The Weekender: Seasonal vegetable and parmesan tart


Updated on 22 June 2012 | 0 Comments

Introducing the third recipe in our `The Weekender' series - seasonal vegetable and parmesan tart. A perfect 'rain or shine' dish that tastes so much better than any shop-bought version.

A brief intro to ‘The Weekender’

It’s simple: every week we pick a recipe from our database and not only cook it, but cost it too. Team lovefood will make the recipe at the weekend, and post photos of our progress on Facebook for you all to laugh at. But sometimes we get lonely, and we’d love it if you, our cherished readers, would cook-a-long with us too. Tell us if you enjoyed it, share your snaps, and rustle up a fantastic meal!

The recipe

This week’s ‘Weekender’ comes from Sevtap Yuce’s book, Turkish flavours. A quick look at the ingredients, however, and you could be mistaken for thinking it’s come from anywhere in Europe, from Wales right across to Turkey.

That’s because it features vegetables and cheese, baked in an egg custard, supported by a pasty case. What we have here then is a flan, or tart, or quiche, or torta, all of which appear in pretty much every culture that possesses eggs, dairy and wheat products.

To everything there is a season

Sevtap’s original recipe calls for leeks, which at this time of year are not in season. However, bizarrely our local Waitrose had organic ones from Spain on the shelves. 

But the beauty of a recipe such as this - indeed, the reason we’ve picked it for this week’s Weekender - is that you can swap in and out, whatever’s about.

So right now there’s still lots of English asparagus on the shelves (ours is from Worcestershire), as well as broad beans, and peas (we found fresh ‘shell on’ peas from Warwickshire, but a bag of shelled fresh peas from Kenya).

The shopping

One strong argument in favour of shopping seasonally is that things in season are plentiful, and therefore cheaper than those things that aren’t. Peas of course don’t have to be fresh; frozen are just dandy, and I bet you’ve already got those in your freezer. 

95p for butter
£1.70 for leeks; (£2 for asparagus; 99p for frozen peas)
£1.24 for eggs
80p for the double cream
£1.25 for the parsley
£3 for the parmesan
32p for the flour
Total (for a leek version) = £9.26

Pastry

A word here about pastry. Please try and make your own. It’s so easy, as well as cheap – so even if the first attempt doesn’t quite work out, you’ve not lost a fortune. A look at the ingredients of a packet of shortcrust pastry reveals vegetable oil, salt and lemon juice. It may be a few pennies cheaper (£1.10 whereas flour is 42p and butter £1.19), but homemade with butter is much much nicer, and flakier too. What’s more you’ve probably got the ingredients at hand.

Fast and fabulous flan

Indeed a homemade flan, tart or quiche beats a shop-bought one in terms of taste every time. I tend to find the egg claggy and spongy in a pre-made quiche. The still warm, barely set, shimmering buttery wobble of a homemade flan is a sight to behold. What more encouragement do you need than that!

More tempting tarts

Diana Henry's Beetroot, goat's cheese and hazelnut tart

Bacon tart recipe

Tomato tart recipe

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