Tarte au Fromage & The Sex Pistols

Aaahh Sunday...What could be better than spending a relaxing weekend afternoon making a tarte au fromage (cheese pie) while listening to late '70s British punk rock as your husband shoves in the ear plugs? Well, I suppose having the tarte au fromage come out edible. I seem to have committed one too many improvisations on Julia Child's original recipe. I wrote the following text earlier today:
"A while back I more or less (actually less) followed Julia Child's recipe for Leek Tart which was pretty good but was lacking spice. So what's up now? Curry Leek Tart? Chipotle-Cilantro Leek Tart? No, that's probably not a good idea. But I've got the other half of the pie crust thawing in the fridge and not too much of an idea of what else to make today, so Tarte au Fromage it is! Anyway, Gabriel loves the stuff and eats it any time he's back home in Geneva. It's like "Italian Beef" from Novi's for me. Every time I go back to Chicago, I have to eat it at least once.
But the heavy French food thing is kinda weighing on me. Yesterday, I ate a plate of cabbage pierogi with butter sauce (o.k. it's Polish, not French but still, it's heavy!) and I'm feeling a little slow right now. We have to have a gigantic green salad with this otherwise I won't be able to get off the couch today. Julia's idea is that you fill a pie crust with melty cheese like Gruyere or in my case, Fontina, eggs, cream or milk (hey, Julia's going light this time! So will I) nutmeg, salt and pepper. Bake in a 375F oven for half an hour and voila'!" Yeah. That was then, this is now. Voila' came before we tasted it. First of all, my oven temp was floating around 400F, not 375F and still at the half hour mark, the pie filling was jiggly, so I left it in for another 10 minutes. I had frozen the pie crust in the pie tin after rolling it out, should I have just refrigerated it? Maybe, but I'll re-think the all milk, no cream thing the mext time I make this. The result was soggy, not creamy and custardy. Oh, I also foolishly/frugally cut up the remaining quarter of a cheese-arugula fritatta into tiny pieces (note how photo reflects "cheese pie" with little squares in it) and sprinkled said pieces into the as yet uncooked pie. Why did I not just eat the fritatta by itself? Because I had salted the hell out of it when I made it the other day and couldn't bear the thought of downing something like that straight again. Basically I am too cheap to throw away even inedible food. SO there we were today eating our soggy tarte and wishing we could just do like my punk rock heroes and order, "Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please!" (Splodgenessabounds).