Goats Cheese & Carmelised Onion Tart

I'm a bit of a goat's cheese fiend, love it. I take after my mother. It will be our go to starter if it's on the menu. I know goat's cheese and caramelised onion tarts are still a thing in Ireland but I've never seen them in Oz. Let me know if any of you have come across them. It's been a while since I had one and the notion took me to give this a try. This is not a quick and dirty recipe but worth the wait.

I haven't made pastry in ages and to be honest, I don't have a pastry recipe in my arsenal so I borrowed a recipe from Nancy Birthwhistle. She is awesome, if you haven't seen her videos on Insta you should check them out. Very wholesome. The pastry recipe is in ounces. Normally, I would convert to grams but trusted Nancy as she said it's a bit more accurate and I reckon it's a tried and tested recipe. I didn't follow her cooking method, I used some memory recall from my home economics class, AKA winged it. I'm not even sure you should do rich shortcrust pastry for this type of tart, but it was very tasty. Crumbly and buttery.

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

Pastry recipe

10 oz plain flour

Pinch of salt

5 oz chilled butter

1 egg yolk

4 tbsp water

Flour for dusting

Tart filling recipe

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 red onion, finely sliced

1 tbsp balsamic glaze

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

400ml of thickened cream

100g of goats cheese for the filling and another 100g for decorating (I used two different types, a lovely crumbly pepperberry goat's cheese and a more firm one sliced into rounds for decorating).

6 sprigs for thyme, 1 with the leaves removed and the others for decorating.

Salt and pepper to taste

2 eggs

Method

1. Start by making the pastry. It's super easy, you just chuck all the ingredients in a food processor and process until it all comes together from the sides.

2. Sprinkle some flour on a clean workbench and then empty out the pastry. Bring it all together but don't over work it. Put in some clean wrap and pop it in the fridge so that you can get on with the rest of the tart. You can make this the day before which I did. It is a bit tricky to roll out though as the butter gets pretty hard.

3. Heat a saucepan and add the butter and the olive oil and heat until melted.

4. Add the sugar and onions and a pinch of salt. Saute the onions for 5 minutes and then add the balsamic. Cook until the onions are caramelised.

5. Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius fan forced.

6. Grease a 23cm/9inch tart tin. Grab the pastry from the fridge and remove the cling film. Sprinkle some more flour on the bench if needed. Roll out the pastry until it's about 1cm in thickness. You should have another pastry to cover the tart tin with excess which you will cut off later.

7. Gently transfer it over to your tart tin and tease into the rivets. Cut a bit of the excess pastry off the edges but not too much. The pastry will shrink during the blind baking process.

8. Cover the pastry with a piece of grease proof paper. If you have baking beans add them on. Otherwise, you can use dry rice, just to create a bit of weight and keep the paper on. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

9. Remove from the oven and take off the baking paper and beans and place back in the oven to bake for another 10 minutes. It should have started to turn golden brown around the edges and the base should not be doughy.

10. Take out of the oven and allow to cool. Keep the oven on though.

11. In a bowl whisk the egs, add the cream, crumbly goat's cheese, thyme leaves and plenty of salt and pepper.

12. Once the tart base has cooled, cover with the creamy, eggy mixture.

13. Decorate with the caramelised onion, the slices of goat's cheese and sprigs of thyme.

14. Place back in the oven and cook for another 10-15 minutes. Give it a little shake and if it wiggles, it needs more time. It should be set.

Serve with a beetroot and citrus salad. Enjoy.