Another tart

Yes, I am slightly obsessed with savoury tarts at the moment. Should I call them quiches? Does it really matter?

I've had an over-abundance of fresh, free-range eggs lately, as well as lots of other good stuff that goes really well with baked egg. (Well that's what it is, when all's said and done.) Today's effort involved asparagus, wilted baby spinach leaves and little tomatoes.

Once again, follow my basic recipe for the egg and pastry. Fry up some onion and bacon, toss in the asparagus for about two minutes and the leaves for about one minute. You want to just take the edge off and slightly wilt them, not kill them. Season to taste and spoon it into the tart case, trying to spread it around as evenly as possible. Pour the egg over, dot with little tomatoes and bake. Could it be simpler?

A stylish tart

I'm really enjoying savoury tarts at the moment. Don't ask me why. I certainly didn't grow up in a quiche making family. My father baulked at the idea of eggs that didn't come out looking like eggs, so my mother never made quiche. I've never gotten into making them before, except for the mini-party kind. Just now and then. Recently, it's been a lot more now than then. Nobody's complaining.

One of the appeals for me is that they're super-easy to make and very hard to mess up. They freeze, slice and travel well, and keep for several days in the fridge without a drama. Also, you can stick whatever you want in them which is handy. On more than one occasion, I've scoured the fridge for vegetables, any member of the onion family I could lay my hands on and anything resembling ham and/or cheese.

As if this wasn't enough, a savoury tart can look fabulous, like you've spent hours cooking when really you threw it together in ten minutes flat! Just choose a nice tin and put some effort into arranging some tomato, asparagus, salmon, herbs, or whatever you've got, on the top. Serve with some nice salad and interesting chutney to round out the meal.

This week's effort involved the same basic recipe as the broad bean and bacon tart, but instead of broad beans I used spinach in the egg mix and cherry tomatoes to garnish. The result was tasty, healthy and looked beautiful.

[Don't worry - I have a sweet recipe for you next!]

Broad bean & bacon tart

Growing up, broad beans were something that I never really liked and ate only under protest. I had relatives who grew them prolifically and they were always in abundance at the dinner table. I got sick of being told how good they are for me and I suspect more beans were surreptitiously slipped into pockets and onto the floor than made it into my mouth. I'm not sure exactly what it was. Perhaps it was the smell of them cooking, or the thick grey skin that you get on older beans. I just wasn't impressed.

These days, the tables have turned and I get excited when I find fresh broad beans in their shells for sale anywhere. I love carefully choosing them from the box, all the while imagining what I'm going to do with them when I get them home. I love announcing to Tim that I found fresh broad beans and I love peeling them and placing the fresh green beans to one side, and the pods in a bucket for the chooks or the compost. I really love that particular shade of green they turn when just blanched and are still tender and full of flavour.

Infatuation aside, what I don't love is eating them as a dish all by themselves. For me, broad beans have to be the high note in another dish; a key point, a little treasure that distinguishes an ordinary dish from something special, however simple it may be. Recently I've had them in risotto and pasta, and this week I worked them into a savoury tart. And it worked very, very well.

Ingredients

180g fresh (podded) broad beans

4 rashers bacon, thinly sliced

4 free range eggs

2 sheets of puff pastry

1/2 a large brown onion, thinly sliced

1/4 cup milk

1 tbsp light sour cream

1 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

olive oil

salt & pepper

In a frying pan, splash a little olive oil and fry the bacon and onion together. You can brown, but don't crisp the bacon. You really just want the flavours infusing and the onion softening. This should only take a few minutes and when done, set aside to cool a little.

Grease a tart tim (mine is 23cm) and line it with the pastry to form a shell. I used puff pastry this time, but only because I'd run out of short crust. It worked pretty well, but you can't bake it blind because of the puff factor.

Pierce holes in the pastry with a fork and spread the bacon and onion mix evenly.

Heat a small pan of water, and when boiling rapidly, throw the beans in for three minutes. You really don't need any more than that. When done, drain and plunge in ice cold water to retain the colour. Drain and then scatter the beans over the bacon and onion.

In a bowl, beat the eggs, milk, sour cream and parsley together until well mixed. You can add some salt and pepper if you want to. Carefully pour this mix over the bacon, onion and beans.

Cook at 180º oven for half an hour, or until golden brown. Serve hot or cold, with or without salad. This also keeps really well for a couple of days in the fridge.

Man colds and comfort food

I've been back at work for two days and not even struggling. The same can't be said for Tim, who has a man-cold and is suffering. Sadly, he does not suffer in silence. Calling him 'Rudolph' didn't help. We now have the paramedics on stand by and my mother is scheduled to make chicken soup in the morning after she gets home from night shift. Sigh...

Comfort food is the word in these situations, preferably something you've got close at hand. Cottage pie on this occasion. It's warm without being too hot so on a warm, but not scorching, day like today, it still works. It's comforting without being heavy or stodgy. It's good for you... relatively good for you... And it's delicious. I actually made this on the weekend and the brilliance of it is that it is not only comforting and able to tempt the palate of someone on his death bed (aka the couch), it also freezes really, really well. So I was set when I got home to my poor, sick, germie, man-cold victim.

