This week the words ‘asparagus tart‘ kept coming into my head. The voices in my head are feeders and mega fans of pastry, apparently. So, it was done.
Adapted from this recipe-
Feeds 4
- 1 sheet of ready made puff pastry
- 1 whole egg, beaten
- 800g of fresh asparagus
- Olive oil
- Juice from ½ a lemon (optional)
- One lot of Coppa, chopped, from an antipasto pack such as this
- 90g Ricotta cheese
- 100g Gruyere cheese
- 100g Parmesan cheese
- 100g any tasty hard cheese you have around
- Salt and pepper to taste
Depending on how long it takes your oven to heat, preheat yours to 400 f/ 200 c/ Gas Mark 6
If you’ve defrosted your ready roll pastry, you can either get it ready first or last. I’m sure there’s reasoning for keeping it as chilled as possible but I prepped mine first and left it out while I did everything else as I had no room in the fridge. It made no difference whatsoever.
Tear parchment paper to fit your baking tray, lightly grease with butter, lay over your ready rolled puff pastry. Homemade pastry evangelists, if you come to mine and have a problem with it, you can ‘ave a bit of dust.
I heart ready-roll pastry!
With the beaten egg, brush around the edges and fold over to make a little lip. Brush over the lip when in place. Pinch the corners.
Grate your hard cheese if you’re so inclined. Besides knuckles knocking on counters and potentially grating skin, I haaaaate cleaning cheese graters so avoid it if I can. Same for garlic presses, totes a pain in the hoop.
I figure if the cheese is going to melt, it’s fine to just chop it into small cubes. I inhaled the first lot of Gruyere that I chopped up. Fooking delicious.
You can steam your asparagus (oh, you fancy, huh?), as in the original recipe, but I dry fried them in a griddle pan as I’d be using it later and I don’t need an extra thing to wash, thankyouverymuch. Just toss them around a little so they don’t colour.
Once they’ve softened a bit, take them out and chop the ends off so the bits with the tips fit widthways in the pastry. You can blanch them…but who are you trying to impress, just put them aside. They’ll be grand, sure.
The bottom stalks are going to be fried and blended with the cheese and egg for the filling before laying the asparagus tip bits on top.
Chop up the bottom bits of the stalks, pour a couple of turns of olive oil in the pan and throw the chopped stalk bottoms in and fry for about 3 minutes. Then plonk them into a food processor or blender.
Chop your cured meat and fry off in the pan for 2 minutes to get them a little crispy. Set aside.
Return your asparagus tips to the pan and sauté for 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
You can add half a lemon, but I don’t think it adds anything. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Now would be a good time to prep your pastry if you haven’t already.
Add the ricotta and the rest of the beaten egg to the chopped stalk bottoms in your blender/ food processer. Blend until you have a coarse purée. It might look a bit liquidy at this stage but it’ll be fine once you add about 3/4 of your cheese and meat. Mix with a spoon until it’s fully incorporated. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the purée mix out evenly into the pastry.
Lay the asparagus tips widthways on top of the mix. Sprinkle over the remainder of your cheese and meat. Add more Parmesan on top if you need it.
Bake tart for 25 minutes, or until the filling has set. Serve warm.
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