This tart is an easy recipe to make for lunch or a simple supper. Cherry tomatoes, goat’s cheese and caramelised onion make a tasty filling. Use store bought puff pastry and you could even use a good bought onion jam to make the recipe even easier.
I made mine in a rectangular flan tin, but a round one would do as well.
Ingredients
320g store-bought puff pastry (I used 2 sheets from a pack of Pampas puff pastry). Use more or less, if needed, to fit your tin.
For the caramelised onion:
1 red onion, chopped
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon brown sugar
Goats’ cheese – or similar crumbly soft cheese. You will crumble this into the tart, so quantities are flexible, about 100gm should be enough
15-20 cherry tomatoes, or more if you want to pack them in, on the vine
Fresh thyme leaves for scattering
Sea salt and ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C or 180 degrees C fan. Grease a flan tin and fit with the puff pastry sheets which you have cut to shape.
Fry the red onion in the butter in a small frying pan over a low to medium heat, until the onion begins to soften. Add the brown sugar to caramelize the onion and cook for a further couple of minutes.
Lay the caramelized onion onto the pastry base. Crumble the goats’ cheese into the tart. Cut some of the cherry tomatoes in half and place on top of the goats’ cheese, place a few whole ones on, too for effect. Scatter a few fresh thyme leaves over the tomatoes with sea salt and black pepper.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the puff pastry is nicely browned, the cheese melted and the tomatoes softened. Nice served with a green salad.
Home-made pasta is great to eat and pretty easy to make. There are so many different sizes and shapes to make, and you can create different flavours by adding vegetables and herbs, as I did here by adding pumpkin to the dough.
This is a recipe for pumpkin ravioli with goat’s cheese I made a while back. I made two different fillings, one with goat’s cheese and watercress, the other with goat’s cheese, pumpkin, thyme and hazelnuts. The pasta dough has mashed baked pumpkin to give the pasta a lovely orange colour and subtle taste.
The basic recipe I use for the pasta dough is a Jamie Oliver recipe. Click here for the original recipe. It’s straightforward and easy to follow.
Ingredients
Pasta
3 large free range eggs
300g Tipo ’00’ flour
3 tablespoons or so of butternut pumpkin baked in the oven with a little olive oil, then mashed. The amount you use will depend on how “orange ” you want the pasta to be. If you add too much, the pasta will be too soft to roll, so start out adding less – you can always add more.
Filling
3 tablespoons or so of any soft goat’s cheese
1 tablespoon or so of wilted watercress ( a few good handfuls of watercress will wilt down to 1 tablespoon – instructions below)
1 tablespoon mashed baked pumpkin (squash)
2 teaspoons roast chopped hazlenuts (about 10 or 12)
A few chopped thyme leaves
Method
Put the eggs and flour into a food proccesor and whiz until the flour looks like breadcrumbs, then tip the mixture on to the work surface and bring the dough roughly together. Add the baked pumpkin, starting off with a little at first, then adding more if you need to. Bring the pasta dough together into one lump.
Knead the dough and work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour, until the pasta dough starts to feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury. Wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for at least half an hour before you use it.
Now is the time to prepare your filling, so you are ready to fill the ravioli once the pasta is rolled.
To wilt the watercress, place it washed in a small frying pan or saucepan with the barest amount of water. Cook over a low heat until it wilts. Break up the goat’s cheese with a fork, and mix in salt and pepper to taste.
To half the goat’s cheese add the watercress, and to the other half mix in the mashed pumpkin, thyme leaves and roast chopped hazelnuts.
I should note here that I inadvertently mixed in some wilted watercress into some of my pasta dough – so I went with it – creating some lovely green speckled pasta dough that you can see in some of the photos.
For the pasta, dust your work surface with some Tipo ‘00’ flour, take a lump of pasta dough the size of a large orange and press it out flat with your fingertips. Set the pasta machine at its widest setting – and roll the lump of pasta dough through it. Lightly dust the pasta with flour if it sticks at all. Click the machine down a setting and roll the pasta dough through again. Fold the pasta in half, click the pasta machine back up to the widest setting and roll the dough through again. Repeat this process five or six times. It might seem like you’re getting nowhere, but in fact you’re working the dough, and once you’ve folded it and fed it through the rollers a few time, it should be smooth and silky.
