These glistening individual tart tatins were meant to be for a grown up dinner party that fell through due to illness, so I rolled them out for the whole family anyway to see how they’d work out.
The recipe is from the fabulous Lucy’s Food by Lucy Cufflin – one of the most useable cookery books I own and still one of my favourite ever. It’s the book I always turn to first if i’m having people over for dinner as it’s bursting full of smart recipes that don’t give you a headache in the kitchen, many of which can be made in advance.
Family dish?
Arlo tucks in
The beauty of making individual tartlets is that you can customise the toppings for fussy eaters. I knew the boys would like at least some of the roasted vegetable selection but wasn’t sure what they would make of feta cheese so I let them have a nibble on some first. Sam screwed up his face, but Arlo gave the thumbs up.
So for the grown ups: roasted peppers, courgette, red onion, pine nuts and feta cheese with rosemary drizzled with balsamic glaze.
And for the boys: roasted peppers, cheddar cheese (feta for Arlo) and pine nuts drizzled with… ketchup!
Tricky to make?
Constructing home made tins for the vegetable tart tatin
Well not too complicated – just a bit of folding and scrunching of foil and greaseproof paper. The vegetables are roasted first in a dish in the oven, then you simply make individual nests of said foil lined with greaseproof, scatter with sugar, plop in your roasted veg, cheese and pine nuts and then a rectangle of puff pastry. Effectively you’re cooking them upside down.
You then bake until golden and carefully flip them over and out of their jackets to serve. If you were making them in advance you would turn them out onto a lined baking sheet and re-heat in the oven.
Anyway it made a nice change from pizza and the boys enjoyed helping me make them and choosing their toppings. Definitely one to be repeated…
Little nifty cheap tip…the balsamic glaze I used to drizzle on the grown up tarts is a really fab product from Aldi. They kindly sent me some samples from their excellent Italian range which i’ve been hugely impressed with. It only costs £1.49!!!!
We’re rather fond of tarts in any shape or form but this kind of thing goes down especially well. I’m loving the idea for cooking them like this, the jackets seem relatively easy to make. Not something I’d have thought of!
It makes a change from my normal tarts too… not sure what i’d do without puff pastry these days!