Tarts: sweet and savoury

Mizz Zoe gifted Miss Eagle with the v-e-r-y thing.

The delicious diary for 2007!

Useful! Handy! And with recipes!

delicious boasts that it

celebrates food and the people who produce it, from celebrity chefs to passionate foodies from around Australia and the rest of the world. So whether you want a simple but scrumptious midweek meal or an impressive dinner-party menu, we've got the recipes you need.

Miss Eagle, needless to say, has embarked on trying them out.

Above is

COCONUT-CREAM TARTS WITH TROPICAL FRUITS

Ingredients

240 grams gingernut biscuits

200 grams unsalted butter

1/2 cup (125 ml) coconut milk

250 grams white chocolate, chopped

Tropical fruits, thinly sliced, to serve

Shaved dried cocount, to serve

Method: Grease eight 10cm loose-bottomed tart pans. Whiz the biscuits to fine crumbs in a food processor. Melt 100 grams of the butter, then add to the crumbs and process to combine. Press into the base and sides of the tart pans.

For the filling, place the remaining 100 grams of butter and coconut milk in a pan, bring to the boil, then remove from the heat. Add the chocolate and stir until smooth. Pour into the tart shells and chill for 2 hours or until set. Serve the tarts topped with tropical fruit and shaved coconut.

Miss Eagle's Notes:

• Miss Eagle's tart tins measure 11.5cm and the mixture filled 6 tins.
• Miss Eagle used a 250 gram pack of Arnott's Ginger Nuts. Now Miss E had not bought GNs for quite a while - and how things change when a multinational buys a national icon. GNs are no longer the same and nowhere near as good. Please remember, GNs are HARD. My whiz would not crunch the bikkies up completely into the fine crumbs required. Miss E had to take her trusty large wooden rolling pin to them to crush them. If there is a next time, Miss E might try using Arnott's Nice Biscuits - but that ginger flavour is a bit special.
• Miss Eagle used lite coconut milk. However, this could be seen to be neither here nor there in the overall scheme of things considering the fat content of this dessert. :-)
• Miss Eagle used white chocolate buttons. Clearly, chocoholics would want to try this dish again with dark chocolate. :-)
• Miss Eagle used banana but didn't bother with the shaved dried coconut because neither she nor the local Woolworths had any. :-)
• These tarts, while luscious and luxurious, are for the sweetest of sweet teeth! Even Herself found them too sweet. On the other hand, few will come back for seconds!

Then there are the

Feta, Zucchini & Mint Tarts

(scrumptious - will be repeating)

Ingredients

1 sheet ready rolled puff pastry, slightly thawed & halved

1 eggwhite

2 small zucchinis, cut lengthways into thin ribbons using a vegetable peeler

2 spring onions, thinly sliced

1/2 cup (70 grams) frozen peas, thawed on paper towel

40 grams Feta (recipe specifies Persian Feta but Miss E was not fussed either way), crumbled

1/4 cup mint leaves, roughly chopped

Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle

Method: Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Line a tray with baking paper. Place the puff pastry halves on the prepared tray and prick all over using a fork. (Not the end of the world if you forget the pricking.) Place in the freezer until ready to use. Place a baking sheet on a pizza stone in the oven to heat. (If you haven't got this just put it in the oven in the usual way.)

Whisk the eggwhite in a bowl until frothy, then add the zucchini, onion and peas. Season with black pepper and toss. (The eggwhite will prevent the vegetables from over-browning.)

Remove the pastry from the freezer and divide the zucchini mixture between the pastry rectangles, leave a 1cm border. Top with pieces of feta. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and transfer the baking paper with the tarts to the hot baking sheet. Bake the tarts for 15-18 minutes until the pastry base is crisp and the sides are golden brown.

Scatter with mint and drizzle with a little olive oil. Serve with a baby cos, avocado and tomato salad, if desired.

Miss Eagle's Notes:

• This recipe does go on. Simplify, dear Reader. Do not sweat the baking stone, etc. Miss Eagle sprayed an enamel oven tray with oil (she had forgotten to buy the baking paper).
• Miss Eagle did one parcel. Left a 1cm border around the single sheet of puff pastry and then tucked the pastry up neatly around the veges. A sort of open pie. This pie will slice.
• Miss E used two egg whites. One was not enough to beat up with the trusty rotary beater. Two were nicely generous for tossing the veges. The two egg yolks were beaten and used to glaze the pastry with a pastry brush and glue the tucked up bits together to make everything nice and neat.
• Woolworths and Miss E did not have spring onions. She used eschallots (in the USA - scallions) instead. Quite satisfactory!