A healthy onion tart, three ways

A bag of onions makes me happier than a bag of candy.

Like...really. As I'd managed to somehow eat all our onions, I was happy as hell to eye a bunch of them when I went to the kitchen, looking for food. I knew exactly what I'd make - and it's not just that the recipe is called 'healthy onion tart' (it wouldn't be healthy if I ate half of it anyway).

I've made it several times and been really happy with it, although I've always been annoyed with the crazy salt amount the recipe calls for. How is it that cookbook authors sometimes really mess up? How is it that they sometimes manage to leave some parts of the recipes out? Or some ingredients? Don't they like...read their work over again and again?
Whatever. But that's lame. Let's just stop whining and stuff our mouths full.

Healthy onion tart on an oat flake and carrot crust (adapted from '100 pirukat', serves 8) Crust: 1 dl oat flakes 1 dl flour 1 dl grated carrots 100 g baking margarine (or butter) at room temperature 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt Filling: 3-4- onions 1 tbsp butter 2 dl milk 2 eggs 3/4 tsp salt Mix grated carrot, oat flakes and margarine. Mix flour with salt and baking powder, add to the mixture. Take a 24cm round baking pan and press the dough onto the bottom and sides of the pan (it's easier to do so when you've chilled the dough in the fridge for some time). Place the pan into the fridge for a half an hour. Meanwhile slice the onions and cook them with the butter until they're golden. Mix eggs with milk, add salt. Bake the crust in the middle of a preheated 200C oven for 15 minutes. Spread the onion slices onto the baked crust and pour the milk-egg mixture over them. Bake at 180C for 20 more minutes.

Feel free to add herbs to the onions (thyme, maybe? rosemary? sage? or oregano?) or cheese on top of the tart when it has been baking for some time already (I allow you to keep the name 'healthy' even when you add cheese;))
I'd definitely go for some green salad on the side for serving, be the tart warm or cold. I love to warm up the cold tart in the microwave, too. The onions are so mild, the crust is sweetly speckled from grated carrot. It's not very crisp - the crust - only the bottom and the sides are, the filling kind of melts into its upper layer.

Long long time ago - in the summer - I used the very same recipe for onion tartelettes.



I think I pre-baked the crust for some 5 minutes and added 1-2 tbsp of both onions and milk-egg mixture to each tartelette, also adding cheese in the middle of baking. They were marvellous snacks to eat with fingers! As this method used up all the crust dough, there was left-over filling and I baked it in bread slices that I placed in a muffin pan. For bread and onion tartelettes I added cheese right away.



Talking about 'marvellous'? These were perfect when eaten warm and definitely on a green salad! I don't think there's a need for a more accurate recipe. Just...look!

This post will also be taking part of the 11th WTSIM event Topless tarts, hosted by Jeanne from Cook sister. Fortunately being underage can't stop one from participating...:D

Melting lime cream tartelettes

Summer it was. Long-long days, generous amounts of sunlight and light salads that were just dying to be followed by something sweet. That was the moment for fetching a cool lime cream tartelette. Just to discover, after having begun eating it by small bites, that one crumbly half of it has to be swallen by whole. And as these bites were starting to become an addiction, I decided to send the recipe to the Estonian food magazine Oma Maitse. Voila! I got a prize for it in October. Why are the tartelettes 'melting'? As I unfortunately discovered, it's mission impossible to take them to friends in summer - gelatin tends to do nasty tricks (Although the taste won't be damaged for the bravest of friends). But with the kind of weather we're having now - ready! set! go!


The picture featured in the magazine didn't however have such bright yellow cream, probably because the cooking team didn't use the eggs of happy home-grown hens (that's the reason why every Estonian should have a homestead).

Using the same recipe, it's possible to make tiny one-bite sweets or bigger tartelettes. The smaller, the better, I'd say: more flavour in every bite and room in the belly for more:) It's really easy to use ready-made tartelettes, or bake your own in a muffin pan or in metallic moulds. For filling 300 g ready-made tartelettes I used about 2/3 of the creme.


Lime cream tartelettes

3 eggs
3 yolks
200 g butter
180 g sugar
1 dl lime juice
vanilla
sour juice (i.e. redcurrant)
gelatin
cherries/raspberries/morellos
tartelettes (cooled if made at home)

1. Melt butter in a saucepan. Whisk in sugar, lime juice, eggs, yolks and vanilla. Whisk over medium heat until the cream thickens (about 10 minutes).
2. Pour the warm cream into tartelettes and let them cool for at least an hour.
3. Now the jelly. You can add water to the juice if you like (I don't - the more taste, the better). Soak a proper amount of gelatin in it, heat the juice to dissolve it and let it cool a bit.
4. Place some berries onto the cream and pour the juice onto the tartelettes. Let cool.

Sour-sweet-crumbly-creamy-juicy tartelettes are often even better to eat with a cup of tea than a slice of cake. It's a simple pleasure, enjoying them while they're slowly crumbling between your fingers.
It's quite odd that when I went to fetch my prize (vegetable oil-juices-margarines) in the rather end of October, some of the margarines had already reached their expiry date. Fortunately it's the only bad thing I can say about the magazine. Still, it would have been polite to at least inform me of the need to receive them as soon as possible. Having won something, one doesn't want to whine, but something like that doesn't lighten the mood very much.