Pissaladiere

Pissaladiere is an open onion tart either made with a bread or pastry base.  I've used a puff pastry base to make it simple and super fast to cook.

This makes two small tarts.  I was going to keep one for lunch but liked it too much so ate them both for tea.  Oops.


Individual Pissaladieres (makes 2)

Ingredients

2 small onions
1 tsp olive oil
Large pinch sugar
A couple of sprigs of thyme
2 cloves of garlic
125g, 4.5 oz ready made puff pastry
Anchovies (tinned) and olives to finish
Milk to brush

Method

Fry the onions in the oil.  Heat them up until sizzling then turn down immediately and cover the frying pan cooking gently for at least 10 minutes; preferably 15 if you have the time.  Stir occasionally so they don't catch or burn.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 200oC, 400F, gas mark 6.

Once the onions are soft and turning golden, chop and add the garlic, thyme and sugar.  Gently fry for a further two minutes.

Either allow to cool or if cooking immediately (and working fast), roll out the pastry into two rectangles.  Score just over 1 cm from the edge (half an inch) all the way round.  Top with the onions then the anchovies; traditionally these would be in a diamond shape but for small tarts a cross is fine.

Put stoned (preferably kalamata or similarly good quality black olives) into the gaps in the cross and brush the edges with milk.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the pastry is browned.

Linked up with recipe of the week.

This goes brilliantly with a simply dressed spinach salad or a great lunch to make your colleagues jealous (if you can resist the leftovers) would be leftover pissaladiere.

I've linked this up to the cooking with herbs challenge for July.