Beetroot and Caramelised Onion Tart

This was my second attempt at beetroot and caramelised onion tart and all was going well until I tipped the jug with the beaten eggs and milk in all over the hob, the worktop, the floor, the front of the cupboards....you get the idea!

I had used up all my eggs so then had to go out and get some more so that I could finish making the tart! It was worth it though. I made sure I caramelised the onions properly this time and added a tiny bit of chilli to the egg mix, although once I'd thrown it on the floor I forgot to add any to the new batch but I will try next time. Great tart this, especially the pastry, who'd have thought carrot in pastry would work? Not me!

Beetroot and Caramelised Onion Tart

We have about 20 pots outside with a beetroot in each and now they are just starting to be ready for eating. I did a search on the BBC Good Food site for beetroot recipes and came across this one.

For the pastry you need:
175g wholemeal flour
100g porridge oats
100g butter
100g grated carrots

You put all of these in a food processor apart from the carrot which you are supposed to add once you've processed the rest of the ingredients to 'breadcrumbs'. I didn't do this I just put them all in together bit it turned out fine.

The pastry was really thick and quite difficult to roll out and I had to patch it into the dish.

Home grown beetroot

For the filling you need:

3 large onions , sliced

3 medium beetroot , peeled and grated

3 medium eggs

250ml milk (either cow's, goat's or oat milk)

While the onions were caramelising I grated the beetroot into the pastry case and beat the eggs and mixed them with (oat) milk, a bit of salt and pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg. Once the caramelised onions were added and the egg.milk mix I grated a little mature cheddar on top.

I popped the tart along with two mini tarts into the oven for 40 mins, adjusting the temperature as the recipe says and they all came out looking fantastic.

We had the tart with a few slightly strange accompaniments, stir fried cabbage and beansprouts and roasted turnip. It was just one of those weeks where I had strange random ingredients left that needed eating. The roasted turnip was lovely, like a cross between a potato and a parsnip and went quite well with the tart. The cabbage on the other hand not so great with this dish!

The tart itself was delicious. The pastry was the star of the show, I would definitely use it for other tarts and quiche type dishes. The filling wasn't full of flavour, the onions seemed to get a bit lost and the sweet beetroot flavour was quite subtle. I would definitely make this again though one I've thought of a way of jazzing up the filling a little bit more. I would also consider blind baking the case as it was a bit soggy in the middle.

Low calorie chocolate tart

I have been calorie counting lately and I regularly search the BBC Good Food website for low calorie meals and it is usually great. As everyone counts calories differently and uses different brands of ingredients I then put the list into the myfitnesspal.com recipe tool and check before making whatever it is.

Being a sweet tooth I searched for low calorie puddings on the site and it came up with this chocolate tart. Awesome I thought! A whole decent sized chocolate tart full of chocolatey goodness with only 184 calories per portion.

So I popped the ingredients list into the recipe tool and it was coming out with something a lot higher. It was more like 250 calories a portion even when I split it into eight rather than four portions. I know that doesn't seem like a big difference but when you're on 1200 (net of exercise) calories a day believe me it makes all the difference.  I was quite disappointed. I have no idea how they came up with that calorie count unless the portions are a quarter of one of the four tarts. I had already drooled over this recipe and became obsessed with making it closer to the calorie count I was originally expecting. I couldn't mess with the main chocolatey ingredients of course but I thought I'd play with the pastry. Using eight sheets of filo pastry instead of the shortcrust I managed to get it down to 190 calories for a portion 1/8th of a whole big tart. That was more acceptable so on Tuesday evening, having returned home briefly I set about putting the filo pastry in layers in a tin and gathering all the ingredients for the middle. I knew I was going to be called out again but did not anticipate it being for quite so long. I returned home just after 10pm to find that Mr VST had made the filling and finished it off. A piece of chocolate tart was music to my weary soul when I returned home.

It is good and chocolatey, as you would expect when it has two bars of dark chocolate in it! You don't really need eight sheets of filo pastry and in fact you could probably make it without the pastry at all and it would make lovely chocolatey brownie-type things.

It's amazing how resourceful you become when you are calorie counting. I enjoy succeeding in the challenge of eating like a (vegetarian) king on such a low calorie budget. Maybe I'm just sad but it is rewarding to see the scales tipping back towards their pre-Christmas marker.

Chocolate Filo Tart - maybe a bit OTT with the filo?!