Carrot Ricotta Tart with Herbs
Last week we got a gorgeous bunch of multicolored carrots in our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) weekly delivery box. We roasted our carrots to beautiful morsels of caramelized goodness, tossed them atop an herb and ricotta smothered puff pastry, and crunched away with taste buds dancing. This recipe is inspired by Bon Appetit.
Yield: Serves 2-4
Ingredients:
Ricotta Herb Mixture:
- 1/2 cup ricotta
- 1 egg
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- 1 tablespoon fresh dill chopped
- 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Carrot Tart:
- 1 sheet puff pastry, (half of 17 ounce package) thawed at room temperature for 30min to 1 hour
- 3 medium multicolored carrots, peeled, cut into small coins
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
Steps:
- Heat the oven to 420.
- For the carrot tart: In a medium bowl, toss the carrots with the oil, salt, garlic and sugar until evenly coated.
- Pour the carrots onto a baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment. Roast for 25 minutes, or until lightly browned and withered at the edges. Remove from oven to cool.
- Decrease the oven temperature to 350.
- For the ricotta herb mixture: In a small bowl, mix together the ricotta, egg, dill, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic. Whisk well to combine.
- Roll or unfold the thawed puff pastry dough, smooth the dough and fold out creases. Using a small knife, score a 1 inch border around the edges, making sure not to let your knife cut through the dough completely. With a fork, make 8-12 indentations inside the center of the square.
- To assemble the tart, spread the ricotta mixture on the uncooked puff pastry on the inside of the cut boarder. Layer the roasted carrots on top of the ricotta.
- Bake for 30 minutes, or until pastry is golden and puffed up around the edges. Remove from the oven to cool briefly for 3-5 minutes.
- To serve, cut into wedges or squares and garnish with a handful of sprouts or lettuce and serve warm.
Zucchini Falafel Burgers with Green Tahini Sauce
It's burger time, and not just for meat lovers. We're combining the summer's bounty of zucchini with loads of herbs for a burger riff on the falafel. While these patties are delicious on their own, we went a little nuts with the toppings, including a tangy herb scented green tahini sauce, and an addictive tomato, cucumber and feta salsa. Zucchini Falafel Burgers with Green Tahini Sauce are a vibrant celebration of summer flavors. Happy 4th and Canada Day to our American and Canadian readers!
For more burger inspiration check out smokey ancho cheddar burgers, bacon bison burgers, turkey feta burgers with yogurt curry sauce & portobello burgers with green olive tapenade.
Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Soup
Yesterday was our last day of work, a bittersweet time in many ways. We left after saying reluctant goodbyes to many wonderful co-workers. It was an unusually silent car as we drove away, each of us lost in our own thoughts, until a loud rumble and clanking sound broke our melancholic lull. Our pensive quiet was replaced with a resigned amusement and a jolt back to practicality; we had managed to get a flat tire before we even left the parking lot. A tire change, careful drive home, and a trip to our local garage later, we were famished by the time we finally made it home. We heated up some Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Soup we'd made earlier in the week and dunked some of Paul's sourdough bread into the sweet goodness while we talked through our next life step. This soup is a master at capturing the nuanced sweetness of natural caramelization and the subtle nuttiness of roasted onion, garlic and butternut squash. While Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Soup tastes rich and complex, it is in reality just a very simple roasted vegetable puree turned into a velvety fall soup. We have adapted this recipe from James Peterson. For more information on his soup cookbook and others, check out our bookshelf.
Carrot Ribbon Salad with Carrot Top Pesto
Our friends Beth and Justin, both creative cooks and passionate gardeners, made our day when they dropped off some beautiful carrots, freshly dug from their garden. While hardcore carnivores may lay claim to nose-to-tail cooking, we think that this veggie based dish gives the concept a run for its money, as it uses all parts of the carrot plant: root-to-leaf cooking in its colorful prime. Carrot Ribbon Salad with Carrot Top Pesto is adapted from vegetable whiz Diane Morgan’s Roots cookbook. In this dish, the carrots are first mellowed with a quick hot water bath to soften their texture and bite. Carrot top pesto, with its subtle parsley-like flavor, is a lovely match, accented with dollops of creamy goat cheese. Find a source for fresh vibrant carrots with tops and make this beautiful dish.
Apple Almond Tart
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some eat greatness in an apple tart. We count ourselves in the third category. Our Apple Almond Tart is a trifecta of dessert greatness. A crisp and flaky butter pastry base, creamy almond cheese filling, and delicately cooked apples for tart contrast. We recommend that you go ahead and double this recipe the first time, as we we polished off an entire tart ourselves in record speed.
Bacon and Caramelized Onion Flatbread, Flammkuchen
It's moving day for us at The Hungry Hounds. Fueled by donuts, coffee and tons of moving help from family and friends, we are on our way from Pennsylvania to Indiana for our final goodbyes with Paul's family before we leave for Haiti. Cooking and eating in our kitchen for the past few weeks has been a bit of an awkward experience with many frustrated sighs and the frequent realization, '...oh right, we packed that already, didn't we!?' One of the last dishes we made when our kitchen was still in full swing was this tasty Flammkuchen, a comfort pizza-like-classic from the Alsatian and South German regions, with many variations and names. We modeled ours after the classic version, a thin crusted flatbread pizza with a creamy, slightly tangy sauce, smoky bacon, a smattering of cheese, and the succulent sweetness of caramelized onions.
