Courgette tart and a bonus recipe…

We’ve gone a bit domestic. Owning a house means we are now doing VERY exciting things at the weekend, like decorating and making multiple trips to B and Q. This weekend we painted our kitchen. It’s almost exactly the same as before, but without the damp patch above the sink from a leak, the random screws in the wall from fixtures that left with the previous owner, and a massive circular mark because their kitchen clock was bigger than ours. Not very exciting, but it made me happy. It did mean we were without a kitchen for about 36 hours, which meant pie in the pub, a bacon sandwich and a take away pizza. Today I have been craving vegetables…

I still wanted to make a nice Sunday meal though, so I went to a (very little) bit of effort. There are lots of different versions of this sort of tart on the internet; this one is mine.

A note on pastry – life’s too short to make puff pastry, so I have chosen not to bother. 

Courgette tart with chilli and garlic roasted broccoli

Ingredients

For the tart:

1 packet of ready – rolled puff pastry

1 large onion, sliced

A clove of garlic, finely chopped

Two courgettes, sliced into discs about 5mm thick

About 20 grammes finely grated parmesan (basically that’s all I had left)

A tablespoon of crème fraiche

Two tablespoons double cream

For the broccoli:

A head of broccoli

A really good slug of olive oil

Half a red chilli, finely chopped

A clove of garlic, finely chopped

Juice of half a lemon

Plenty of salt and pepper

Stick the oven on to preheat at about 200 degrees.

Prepare the broccoli by cutting into florets, and tossing it in all the other ingredients. You want it to be reasonably well coated in the oil to avoid it burning. Put on a baking tray in one layer.

Over a low heat melt a knob of butter and a drop of vegetable oil. Add the onions and a good pinch of salt, give them a stir to coat them in the butter and oil, and cook, occasionally stirring. You want to give them about 15 – 20 minutes, so they slowly caramelise and go quite sweet. Add the garlic for the last ten minutes.

While that’s cooking, lay your pastry out on a buttered baking tray, and use a sharp knife to mark a border about two centimetres in around the outside. You don’t want to go right the way through, just score it. Inside that line, prick the pastry all over with a fork. Shove that in the preheated oven for about five-ten minutes to crisp up/start to rise. The middle will still puff up, but you can just squash it down with a spoon.

Take the onion/garlic mix off the heat, then add the cheese, cream and crème fraiche, taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Not pretty, but damn tasty...

Spread this mix in a thin layer over the pastry (within the border) and then put the courgettes on top. 

Put both the broccoli and the tart in the oven for about fifteen-twenty minutes until crisped up. I turned up the heat too much on mine because I was getting impatient, but it was still fine. You might want to give the broccoli a stir around half way through.

We had a tomato salad with it too – but if you feel that you need something a bit more substantial you could do some buttered new potatoes.

BONUS RECIPE

It’s not that we currently have a glut of courgettes, but seeing as I’m writing about them anyway, here’s a recipe for one of my favourite quick dinners.

Put enough spaghetti on for one hungry person.

Grate a courgette and finely chop a clove of garlic. Melt a good sized knob of butter in a frying pan over a low heat, then add the courgette, garlic a good pinch of salt and a pinch of chilli flakes. Fry slowly – the courgette pretty much disintegrates into a sauce. It takes as long as it takes for your pasta to cook.

Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and a generous tablespoon of half fat crème fraiche.

Drain the spaghetti, reserving a little bit of the water it boiled in, and add to the courgette mix. Stir everything through and cook for a minute or two in the pan so the spaghetti is well coated and has picked up all the flavour.

Eat!