Asparagus, goat’s cheese & bacon tart

Some bakes happen as the result of lengthy cookbook trawling and a great deal of planning. Others are down to the fact there are things in the fridge to use up and you want to turn them into something quick and tasty for dinner. This recipe sits in the latter category.

We’d been to the supermarket earlier in the week where we made the fatal mistake of getting two trolleys and shopping separately. As always happens when we do this, the result was an overstocked fridge full of random ingredients. This tart helped to use some of them up.

The recipe cuts to approximately six slices, we found it just as enjoyable to eat cold the following day as it was warm when I baked it.  An additional bonus is that baked asparagus has so much more flavour than if you cook it on the top of the oven

Ingredients

• 320g pack of puff pastry
• 150g soft goat’s cheese
• 100g creme fraiche
• 10 to 12 sticks of asparagus
• 2 rashers of bacon
• Black pepper

Method

• Preheat your oven to gas mark 5 and lightly flour a large baking tin.
• Unroll the puff pastry onto the tin. Using a sharp knife score a border all the way around the pastry, about 2cm in from the edge. Try to avoid cutting through the pastry as you do this.
• Prick the centre of the pastry all over with a fork. Then cover the centre of the pastry with a piece of baking parchment so that only the 2cm border is showing. Weigh the parchment down with baking beans and bake for 15 minutes. Then remove the beans and parchment and bake for another 5 minutes.
• Mix the goats cheese and creme fraiche until smooth and then add some black pepper.
• Snap the woody end pieces from your asparagus.
• Pan-fry the bacon rashers and then chop them into small pieces.
• Spread the cheese mixture over the pastry base, making sure you leave the borders clear
• Arrange the asparagus on the cheese mixture and then scatter the chopped bacon across the top.
• Bake for 15 minutes.