Heinz Salad Cream with Onion & Chives cookery challenge 2 : Mediterranean Tarts

Well, you may have looked at our first Heinz Salad Cream with Onion & Chives cookery challenge for Picnic Rolls and thought we were cheating becauseit was so simple, but rest assured, today's recipe was more of a challenge - and it actually involved an oven !

The recipe that we used is below and this is what they're supposed to look like.

Mediterranean Tarts

Serves 4 • Prep Time: 15 minutes • Cook Time: 35-40 minutes

Ingredients

400g mediterranean vegetables (courgettes, red onions, peppers), cut into 3cm chunks

½ tbsp vegetable oil

2 Jus Rol filo sheets

1 egg white, beaten until slightly frothy

4 tbsp half fat crème fraîche

1 large egg

3 tbsp Heinz Salad Cream with Onion & Chives

20g reduced fat cheddar cheese, finely grated

How to make

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C, fan 180 C, gas 4.

2. Place the vegetables on a shallow baking tray and toss with the oil, season and roast for 20 minutes, remove and cool.

3. Reduce the heat of the oven to 180 C, fan 160 C, gas 4.

4. Brush half of a fi lo sheet with egg white, fold in half and cut into 4 equal squares.

5. Brush each with egg white and layer two squares together with corners off set and repeat with the other two squares. Place in a yorkshire pudding tin and repeat with the other sheet of filo pastry to make four tarts in total.

6. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then invert the cases so they are on top of the tin and cook for a further 2 minutes.

7. Meanwhile whisk together the crème fraÎche, egg and Heinz Salad Cream with Onion & Chives, and season. Add the roasted vegetables and mix.

8. Place the cases back into the tin and divide the mixture between them, sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven for 25 minutes until golden and set.

9. Serve warm with green salad.

Tip: You can use ready-to-roast vegetables that are oven ready for this recipe.

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The first job was chopping up some courgettes, red and yellow peppers and onions. I always love the bright colours of Mediterranean vegetables which are always more appealing than boring green veg !

I drizzled over a little olive oil and decided to jazz things up by mixing in some Schwartz Mediterranean Roasted Vegetables spice mix, which gives them a lovely smokey flavour. Twenty minutes in the oven and they came out lovely and soft.

While the vegetables were roasting, I got to grips with the filo pastry. Now, I had a slight technical issue - I was using round sheets so making the two squares superposed at an angle was impossible. I folded the circles in half then cut (with scissors, much easier than a knife) each semi-circle in four. Brushing each part with egg white, I superposed the four pieces with the points sticking outwards so that they made a kind of four-pointed star kind of shape.

The second technical issue was that I don't own Yorkshire pudding tins or even muffin tins, so I used bun tins which meant they were very shallow. They did come out lovely and crispy and golden though, although I wasn't sure how well the filling would stay put.

Time to mix the egg, cream and - all importantly - Onion & Chives salad cream in with the cooled roasted vegetables.

I carefully positioned a couple of spoonfuls of the vegetables into the filo cases and crossed my fingers ! I actually put the left over vegetables and eggy liquid into three little ramekins and put them next to the tarts as they cooked to make pastry-free veggie mini quiches, which was also very successful.

A quick sprinkle of cheese and into the oven, one baking tray at a time.

Everyone seemed to magically appear in the kitchen at this point, saying that it smelt nice and asking what it was. The Madhouse Mini-testers ate the corners of filo pastry that had broken off on the table and declared, "yum, did you make crisps ?"!

I decided to serve the tarts with some rice, because I wasn't at all convinced that Juliette and Pierre would eat the vegetable tarts.

But the photo says it all - I needn't have worried ! I've never seen Juliette eat courgettes with such enthusiasm (apart from when they're cleverly disguised !)

I was impressed to see that each sheet of filo pastry only contained 70 calories too so it's a much lighter option than flaky pastry or shortcrust pastry cases. I'll definitely be making these again, possibly experimenting with other flavours such as leek and bacon or ham and tomato but I'll definitely keep adding the Salad Cream with Onion & Chives because it really adds a lovely flavour and jazzes things up.

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Heinz Salad Cream with Onion & Chives cookery challenge 1 : Picnic Rolls 

New Heinz Salad Cream With Onion & Chives review & a competition 

 Heinz Salad Cream with Cucumber and Dill