Just add baked beans - Roast Potato and Spring Onion Tart

 

 

And there was me thinking that roasties were just for, well, roasts. Actually, we have roast potatoes reasonably often as Lola and Finn adore them. They eat them like a donkey eats strawberries and on each occasion I never cook enough of them. I look at the pan of peeled spuds and think to myself that this time I have done it; they won't eat all these. But they do. I admire their stamina, frankly, 'cos after about three I am potatoed out.

 

To that end, I thought this recipe would be a sure fire winner with my children and to a certain extent it was. Finn says he doesn't like cheese (Is he mine? People who know me well know that me and cheese have a passionate affair that goes back to the womb...) and then I pointed out the stringy stuff he has on pizza which he said wasn't cheese but then agreed it was and grinned. Anyway, the offending cheese, once partly covered by an accompaniment of beans (yes, baked beans - I refuse to be ashamed by this notion) ceased to be a problem. Not that it ever should have been.

 

Now, these aren't real roasties. They aren't burnished, floury, fluffed up, duck/goose/dripping affairs, but they were nice and when combined with the cheese, the onion and the cream were really tasty. But then potatoes in whatever guise are always tasty with those particular ingredients. The more I think about it, I don't know why, when I initially read this recipe several months ago, I thought the filling was incongruous for these ingredients are really meant to go together.

 

A word (well, several words) on the pastry. Popina (from whence this recipe comes) often uses a pizza dough base for some of her tarts and that is a good idea, particularly I think for some of her Mediterranean inspired tarts and quiches. I had some frozen pizza dough which I had bought when in France which I decided should really be used, and the trick I find to avoid the soggy bottom with a pizza dough is to make the base really thin and to ensure that when you cook the tart in the oven it is placed on a really hot baking tray to give it a head start. Can you tell I have had a soggy bottom before? Though so. Next time I make this though, I will use a pastry because I think it's what the filling needs. Like it needs a tin of baked beans as an accompaniment. Oh yes.

 

Roast Potato and Spring Onion tart, adapted from 'Popina Book of Baking' by Isadora Popovic

 

Serves Lola, Finn, Mum and Dad, and one other.

 

For the base:

 

A ready made pizza base

 

For the filling:

 

500g baby new potatoes, halved

4 tbsp olive oil

bunch of spring onions, sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

70g cheddar, grated

170ml double cream

1 egg

salt and pepper to taste

 

Method:

 

Put the potatoes and oil in a roasting tin and season well. Toss the potatoes until evenly coated. Cover the tray with tin foil and roast in the preheated oven for 20 mins. 

 

Remove and leave to cool for 10 mins.

 

Reduce oven temp to 170c/gas mark 3. 

 

Add the potatoes to the rest of the filling ingredients and combine carefully, so the potatoes don't disintegrate too much. Taste for seasoning.

Sadly blurred but you get the idea...
 

Press the pizza dough into a prepared (loose bottomed) tart tin (mine was a ten inch one)

 

Spread the filling over the base of the tart, ensuring even coverage. 

 

 

Place into the oven on an already hot baking tray. Bake for 25 - 30 mins or until the filling looks golden. (I threw some foil over the tart when it looked cooked so that it could stay in longer and hopefully eradicate any chance of soggy bottom). 

 

Leave to cool for 5 - 10 minutes as the filling will be too hot to taste. Serve with, if you're normal, a green salad maybe, I don't know. If you're Northern, open a tin of beans.