Tarts & quiche

July 27, 2012

Just because they’re yum. Pastry is a favourite any time of the year, but here in Buenos Aires tarts and quiche are easier for me to cook in winter when having the oven on doesn’t mean I burn up, feel my blood convert into lava, pour with sweat and become desperate and volatile. A scarlet She Who Must Be Obeyed, and nobody wants that.

I have shown a slice of pea and artichoke tart from a Rose Bakery (Paris) recipe before, but we usually make their butternut squash tart which is faster. Butternut squash is also very popular here, always found at any verdulería/greengrocer. JP licks his lips when he sees a cumbersome calabaza on the kitchen counter ready to be tackled. I had never seen enthusiasm for butternut squash before, it used to seem such an overweight and gormless vegetable to me but I have since apologised to it for that rash judgement. Its uplifting colour inside gets my vote. In the above photo and for February’s pea tart I used shop-bought pastry, which is why they both look neat and uniform in shape. Tatty home-made pastry to follow.

Just look how tatty that is! I’m a beginner. Hopefully I’ll tidy up with practice. This was an improvised spinach and roasted courgette tart, following Rose Bakery’s basic recipe for tart filling. As you can see, it’s been sliced in the hurry for us to get it into our mouths. This was the first of three tart bases I made using their recipe and then froze. It’s brilliant to be able to whip a tart case out of the freezer and bake from frozen when you want.

Shortcrust Pastry – enough to make three 28 cm/11 inch tart cases

Roll it out into tins and wrap in cling film before freezing. When you want to use one, unwrap the tin and place it directly in the preheated oven.

* 500g plain flour

* Half a tsp of salt

* 250g cold unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

* 1 egg yolk

* Approx 250ml cold water

1. If using a food processor, process the flour, salt and butter for about 5-8 seconds, so that some pieces of butter are left, then put the mixture into a bowl.

OR

1. Put the flour and salt in a bowl, cut the butter into pieces and work it into the flour with your fingertips.

2. Now make a well in the middle of the flour and butter mixture and add the egg yolk and half the water (only a third on a very hot day – only use all the water in the coldest months).

3. Stir quickly with a fork to start bringing the dry and wet ingredients together, adding more water if needed.

4. When the fork can’t do any more, use your hands just to bring the dough together. There is no kneading or pressing – all you have to do is gather up the dry parts as quickly as possible.

5. Make sure you don’t have a sticky mess or a dry crumbly mound. If your hands get too warm, put them under cold water for a few minutes.

6. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes – or up to 8 hours.

Tart Crust/Case

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 (**only if you’re going to cook a tart now**). Grease three 28cm/11 inch tart tins with butter.

2. Take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into 3 pieces.

3. Dust your work surface and rolling pin with lots of flour and roll out one of the pieces, lifting and turning it all the time so that it does not stick to the surface.

4. When it reaches a thickness of about 4mm – less if possible – use it to line a tart tin. Make sure you don’t stretch the dough to make it fit.

5. Just ease it in with a little extra to spare – this will stop the pastry shrinking. Repeat the process with the remaining pieces of dough.

6. Chill again for about 30 mins (**or freeze**).

7. Bake the tart cases blind with any weight system you have (**when you take it out of the freezer**), e.g. foil filled with beans, for about 25-30 minutes. The pastry must be dry and just turning golden.

8. Cool for a while.

Cream Mixture

* 500 ml single cream

* 4 eggs

* 1 egg yolk

* Pinch each of salt & black pepper

* Pinch of grated nutmeg

1. Beat all the ingredients together in a bowl until they are well mixed.

You simply then pour the mixture over the vegetable filling you have put onto the tart crust. Sometimes we scatter grated cheese over the crust before putting in the butternut squash.

I have used the full cream mixture once only, for their mushroom and chive tart. I almost keeled over it was so rich, although JP gobbled it up no problem, being amazingly immune to the effects of gobbling excessive amounts of dairy produce in one sitting. I now only ever use a quarter of the cream mixture, which they suggest for the butternut squash tart, or a half of the mixture very occasionally.

Fillings

There is a huge variety of fillings for vegetable tarts, all of which involve adding different ingredients to the basic cream mixture. Suggestions:

* 8 rashers of bacon, grated Cheddar cheese and 2 tomatoes, sliced

* 4-5 slices of smoked salmon and fresh dill

* 6-8 roasted courgettes & 2 red peppers

* 1 medium to large butternut squash, roasted and puréed, with only a quarter of the cream mixture, topped with pine nuts

Above is a quiche Lorraine I made from Rachel Khoo’s recipe, a smaller one. I slightly overcooked the pastry but it went down the hatch nicely anyway. With so much butter, cream and bacon in one dish, I had to sit very still and quietly for a while after eating a slice or two of this.

I used one of the three frozen tart cases outlined above to make David Lebovitz’s tarte au citron. Look at his exquisite pastry! I like to think of mine as ‘quirky’.

His lemony filling is sublime. I doubled the filling ingredients in the recipe to fit our slightly larger tart case, so we had a small bowl of left-over sunshine in the fridge. Sunshine that got repeatedly attacked with a spoon until it vanished, sunshine that nestles in the homely comfort of an already ample backside from too much pastry-eating.

Last but not least is a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (what an absurd name!) cherry tart, circa December 2011. This was made on a very hot day, a highly stressful experience which I regretted in the midst of it but we greatly appreciated the finished product later that evening – cooler, calmer and watching one of the best films of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird. I studied the book at school, it might be my favourite yet.

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