Beetroot, pumpkin and caramelised onion tarte tartin

tarte tartin

Time for another meat free Monday recipe. I have never made a tarte tartin before, and instead of trying the normal sweet variety, I decided I wanted to make a beetroot and pumpkin one. I looked at a few different recipes, but couldn’t find what I wanted. So I made this one up as I went. I did cheat and used bought puff pastry. I’m not quite up to home made puff pastry, but I’m almost there. I made a great rough puff in class the other week (which I will post about next).

I was very happy with the end result flavour wise. The balsamic vinegar is a great match for the earthiness of the beetroot, and there is a nice savoury sweetness from the caramelised onions and roast butternut pumpkin. And of course the crisp puff pastry and ‘caramel’ (in this case reduced balsamic and brown sugar). Unfortunately I didn’t quite cook my pastry enough when I made this for the first time, however the next day when it was cooked for an extra ten minutes it was perfect, so I have adjusted this recipe to give the pastry that extra ten minutes.

CLick here for the recipe

Caramelised onion, tomato and prosciutto tart

This week seems to be the week of recipes inspired by other blogs. After trying a new recipe for the guilt free banana bread, I felt like going back to an old favourite for dinner Sunday night. I’ve also been asked by a friend to put this one up. Given it is a favourite of mine, I didn’t mind fulfilling the request.

I came across this recipe a year ago at Delicieux, an Australian vegetarian blog. Although not vegetarian myself, I do like cooking vegetarian dishes (I know that hasn’t been reflected in my blog yet…but I’ll get there) and I often find myself ordering a vegetarian dish at restaurants. I find more and more these days that the vegetarian options just seem so much more creative and interesting when I read them on the menu. For this dish I’ve added prosciutto and goats cheese resulting in a non-vegetarian version, but it’s just as nice without the prosciutto.

I  find I always have extra of the marinated tomatoes mix left whenever I make this. Rather than use less tomatoes, I like to add a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil to the remaining tomatoes and their juices, and use this as the dressing (with the tomatoes) for the salad greens. I usually get enough for six tarts from 4 large onions (although I used one less onion this time and still made the 6 tarts, so there wasn’t as much onion as usual – hence the gaps in the picture). You could also make these into smaller squares for a nice entrée or canapé.

with basil, prosciutto & goats cheese

click here for the recipe