A RECIPE FROM ANNA JONES

Written By Ellen Brookes

As part of our new season magazine ‘Community’ chef and writer (and Sideline customer :) Anna Jones gifted us a recipe to share with you, our community, and in turn for you to share with yours. This recipe comes from Annas book The Modern Cooks Year. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have at the Sideline Studio.

This forgiving tart comes together pretty quickly. The star here is the flaky walnut-spiked pastry. It sits around a centre of sweet buttery leeks, chard and some verdant green herbs. It’s quite a crumbly pastry, thanks to the walnuts, but they make it so toasty and flaky it’s worth it. The tart is free form, so if the pastry cracks you can pinch it back together with your finger easily – just be sure to do a final check around the outside of the pastry once it’s filled to make sure all holes are pinched and no filling can escape. I serve this with some simple boiled potatoes and a lemon dressed salad.

SERVES 4–6

  • olive oil

  • 2 leeks, outer leaves removed, washed and finely shredded

  • a bunch of chard (about 200g)

  • 2 cloves of garlic, chopped

  • a pinch of dried chilli flakes

  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds

  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

  • a large mixed bunch of soft herbs, leaves picked

  • 25g Parmesan (I use a vegetarian one)

  • 3 medium organic eggs

FOR THE PASTRY

  • 50g walnuts

  • 200g white spelt flour

  • 1⁄2 teaspoon flaky sea salt

  • 100g very cold butter, cut into cubes

  • 2 tablespoons ice-cold water

First, make the pastry. Put the walnuts into a food processor and blitz until you have fine, uniform crumbs, but keep an eye on it – if you go too far, they will start to come together as a nut butter. Add the flour and salt and pulse a few times to mix everything evenly.

Next, add the butter and pulse a few times until you have a rough looking dough. With the motor running, add a tablespoon of the very cold water and pulse again for four turns of the blade.Take the lid off and pinch the dough with your fingers. Add a little more water if it feels dry and keep blitzing until the dough comes together in a ball; it should be a buttery pastry and not feel crumbly. Wrap the dough in cling filmor greaseproof paper and put it into the fridge.

Next, warm a frying pan over a medium heat, pour in a drizzle of olive oil and add the leeks and a pinch of salt. Fry for 5–7 minutes, until the leeks are soft and sweet.

While this is happening, wash the chard and strip the leaves from their stalks. Slice the stalks into 2cm lengths, then roll up the leaves and slice across the middle into 1cm-wide ribbons.

Back to the leeks. Add the garlic, dried chilli and fennel seeds and fry in the pan for a couple of minutes to toast the spices. When the pan is smelling aromatic, add the chard stalks and stir. Cook for 5 minutes until the stalks lose their rawness, then stir in the leaves and add the vinegar. Cook until the leaves have wilted – about 4 minutes.

Put the vegetables on to a plate to cool and preheat your oven to 220oC/200oC fan/gas 7.

Finely chop the herbs and place them in a large mixing bowl. Grate in the Parmesan and whisk in the eggs with a fork.Season with salt and pepper.

Take the walnut pastry out of the fridge and line a large baking sheet with baking paper. Drizzle some olive oil into the centre of the paper. If your baking sheet is quite flat, you should be able to roll the pastry out to a round about 30cm across and 1cm deep. If you have a standard deep roasting tray, flip it over and place the paper on the underside instead.

Mix the cooled vegetables with the egg mixture. Arrange the vegetables in the centre of the pastry, leaving about 3cm around the edge. Gently fold the pastry border back over the vegetables, pleating a little as you go. It will be crumbly and more difficult to handle than other doughs and may break at its edges, but it will be worth it for the flaky short pastry at the end.

Place the crostata in the centre of the hot oven and bake for 35 minutes, until the edges are deep golden and the filling is starting to bubble, then turn the heat down to 200oC/180oC fan/gas 6and bake for a further 15 minutes, until the pastry is cooked through.

Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then slide on to a wire rack to cool and let the pastry crisp up.

Enjoy x

Ellen Brookes
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