Manon’s Cuisine
An impressive and healthy tart perfect for a picnic on a beautiful sunny day in one of East London’s great parks or as a centre piece to a light dinner with friends. A base of creamy ricotta and fresh peas that beautifully compliments the mint, lemon and thin slices of courgette. Happy flan-day!
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 2 to 3 large courgettes
- 1 lemon
- 250g of frozen green peas
- 2 heaped tbs of ricotta
- Handful of chopped mint
- Salt + Pepper
- 1 tbsp of olive oil
- Ready rolled shortcrust pastry sheet
- 1 small knob of butter
Method
- Heat up the oven on fan at 200°C.
- In a quiche dish, rub the knob of butter all over to stop from the shortcut pastry sticking. Place the pre-rolled sheet in the dish and gently press down on the sides and mould to the dish. Make sure to prick holes at the flat part of the pastry to prevent the pastry from expanding too much in the cooking.
- Start by crunching up a piece of baking paper and stretch back out and place on top of the pastry, tip on your ceramic beads for the blind baking. If you don’t have ceramic beads then using short grain rice can also work.
- Blind bake the pastry for 15-20mins and then another 5 minutes without the baking sheet with the beads/rice as this allow better colouring.
- Take out the quiche dish from the oven and let cool before adding in the ricotta mixture and courgettes.
- For the base sauce, cook the peas in a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes, drain and then let cool down before adding in the mint, lemon, salt, pepper, olive oil and ricotta.
- Using a peeler or a knife cut strips the whole length way of the courgette. Once the pastry crust has cooled down spoon in the ricotta, pea and mint mixture and spread an evenly across the base. Then starting from the outside and making your way to the centre, place the courgette strips on top of the mixture.
- Finally brush on olive oil on the edges of the courgette to prevent too much colouring and pop into the arm oven for 30-40 minutes until the courgette is cooked through.
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