Madhouse recipe : Sicilian Cherry Tomato & Pesto Tart

Tonight, I needed something quick and simple for dinner that would also use up some of the lovely juicy cherry tomatoes I brought back from the farmers' market - this was perfect !

Sicilian Cherry Tomato & Pesto Tart

ingredients :

1 ready-to-use puff pastry sheet

1 jar pesto 

300g bacon lardons

1 onion, peeled and chopped

lots of ripe, juicy cherry tomatoes

grated cheese

I usually use Sacla pesto but I had a jar of Olives Et Al Basil & Pine Nut Pesto from the Christmas hamper which was perfect. It has whole pine nuts in it which adds some lovely crunch.

Line a shallow dish with baking parchment and roll out the puff pastry. Spread pesto all over it. (I used the whole jar.)

Fry the bacon lardons and onions for 10 minutes. Don't overcook them as they will continue to cook in the oven. Drain off any excess grease and sprinkle over the pesto.

Halve the cherry tomatoes and lay them out all over the top of the tart.

Sprinkle with grated cheese and pop it in the oven at 180° for 1/2 hour.

The sweetness of the tomatoes perfectly offsets the saltiness of the bacon and the pesto adds a deeper background flavour. It all mingles together and works really well. The oil from the pesto and the juice from the tomatoes does have a tendency to make the middle of the pastry go a bit soggy so you might like to leave a margin around the edge with no topping so that you have a bit of crunchy, crispy pastry to make up for it. 

Linking up with Four Seasons Food with Delicieux & Eat Your Veg whose theme this month is  ‘Celebrate Vegetables!’

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Our farmers' market haul !

I haven't picked up a veg box for a while - I was never signed up to an official scheme, I just used to pick up a selection of goodies from one of the stallholders once a week - but the market got moved and it all ground to a halt. This week, spurned on by the blue skies and bright sunshine, I decided to stock up on some interesting fruit and veg. 

My first interesting find was these beans which I think are Paimpol coco beans - not sure what to do with those but I'll find something.

And another new find (for me) was orange tomatoes - they taste much the same as red tomatoes but look pretty if you mix them up with red ones.

I also got some apples, pears, oranges, kiwis, yellow plums, endives (chicory), grapes, red pepper, mushrooms, avocadoes, cucumbers and loads of cherry tomatoes. Looks like I might have to adapt this week's menu plan to fit in all these extra goodies !

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What to do with ... rhubarb ?

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#Vegboxchallenge week 7

This week's fruit & veg box : feeling fruity !

Last week, I didn't bother going to the farmers' market and I think that was one of my downfalls on the weekly weigh-in front. There was nothing interesting in the fruit bowl so I went looking in the sweet basket a few times instead ! This week, I decided to go and stock up and came back with this lovely lot : lettuce, loads of cherry tomatoes, mangoes, pomegranate, persimmons, baby potatoes, pears, red apples, green apples, oranges, endives (chicory) ...

Now that's what I call a tempting fruit bowl - who needs chocolate ?!

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This week's veg box : Full of autumnal colours

Madhouse recipe : Romanesco Broccoli & Salmon Bake

What to do with ... rhubarb ?

This week's veg box : Full of autumnal colours

This week, I picked up a lovely colourful selection from the farmers' market : a pumpkin (perfect for this month's Nigella cookalong for a stuffed whole pumpkin), a marrow (which will be stuffed too, with minced meat and not sure what else - let me know if you have a tried and tested recipe), red peppers, onions, two cauliflowers and two yellow melons.

That's blown this week's menu plan out of the water though - I'll have to replace some of what was planned with stuffed marrow and cauliflower cheese !

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Applewood Spreadable challenge : Pork & Pumpkin Risotto

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This week's veg box : yellow carrots ! 20/10

Ask any 4-year-old what colour carrots are and they'll tell you orange, without a second's hesitation. Well, in today's veg box, I did get some orange carrots but I also got some yellow ones. Apparently, you use them in exactly the same way and they have a sweeter taste. Has anyone else tried them before? I feel like I should do something special with them !

I also got a cauliflower, some courgettes, an aubergine, a red pepper and some sweet peppers. I'm thinking cauliflower cheese, huevos rancheros and pakora (from the Pakistan Kitchen Nomad box).

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

What to do with ... rhubarb ?

Recipe : Black Cherry Crisp

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This week's veg box 29/9/13

I only went to pick up some potatoes at the market today, as I already had quite a lot in the fridge and fruit bowl, but I ended up coming back with this lovely selection ! Red and white potatoes, parsnips (which is quite exciting as you can't usually get them in France), lettuce, spring onions, leeks.