This recipe makes enough for several meals for two hungry people. Or it could probably feed an average family with leftovers. Unless your family is made up of rugby players and then it's an entree. 

Ingredients:

tbsp or two of olive oil

1/2 red onion, finely chopped

1 large clove garlic, finally chopped

1 large carrot, finely chopped or grated

1 kg beef mince

1/2 bunch flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

140g tub tomato paste

1/2 cup dry red wine

2 tsp ground cumin (optional)

1 tsp dried oregano

salt & pepper

1 tsp finely ground chilli powder (optional)

1 kg potatoes, peeled & boiled

60 g butter

1/2 cup milk

1 cups frozen peas

1/2 cup grated cheese (or more if you like)

In a pan with a little olive oil, soften the onions, garlic & carrots. There's no need to brown them. Then throw in the mince and parsley. I don't use the leanest of lean mince as I find it gets too dry. Brown off the meat and make sure you break it apart with a spoon or spatula as you go. You don't want big chunks and you want to spread the flavour.

Add the parsley, tomato paste, wine, oregano & cumin if you like it. Some people don't, but it gives it a really nice taste and it's not hot, so leave it in if you can. Same with the chilli - I like it a little hot. I know it's not traditional, but whatever. A hint of chilli, and that's all it should be, gives the flavour extra depth. Salt & pepper to taste. Don't overdo the salt though.

Make up the mashed potato. I've given my ingredients, but do it however you like. Salt to taste but again, not too much. Not a health kick, you just don't need salt taking over a flavoursome dish. 

To assemble, put the mince into a baking dish and flatten out a bit. Then a layer of frozen peas - they'll soften up in the oven. Flatten them down. Then gently top with the mash. If you like, scatter some cheese on top. More or less as you like. 

Cook for around half an hour or until you see the mince bubbling a bit and the cheese is brown. Alternatively, cook for a bit, then stick the cheese on top and brown under a grill. All the ingredients are cooked and at a minimum you could probably just grill, but I like to give it a chance to get all the flavours working and each layer sticking together really well. 

Stacks of success

What do you do when you hit the middle of the week, there's nothing much left in the fridge, it's the day before pay day and you're hungry because your boyfriend is a fitness nut who insists you power walk/climb/lift/leap and run over hill and over dale? 

Apart from a lot of cursing, you look into the deep, dark depths of your fridge and see if anything besides the frozen emergency meals are salvageable. 

My fossicking around turned up the following items: two pink potatoes (eyes not growing that much), one red capsicum, one medium sweet potato, one large zucchini and two portobello mushrooms that were on the verge of turning into fungus but still ok if you peeled them. Which I did. 

Tim glanced at this collection, carefully arranged according to length, and politely expressed the view that he wasn't convinced anything could be made of it and wouldn't it be much easier if we had cereal for dinner? Big mistake for a man who had just made me march up, down and around a sizable hill for fun. 

Heck, after that feat, during which I engaged muscles in the general buttock region that I did not realise existed, (and I was excellent at biology) I felt that creating dinner for two people in under half an hour from this collection was not only achievable, but that I may even triumph!

Whatever... I made roast veggie stacks. 

And they were amazing. Another idiot-proof idea. The principle is simple: 

Take whatever veg you can find in your fridge and that will withstand a good grilling.  Slice lengthways - about half a centimeter is a good guide - mash up some garlic with some salt and olive oil in a pestle and mortar (or the mini-whizz machine); paint the mixture on both sides of everything; grill until they're going brown but not burnt. Except for the pepper which you want to grill the bejesus out of so it goes black and you can pull the skin off easily. 

For the mushrooms, once both sides have been browned, put some diced fetta and sprinkle some parsley on the inside and stick it back under the grill until it's looking brown.

Stack the whole lot up on a plate with the mushroom on top, dabbing with hommus at intervals. Serve with some olive oil, black pepper and baby capers. (Yes, I really did have those things just languishing in my fridge.)

I know you can buy hommus, but it's SOOOOO easy to make it I don't know why you wouldn't. Into a food processor, stick a can of chickpeas, (rinsed and sans can), the juice of one lemon, some salt, pepper and a tablespoon or so of tahini and enough olive oil so that when you whizz it to bits, it forms a nice, smooth(ish) hommus-like consistency. You might find you want more lemon juice or olive oil or even tahini. So for goodness sake, taste it as you go along!!! Personally, I like it on the lemony side. It's pretty hard to get it wrong but whatever you do, you don't want it to be dry. All dry hommus is is mashed chick peas and nobody ever paid for that.

All this in under a half hour and bloody delicious, and probably quite good for you too.

Now to get serious for a second, Tim and I are really enjoying the whole process of cooking, eating, presenting and photographing the food. It can be so fun and yet so challenging, especially for a couple of people who are completely self-taught. We're certainly learning a lot as we go which is all part of the fun. I tell you all this because we're pretty proud of some of our efforts, particularly this one - the photo of the half-eaten stack was taken in one shot, nano-seconds before the light blew!!! We hope you enjoy. We certainly did!