About Me

Lover of carbs, cake and all things in between. An East London girl on a year's mission to chronicle all her gastronomic highs and lows, and hopefully gain many many pounds in the process.

Tuesday 23 August 2011

Mushroom & Spinach Tart

This was supposed to be a quiche.  I had promised B that I would make one on my day off with the lovely box of mushrooms we had in the fridge.  But, well, it didn't happen.  I looked up a couple of recipes and really, quiches seem like a lot of work.  Lots of ingredients.  Lots of eggs and cream.  I felt tired just thinking about it.  Then I stumbled across this little treasure in Delia's Winter Collection (hmm, unseasonal again) and I was sold.  It's pretty similar to a quiche, without any of the hard work.

First, I slaved over a batch of homemade pastry reached for the Jus-Rol.  I accepted long ago that I don't have the patience or the light hands required to make proper pastry, and I think the ready-made stuff is delicious anyway.   I used an ordinary flan tin for the tart - Delia makes hers in little individual pie tins, which are very cute but unfortunately not readily available in the supermarkets of East London, so I used what I could find.  Once rolled out and cut to fit the tin, the pastry takes about ten minutes to blind-bake in a hot oven. 

Whilst the pastry was cooking,  I assembled the filling.  One onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and some sliced mushrooms got stir-fried in olive oil until soft.  The spinach doesn't need to pre-cooked, just chopped and added when the rest of the ingredients have been cooked. 

When the pastry case is looking golden and crisp, whip it out of the oven and spread the filling evenly out inside.  Then crack an egg into a cup, and carefully slide it on top.  Repeat with another couple of eggs, trying to space them out evenly.  You can see from the picture below I did not do a good job of this.   Also that I didn't use enough eggs.

spinach eggs tart Delia Smith

Scatter some grated Parmesan over the pie and bake at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes, until the yolks of the eggs are set.

Delia Smith baked eggs tartlet

I will admit that Delia's tarts are much neater and prettier, but my version tasted pretty good nonetheless.

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