Vegetable Pesto Tart
Delicious cheesy pastry filled with creamy pesto and roasted vegetables!
Serves 8
Ingredients:
For the pastry:
- 110g self raising flour
- 55g grated cheddar cheese
- 70g very cold butter
- 1 tsp paprika
- Pinch of salt
- 3 tbsp beaten egg
For the filling:
- 1 courgettte
- 1 sweet potato
- 1 aubergine
- 100g mascarpone
- 100g pesto
- 20g fresh bread crumbs
- 80g parmesan (finely grated)
- pinch salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil
Method:
- In a food processor, blitz the butter, flour, cheese, paprika, and salt until it forms a bread crumb consistency.Add the 3 tbsp beaten egg and blitz JUST enough for the dough to come together. You should be able to squeeze it together in your hands to form a ball.
- Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for around 30 minutes.
- Pre-heat your oven to 190C fan
- When the pastry has chilled, roll it out to about 4mm thick in a circle, big enough to line your tin with. I used a 7 inch case, but a 8 inch would still work with this amount of pastry!
- Grease the tin, and then roll the pastry on top, gently pressing down into all of the groves.
- Trim the excess pastry and prick the bottom with a fork.
- To help prevent the pastry from shrinking, chill the tart case again before baking - around 20 minutes is fine.
- Blind bake the pastry with baking beans or equivalent for 15 minutes.
- Remove the baking beans and bake for a further 10-12 minutes until the bottom is nicely golden.
- Allow the pastry to cool and meanwhile, prepare the filling.
- For the vegetables, wash (and peel the sweet potato) and use a mandolin so you get thin circular slices.
- Place the slices in a bowl with a little bit of water and heat on high inthe microwave for a minute or so so that they are soft enought to bend. Some may take less time than others, the sweet potato will take longer.
- Leave to cool and dry off.
- For the pesto filling, mix the mascarpone, pesto, breadcrumbs, salt, parmesan and eggs and mix together until fully combined.
- Spread the mixture evenly inside the pastry case - you want to fill it almost to the top to give the vegetables a good base to sink into.
- Start with a slice of each vegetable and place them overlapping each other before rolling up to create a tight swirl that will be the middle of the tart. Place this securely into the pesto mixture.
- Keep adding the slices around in concentric circles until you reach the edge.
- Brush the top of the vegetables lightly with the olive oil, and bake in the oven at 175 degrees C for around half an hour, until the vegetables are just starting the brown and the pesto mixture has set.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin and leaving to cool fully.
- Enjoy!
You can find the video on how to make this on my Instagram @alice.fevronia, if you give this a go, please tag me I would love to see!
