EPISODE 95

This tart is beautiful, very easy to make, yet elegant enough to serve with a glass of red wine and a nice salad at a ladies or gentleman’s lunch, or cut into squares and pass around as an appetizer at a party. You can also freeze it, unbaked, and then pop it into the oven straight from the freezer, just adding an extra 10 minutes or so to the cooking time. You could also omit the decorative portobello mushrooms, and choose to spread then filling, roll up the dough, and then slice and bake. You’ll end up with golden mushroom bites (these do spread a little as they bake so be warned) that are very tasty and very popular nibblies. Fab, hot, cold, or at room temperature.

Ingredients – Mushrooms

• 6 portobello mushrooms
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Pepper

Instructions – Mushrooms

Preheat the oven to 400F. Slice the mushrooms into 1 cm thick slices, and toss with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper/silicon baking mat and bake for 15 minutes. They won’t be completely cooked through, but that’s totally okay. You’re just looking for them to shrink as the heat of the oven soaks up some of their water (which will therefore not leach into the tart).

Ingredients – Mushroom Filling

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 8 oz mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Pepper
• 2 tablespoons red wine (optional)
• 1 handful parsley (stems included) – as much or as little as you want
• 6 oz soft tofu
• 2ish tablespoons non-dairy milk/water
• 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional)

Instructions – Mushroom Filling

Heat a large pan over medium-high heat, and add the olive oil and onion. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the mushrooms, salt and pepper and cook for 10 minutes or until browned and soft. Add the wine and cook until it’s been absorbed.

Now place the mixture into the food processor, add the parsley, and blend until you have small bits. Scrape down the sides, add in the tofu, non dairy milk, and nutritional yeast and blend until quite smooth. If you haven’t added wine to the mushrooms, you may need to add a little more liquid. Don’t forget that as this bakes, it will dehydrate slightly, so while you don’t want it to be liquidy, it should definitely spread easily on your puff pastry.

Ingredients – Assembly

• 1 sheet vegan puff pastry

Instructions – Assembly

Preheat oven to 375F. Take a silicon baking mat/parchment paper (that will fit your baking pan), flour it lightly and place the puff pastry on top. Flour that too, then roll it out so that it overlaps it’s surface by about 1 cm on each side. Spoon in the filling and roll out until it almost reaches the border. Roll over the sides to form a nice crust. Top artistically with the baked mushrooms, and cook for 40ish minutes or until the bottom is browned.