The spring onions were quite exciting in themselves because I got the usual white/green ones but also these bright red/purple ones. The stallholder gave me a big handful of these herbs too - I think they're flat-leaved parsley and curly parsley, unless anyone wants to tell me anything different !

Now, I use dried parsley all the time, but haven't really experimented with the fresh stuff. It looks far too lovely to waste though so who has an idea of something special to do with it ?

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What to do with ... rhubarb ?

Recipe : Black Cherry Crisp

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What to do with ... rhubarb ?

Every time I get a huge glut of a certain fruit or when I get something unusual in my veg box, I turn to google for inspiration for what to do with it. I haven't been let down yet, so let's see what it comes up with for rhubarb.

Jamie Oliver's Mother's Day Rhubarb & Ginger Muffins (see? I wasn't being crazy with my rhubarb and apple cupcake idea !)

Rhubarb & Lemon Baked Cheesecake from Delicious Magazine

Coconut Creams with Poached Rhubarb from BBC Good Food

Strawberry Rhubarb cream

Rhubarb Streusel Bread

What about you? Have you got any tried and tested rhubarb recipes that you want to share? I think I'll have to start with a rhubarb and apple crumble, due to popular demand, and see what's left over to play about with !

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Fruit & veg box 22/9/13

Another week, another veg box ! You can tell we're at the point where the seasons are changing - we've all got a cold for one thing, we can't decide which clothes to wear in the morning for another (T-shirts and cardies or winter coats and jumpers?) and the farmers' market really reflected that this week. We've got the last of the summer fruit and the beginning of the autumn crop.

So we have : melons, apples, lettuce, broccoli, Romanesco broccoli, avocadoes (perfect for guacamole to go with our tacos later in the week), carrots ...

some lovely ripe figs, a big bag of green and purple plums, peaches, nectarines and flat peaches (as they've been called in France for donkeys' years, or doughnut peaches, as they have apparently been named in English recently).

Now that's what I call an overflowing fruit-bowl !

I also have some rhubarb from one of Madhouse Daddy's work colleagues and some round courgettes that he picked up at the supermarket. I'm thinking apple and rhubarb crumble, but I might see if I can find something more original to make with the rhubarb. I suggested apple and rhubarb cupcakes but everyone looked at me like I'd gone nuts !!

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Madhouse recipe : Romanesco Broccoli & Salmon Bake

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This week's fruit & veg box 8/9

Well it's more of a fruit box than a veg box this week, which works well as I still have some veggies in the fridge left over from last week. I got a couple of interesting bits this week, most notably some prickly pears. They grow all over the place like weeds in Morocco so I'm looking forward to eating them to remind us of our recent holiday there! I also got some oranges, apples, pears, bananas, plums, two lettuces and a tray of peaches.

Summer is definitely giving way to autumn though because the sweetcorn farmer was there. He hands out raw bite-sized pieces for the kids to gnaw on and the Madhouse Mini-testers eat them like sweets so I bought six. I learnt that you can microwave them in their leaves, but I'm not sure that would work as well as boiling them - has anyone tried it?

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

Moroccan recipe : Watermelon sorbet drink

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This week's fruit & veg box 1/9

You may have seen on this week's weigh-in post, my mission for the week was to fill the fridge up with healthy stuff and restock the fruit bowl. One of the lovely things about our house is that we have a huge market just opposite our house every Sunday so I made a double trip, as we were totally out of everything after our extended holiday.

Our fruit bowl went from empty to overflowing, much to Pierre's delight. (He's after the grapes !) We have a pineapple, apples, bananas, nectarines, peaches, melons, pears, grapes ... who needs chocolate and biccies when I get the munchies? (That's the idea anyway !)

On to the fridge ! Lettuce, leeks, red and green pepper, courgettes, aubergine, a whole box of cherry tomatoes ...

carrots, baby grenaille potatoes, a cauliflower, a white cabbage, broccoli, red shallots, onions, sweet peppers, a cucumber ...

I can't fit it all in the fridge now though ! I have lots of new recipes to try out this week which should use this lovely selection up. I'll give you a recap next week to show you how we used it all.

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Recipe : Black Cherry Crisp

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This week's veg box 28/7

Well, actually, this week it's a non-veg box ! My mission to use up everything from the fridge and fruit bowl before we head off on holiday at the end of the week has begun, so we did go to the market but we didn't buy anything much, except for a couple of onions and some garlic !

It won't be a totally veg-free week though - the vegetable compartment in the fridge currently contains some carrots, round courgettes, red/green pepper, spring onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and cucumber. We also have a couple more salads growing on the patio that will need eating - they worked really well so we'll have to grow those again next year - and I have some potatoes, onions and garlic to finish off.

