An attempt at tart
When we get our organic box delivered from Damhead there is invariably something in amongst the spuds and carrots that I have absolutely no idea what to do with. Usually this gets bunged to the back of the fridge to be found months later covered in mold and leaking into the cheese.....ugh!
This time we got some swiss chard which I have never attempted to cook before. Luckily Damhead provided a recipe in amongst the veg and mud and I decided to give it a try.
I looked up swiss chard on the bbc recipe finder in case there was something less daunting than a 'tart' but low and behold I found the same recipe - seems they have nicked it from Rosa Baden-Powell of Masterchef fame!
Anyway to cut a long story short the tart turned out really well despite having very odd pastry. Short crust this is not. It's just plain flour and olive oil and is very runny when raw and turns out quite soft when cooked, but this does taste nice despite my initial misgivings.
I didn't have any pine nuts so substituted them with cashew nuts which were a nice crunchy contrast to the chard and cheese mixture. This uses a lot of parmesan so I added some cheddar to bulk it out a bit.
Instead of pumpkin I used sweet potato as that was what was available. It is similarly sweet and an equally vibrant colour so worked well.
It was great to get back in the kitchen and cook something slightly more adventurous than frozen pizza, which is pretty much what we have been resorting to during these last few weeks of parentdom......
I suspect these culinary experiments won't be as regular an occurrence as they were P.J. (pre-Josh) but hopefully I'll be able to get a chance to dabble in the kitchen often enough to fuel my foodie fancies!!!
I can recommend the tart - I think it would work equally well with spinach or even shock horror savoy cabbage!