I was watching The Great British Bake Off the other evening and the
overriding theme was a terror of
soggy bottoms. They went on about it so much I began to wonder if the judges
and contestants had each had a childhood filled with compulsory picnics on damp
grass without the benefit of a ground sheet.
It turns out that the dread lay in the possibility of puff
pastry not reaching its full airy potential. Oh the drama of it all!
And yet, as I prepared this roasted vegetable tatin, I too began to worry about
stunting the growth of my puff pastry. Ripe juicy tomatoes, plump peppers – all
that juice instead of spelling flavour, now just signalled certain disaster. There
was nothing for it but to roast the bejaysus
(technical term) out of the vegetables before they came anywhere near the
pastry. The benefit of roasting the vegetables in advance is that it
concentrates the flavour no end as well as driving out those potentially catastrophic
juices.
War On Waste: Because this is cooked in two
stages, you could pop the vegetables in to the oven with another dish and
finish the tart the next day, or you could cook something else in the oven
while the vegetables are cooling (This is what I did, making this banana bread
- with walnuts instead of coconut)– WOW is about energy efficiency too.
... to preheat the oven to 180°C
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 medium tomatoes (about the side of a tennis ball), halved across the waist
4 small bell peppers (again, think tennis ball), halved top to bottom, seeds removed
2 onions (yep, tennis ball), peeled, leaving the root intact, then sliced into 4 wedges through the root
1 fat clove of garlic, grated
½ teaspoon dried basil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 x 250g ready-rolled puff
pastry sheet
Fresh basil, parsley or mint
leaves to garnish
1
Put
the olive oil into a medium roasting tin and add the prepared vegetables. Dot
with grated garlic and sprinkle with the dried basil, salt and pepper. Roast in
the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until the edges of the vegetables
start to brown. Remove and leave to cool.
2
Line
an 22cm (9”) round cake tin with parchment paper (this stops the vegetables
sticking)
3
Pack
the cooled roasted vegetables snugly into the cake tin in one layer, bearing in
mind that you’ll be inverting it to serve, so best side down...
4
Cut
the pastry sheet to fit neatly over the top of the tin. Place on top of the
vegetable layer and transfer to the preheated oven.
5
Bake
for about 30 minutes (again in a preheated oven at 180°C) or until the pastry is golden and risen. Leave to cool for
about 10 minutes before carefully inverting onto a serving plate. Scatter with
fresh basil, parsley or mint leaves.
Note: Although this
tart didn’t hang about long enough to get a soggy bottom, I suspect that the
juices would leak into the pastry by the following day so feed this to a hungry
appreciative crowd who will demolish it before it has time to disgrace you.
Pin It