A while back I decided that I had avoided making pastry for far too long. I have a nice easy to use silicon tart case and I was determined to overcome my fear of pastry making and put it to use. Pastry is one of those things that lots of people assume is going to be very tricky and time consuming, so they don't bother doing it. I was one of those people! However, after trawling the interweb for a while one weekend, I realised that it probably isn't as challenging as I first thought.
I quite fancied making a mainly vegetable based tart and came across this blog post: http://food52.com/recipes/10062_potato_tart_with_gruyere_bacon_and_rosemary#
The recipe uses a butter pastry and I would definitely use it again, it was beautiful. The key is to keep everything very cold. I used my shiny new food processor that my brother and his wife bought me for Christmas and this made it super easy. I weighed out the butter I needed about half an hour before I planned to make the pastry. I chopped it up into little cubes, put it in a dish, and put it back into the fridge to re-chill it. I also put a glass of iced water in the fridge so the water I was using would be really cold too. When I came to make the pastry, I added the flour, sugar and salt into the food processor and gave it a quick whizz. Then i added the chilled cubes of butter and pulsed the processor blades until the mixture formed crumbs. I then added the chilled water and blitzed til the pastry mix started to come together in a ball. Once it's in a ball, wrap it in cling film and chill for about an hour before rolling it out. Don't work the pastry too much, just roll it then use it and you will get a lovely buttery, short pastry.
Now, the filling. Honestly, what is not to love about potato, cheese and bacon encased in butter pastry??? Heaven!? But I thought potato and pastry might be a bit carb heavy together for my personal taste, so although I used the pastry recipe, I tweaked the filling a little. I opted for sliced sweet potato (counts towards your 5 a day, unlike starchy white potatoes), sliced leeks fried in a little butter with some chopped chives, fried off pancetta lardons, and a mixture of mature Scottish cheddar and Gruyere cheeses.
I lined the tart case with the rolled out pastry and layered all the filling ingredients inside, with a bit of black pepper. It was a bit hit and miss knowing how long to cook it for. The recipe called for 45 mins at gas mark 5. I ended up with it in for just over an hour. I got a bit impatient waiting for the sweet potatoes to become tender so I ended up drizzling a little olive oil over the top towards the end, hoping it might increase the temperature in the filling a little. However, this resulted in the tart having a bit of a soggy bottom. I plan to make it again but will try either roasting the sweet potato slices for a while before layering them in the tart, or possibly par-cooking the sweet potatoes as well as blind baking the tart case first.
Soggy bottom or not, the end result was lovely and the sides of the tart were beautifully crisp and buttery:
Yes, as usual our bellies needed to be filled so badly that I forgot to take a photo of the entire tart before we devoured it!! But at least this way you can see the layers, and my soggy bottom ;)
So, go on, give pastry a go - and let me know how you get on!!
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