very pungent flavor.

Gives you a lot of licorice, and I don't want a lot of it but I want about three quarters of a teaspoon fresh.

If you don't have fresh just about a quarter of a teaspoon dried.

Now let's put in our vegetables and make sure you're getting in all that flower that remains on your plate and then a cup of sour cream a little bit at a time.

Mm so yummy.

This almost seems like it would be a great dip.

Of course, we've got raw eggs.

Now one more check of the bottom of the bowl and scrape down those sides and get off anything that's clumped.

All right, one more run of the mixer, just lightly.

Okay, now let's get our cheesecake pan ready.

So I have a nine inch cheesecake pan here that I've lined with a little bit of parchment paper that will really help you release this cheesecake when you go to put it on a plate or a pan.

And I just want to spray it really well with a baking pan release.

There we go.

Now let's put our cheesecake right over in that pen.

Mm this gives one last chance to check to see if there are any lumps.

Get all that tasty goodness in there.

There we go.

And then let's just smooth it a little bit.

So here I have a doubled piece of aluminum foil and I just want to put my cheesecake pan right in it and then bring that up the sides all the way around.

And then I'm gonna put an inch of water in my pan and baked this at 350 degrees for about 70 minutes.

Then I'm gonna open my oven, turn it off and let it rest for an hour.

So I unmolded my cheesecake.

I put it on a little platter and gave it a little garnish.

Now let's just get a slice.

Oh, this is beautiful.

Now I'm serving this one at room temperature.

So whether you pull it out hot and serve it at room temperature or you cool it overnight in the refrigerator so it makes it easier to unmold and then you serve it at room temperature, either way is great.

But look at that.

Isn't it terrific?

It makes such a cute little luncheon plate that is just awesome with a little bit of salad a little bit of this wonderful torte.

Now let's give it a try.

Mm, so creamy, delicious, and with Sauvignon Blanc.

Mm, perfect.

Oh yeah, the acidity of the Sauvignon Blanc, that fresh fruitiness.

It's the perfect blend.

The perfect blend with this.

The other thing you could do when you're using Sauvignon Blanc is instead of the boursin, substitute goat cheese it's a natural pairing with sauvignon Blanc.

But either way, this is delicious.

And what a great lunch.

(peaceful jazz music) (chiming music)