Now roll the pasta dough working it through all the settings on the machine, from the widest down to around the narrowest. Lightly dust both sides of the pasta with a little flour every time you run it through. When you’ve got down to the narrowest setting, fold the pasta in half lengthways, then in half again, then in half again once more until you’ve got a square-ish piece of dough. Turn it 90 degrees and feed it through the machine at the widest setting. As you roll it down through the settings for the last time, you should end up with a rectangular silky sheet of dough with straight sides. For ravioli, roll the pasta down to the point where you can clearly see your hand or lines of newsprint through it.
Once you have rolled the pasta, you will need to work quite quickly, as the pasta dries out. Place the rolled pasta on a lighly floured board. Cut the pasta sheets into two if they are really long, or use two rolled sheets if they are the right length to make the ravioli. You can cover the unused sheets with a tea towel for a few minutes while you are making ravioli with the other sheets.
Place small spoonfuls of the filling on one pasta sheet, allowing for a border when you come to cut the ravioli. Moisten the exposed pasta and put the other pasta sheet on top. Press down to divide the sheets into individual ravioli and, making sure you don’t trap any air with the filling, seal the ravioli edges.
Cut pasta into shapes using a pastry cutter or a sharp knife. Dust the ravioli with a little flour to help them keep their shape if you’re not cooking immediately, or alternatively pack them carefully into freezer bags and freeze for cooking in the future.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil and put the ravioli in. Cook for 3-5 minutes, or until al dente. The fresher the ravioli are, the quicker they will cook.
For a quick sauce, heat a little butter in a frying pan until the butter foams and add lots of black pepper. Pour over the ravioli and serve with shaved parmesan.
I really love the book as all the recipes are actually as simple as they sound. And, as I am still a cook without a kitchen, I am very happy that I can make the recipes with limited space and equipment!
Here is Jamie’s recipe as is. I used golden beetroot and regular purple beetroot and I also used thyme instead of tarragon as I love lemon thyme.
Ingredients
600g raw mixed-colour baby beets, ideally with leaves
4 clementines
½ a bunch of fresh tarragon (15g)
100g crumbly goat’s cheese
40g shelled unsalted walnut halves
Method
Reserving any nice smaller beet leaves, halve any larger beets and cook, covered, in a pan of boiling salted water for 15 to 20 minutes, or until tender. Meanwhile, squeeze the juice of 1 clementine into a large bowl with 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and a good splash of red wine vinegar. Peel the remaining 3 clementines, slice into fine rounds and arrange on your plates.
Drain the beets and briefly refresh in cold water until cool enough to quickly rub off the skins. Halve or slice a few, then toss them all in the dressing. Taste, season to perfection with sea salt and black pepper, then pick in the tarragon and toss with the reserved beet leaves. Divide between your plates, crumble over the goat’s cheese and walnuts, and drizzle lightly with extra virgin olive oil.
This is more a throw together than a recipe. The sort of thing you can whip up when you need a super quick lunch or supper dish!
Store-bought puff pastry tart base, some caramelized onion for the base, then topped with goats’ cheese, cherry tomatoes and a scattering of fresh herbs. I made mine in a rectangular flan tin, but a round one would do as well. You might have to adjust the quantities.
Ingredients
1 quantity store-bough puff pastry ( I used 2 sheets from a 3 sheet pack of Pampas Butter Puff Pastry)
1 red onion, chopped
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon brown sugar
Goats’ cheese – or similar crumbly soft cheese. You will crumble this into the tart, so quantities are flexible, about 100gm should be enough
15-20 cherry tomatoes, or more if you want to pack them in, on the vine
Fresh thyme leaves for scattering
Sea salt and ground black pepper
Method
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Butter a rectangular flan tin (or a round one), and fit with the puff pastry sheets which you have cut to shape.
Fry the red onion in the butter in a small frying pan over a low to medium heat, until the onion begins to soften. Add the brown sugar to caramelize the onion and cook for a further couple of minutes.
Lay the caramelized onion onto the pastry base. Crumble the goats’ cheese into the tart. Cut some of the cherry tomatoes in half and place on top of the goats’ cheese, place a few whole ones on, too for effect. Scatter a few fresh thyme leaves over the tomatoes with sea salt and black pepper.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until the puff pastry is nicely browned, the cheese melted and the tomatoes softened. Nice served with a green salad.
The Quirk and the Cool 