Shouldn't be a problem - I already have some ideas on this week's menu plan for using up loads of veggie-leftovers, such as Spanish tortillas and homemade pizza.

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Recipe : Black Cherry Crisp

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Recipe : Black Cherry Crisp

As I told you yesterday, I came back from the farmers' market with a big box of black cherries that were right on their time so this morning, I spent 45 minutes stoning them and ended up with purple fingers for the rest of the day ! I'd preselected several recipes that had caught my eye and ended up making Black Cherry Crisp, using this recipe from Paula Deen on the Food Network website.

I'd never thought of tossing the chopped fruit in a mixture of sugar and flour before but this helped mop up the excess juice and made a thick syrup which stopped the topping from going soggy. I'll definitely try this technique with other juicy fruit in the future.

The topping is basically like crumble - a mixture of flour, brown sugar, oats and butter, although I used margarine to make it slightly healthier. I also replaced the almonds with pecans as it was what I had in the cupboard.

It's a really simple but utterly delicious recipe that was perfect for using up the cherries but that could be used with pretty much any fruit.

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Have you ever thought about cooking with tea?

What to do with a glut of cherries ?

When I have a big amount of a particular fruit or vegetable to use up quickly, I always go googling for inspiration. This week I got a big box of black cherries right on their time from the farmers' market. They're lovely and sweet but we'll never be able to eat them all before they go mouldy, so I'll be cooking with them tomorrow. Here are some of the recipes that I found online that caught my eye. Do let me know if you have any other brainwaves though.

Sweet Black Cherry Crisp

Old-Fashioned Black Cherry Cobbler

Cherry Pie

Black Forest Cranachan

Cherry Clafoutis

Chocolate Cherries

Chocolate, Almond & Cherry Bread Pudding

Cherry-Raspberry Buckle

Ooh decisions decisions - they all look totally delicious so I don't know which ones to make !

I bet I could come up with a salad involving cherries too if I tried !

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What to do with a crate load of melons?

Recipe : Mango, Passion Fruit & Raspberry Roulade

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This week's veg box 21/7

Later than usual today as we've had the Madhouse grandparents and Auntie Em visiting for the day, but I did manage to grab a fruit & veg box this morning at the farmers' market. This week's box contains some lovely fresh salad ingredients - a curly lettuce, a regular lettuce, some spring onions, the longest cucumber I've ever seen, some cherry tomatoes on the vine, some baby grenaille potatoes. There are also some round courgettes that I'll stuff with leftover something or other later on in the week. On the fruit front, I got two punnets of small but sweet grapes and a huge box full of black cherries. They'll need using up quickly so I'll have to have a think about what to do with those in a moment. If you have any ideas, let me know !

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Madhouse recipe : Romanesco Broccoli & Salmon Bake

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Madhouse recipe : Romanesco Broccoli & Salmon Bake

One of the ingredients in last week's veg box was this Romanesco Broccoli. Apart from using it in the same way as broccoli, I didn't really have any ideas of what to do with it, so I went googling for ideas and came up with this.

 Romanesco Broccoli & Salmon Bake

ingredients (for a family of 5) : 

1 head of Romanesco broccoli

400g of fresh salmon

1 pack of mozzarella

50g grated Cheddar

20cl crème fraîche

1 tbsp green pesto

salt, pepper and garlic granules

Method :

Chop the Romanesco Broccoli into florets and boil in salted water for 10 minutes. Drain it and put it into an ovenproof dish. Chop the salmon into chunks and scatter over the broccoli then mix it all up a bit. Chop the mozzarella into chunks and push it into the mixture so that it is evenly distributed throughout the whole dish. Season with salt, pepper and garlic granules.

Mix the pesto into the cream and pour it over the salmon and broccoli. Sprinkle grated cheese over the top and bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the cheese is melted and golden brown and the salmon is cooked through.

To be honest, I didn't think it tasted much different to normal broccoli but visually, it is quite appealing. This dish would work just as well with regular broccoli though.

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This week's veg box 14/7

Not quite so green this week but still lots of salad ingredients (which is a good thing, if you've seen this week's weekly weigh-in post !) : two types of lettuce, some red peppers, red onions, cherry tomatoes (on the vine and baby plum tomatoes) and new potatoes.

Not so locally produced but I also picked up some lovely pineapples, nectarines, oranges and bananas.

I love the bright colours of the summer fruit and veg :)

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This week's veg box 7/7

What to do with a crateload of strawberries?

#Vegboxchallenge week 7