Asparagus and Spring Onion Tart

With summer just around the corner, the British asparagus season is now in full swing. The season, a highlight of any foodie’s calendar, begins at the end of April, when the first tasty spears appear, and runs for just eight short, delicious weeks. The period is marked by restaurant menus and TV cookery features packed with asparagus related dishes. There are also numerous quirky asparagus events held up and down the country, the highlight of which has to be the British Asparagus Festival, which culminates with the festival day at the end of May which promises “to be a fun asparaday for all the family”……Yay!

Despite all these green-spear laden celebrations, asparagus is perhaps better know for its special “urinal properties” – you know who you are! As Marcel Proust, the great French novelist, claimed, asparagus “…transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume”. Anyway, not one to be put off by an occasional stinky pee, I decided there was no better time to have a crack at Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food recipe for asparagus and spring onion tart.

The asparagus, fresh from the market, are shown below with the other ingredients of  spring onions, mature cheddar cheese, flour, eggs, butter and cream.

To start, I made up some short-crust pastry as per Gordon’s recipe. I had made this before (see my post for Cornish Pasties) and things seemed to go pretty smoothly. Once the pastry had chilled in the fridge for a while I rolled it out onto a large tart tin ready for blind baking.

I lined the pastry case with greaseproof paper and added a load of dried belotti beans (you can use any dried beans or those special made-for-the–job ceramic ones if you prefer).

I baked this in the oven for a quarter of an hour before removing the beans and paper and baking “naked” for a few minutes more. By this time the edges had begun to colour. You can see in the picture below that I didn’t really leave enough of a pastry overhang  when I first lined the tart tin. Still, it didn’t look like it would cause too much of a problem once the tart was filled. Fingers crossed!

For the filling, I first sliced the spring onions and fried them gently in a decent sized knob of butter until softened but not browned. At the same time I blanched the asparagus in boiling water for a couple of minutes before taking them out of the pan and refreshing them in cold water. You want the spears to still have plenty of bite at this stage, so be sure not to overcook them.

Into the bottom of the pastry case I spread the spring onions in a thin layer and added a bit of grated cheese before arranging the asparagus spears on top so that they kind of resembled the spokes of a wheel.

Next, I whisked together a couple of eggs with two egg yolks and some cream. Once combined, I stirred in a good handful of the grated cheese and seasoned the creamy mixture well.  I poured this onto the tart until it reached just below the rim of the pastry case, sprinkled some more cheese on top, and then set it into a hot oven to bake for about 35 minutes.

When the tart is ready it should be a golden colour on top and the filling should be well set. Be sure to leave it to cool for a little while before you try to remove it from the tart tin to serve.

You can happily eat this tart warm from the oven  or you can leave it for a day chilling in the fridge. Of course, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in so I ate mine still hot. You can see it below served with a simple salad and a well earned pint of  Weston’s Special Reserve Vintage Cider (which, if you’ve never tried it, is a cracking, strong cider with plenty of flavour).

So how did it taste? Well, still warm from the oven the tart filling was very rich (butter, cream, egg, cheese – duh) and perhaps the taste of the asparagus was a little hidden away. Don’t get me wrong, it was still good, but the tart really came alive the next day when I ate a slice chilled from the fridge. Wow. Amazing, the flavours had had time to set-in and the consistency, firmed from cooling, really improved (it was a bit wet and floppy when still hot). But, most importantly, the asparagus was now the star of the show and the taste of the sweet, almost nutty spears really stood out. I heartily recommend that this is the way to go, and I think a chilled slice of tart would make the perfect centrepiece to an early summer picnic. Delicious!

As for the next day and that well known asparagus effect, well, lets just say Proust had some funny ideas about perfume…