Recipe Braised Shallot and Caramelised Garlic Tart

Morning Glory

Morning Glory

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This tart uses a whole head of garlic - but don't be alarmed. The slow caramelisation renders the garlic cloves into plump sweet bites. You really need to use a big head of garlic for this and one that has fat cloves. Serve the tart at room temperature with a crisp salad.

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Ingredients:
Shortcrust pastry (made with 300g plain flour,150g fat)
250ml milk
3 eggs
Salt and pepper
250 g banana shallots
250ml boiling water mixed with 1 heaped tsp Marmite*
Butter or margarine
A few sprigs of thyme
1 x large bulb of garlic
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
200ml water
1 tbsp sugar
A little vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt

Method
For the braised shallots:
  1. Peel the shallots Heat the over to 160 C. Peel the shallots** and cut in half lengthways
  2. Arrange the shallots in an oven proof dish.
  3. Pour over the Marmite mixture and scatter with sprigs of thyme. Dot with little pieces of butter or margarine.
  4. Cover and bake for an hour or until the shallots are tender. Drain (you can reserve the stock for another use), pat dry and allow to cool.
For the caramelised garlic:
  1. Peel the garlic cloves. Simmer in water for 4 minutes to soften. Dry the cloves and fry in a little oil until they brown slightly
  2. Place in a pan with the balsamic vinegar, sugar and salt. Simmer gently for 15 - 20 minutes until the liquid is reduced to a dark caramel, coating the cloves.
To make the tart:
  1. Heat the oven to 180C. Line a greased 23cm flan tin with the pastry and bake blind (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/videos/techniques/how-blind-bake-pastry).
  2. Beat the eggs into the milk and season with salt and pepper
  3. Cover the base of the pastry shell with half the shallots
  4. Pour the half the egg/milk mixture into the pastry shell.
  5. Lower the oven heat to 170C and bake for 15 minutes to partially set the custard. Remove from the oven and arrange the remaining shallots and the garlic in an attractive pattern and pour in the remaining milk/egg mixture.
  6. Bake for a further 15 minutes or until the custard is set. Serve warm or at room temperature.
*You can substitute beef stock
**To make peeling shallots easier, cover in boiling water for ten minutes, drain and then peel

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Last edited:
Here are the shallots before and after cooking - this is half of them as I had to use 2 dishes (no pan big enough):

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And the garlic cooking:

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Balsamic reduction:

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Finished:

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The Late Night Gourmet said:
What a stunner! And, such a garlic-forward dish that really works.:bravo:It seems that this would work equally well for any meal.

My in-laws just brought over a ridiculous amount of eggs yesterday, and I had planned on making a quiche. But, now I think I'll make this instead.
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Well it is a quiche really - I really don't know the difference between tart, quiche and flan!
 
morning glory said:
Well it is a quiche really - I really don't know the difference between tart, quiche and flan!
Click to expand...
I decided to look for a definitive explanation of the differences, but all such "clarifications" seem to be using different words to describe the same thing in all 3. For example, "a tart is usually small, or even bite-size, but can be full-sized" or "a flan or a tart can be sweet or savory, but a quiche is never sweet". I can agree on the last one, but it doesn't exactly give me the answer, either.

Of course, what matters most is taste. I posted a recipe that I called Apple Cupcakes, which I later realized are really Apple Muffins, but the bottom line is that it's exactly the same thing.

The only place were I've seen the name of the dish actually be important is in cooking competitions. Some judges will be upset if a contestant calls something a tart, say, when the judge considers it to be a flan, to the point where it will affect their score vs other dishes. This seems ridiculous. But, if I am ever in a cooking competition, I will make sure not to make any of them! :laugh:
 
The Late Night Gourmet said:
I decided to look for a definitive explanation of the differences, but all such "clarifications" seem to be using different words to describe the same thing in all 3. For example, "a tart is usually small, or even bite-size, but can be full-sized" or "a flan or a tart can be sweet or savory, but a quiche is never sweet". I can agree on the last one, but it doesn't exactly give me the answer, either.

Of course, what matters most is taste. I posted a recipe that I called Apple Cupcakes, which I later realized are really Apple Muffins, but the bottom line is that it's exactly the same thing.

The only place were I've seen the name of the dish actually be important is in cooking competitions. Some judges will be upset if a contestant calls something a tart, say, when the judge considers it to be a flan, to the point where it will affect their score vs other dishes. This seems ridiculous. But, if I am ever in a cooking competition, I will make sure not to make any of them! :laugh:
Click to expand...
One of the definitions given on a cookery site on the internet is that a tart "is always sweet" whereas a flan "is savoury". I don't think so! Actually, I don't think they know themselves. But there are some sweet quiche recipes out there (sweet vanilla quiche, anyone?). As far I'm concerned, a quiche always has eggs and milk in it, whereas flans and tarts do not necessarily have any dairy in them at all, except maybe butter for making the pastry. Wikipedia, on the other hand, says that a quiche lorraine is a flan, so I just give up :laugh:
 
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Here's my interpretation of your recipe. You'll note that there's some spinach. It all floated to the top during the bake, so I'm showing a cross-section: you can see the garlic in the dark brown areas near the bottom crust. While the spinach dominates the look, the garlic certainly is front and center in the taste. I think I'm going to use roasted garlic from now on in my quiches (which I choose to call this). I included a massive amount of shredded gouda (2 cups), too, but the garlic definitely shined through.

I also decided to make my own crust. I'll reserve posting the full recipe in the event that I need it for a future competition, but there's a massive amount of butter in that crust: 10 ounces for 1 1/4 cups of flour! Here's the process:

I've seen instructions that say to roll the dough flat, but rolling is impossible with that much butter. So, I pressed it down (on a Silpat) to get the size and shape I wanted, a bit larger than the size of the pie pan:

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Then, flip it over on top of the pie pan...

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...and press it into shape in the pan:

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I par-baked it for 10 minutes before adding the filling. This really helped keep the bottom crust from getting soggy. Here's the finished product:

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Where's the garlic? Don't worry...it's in there!
 
I am a HUGE fan o f roasted garlic. I always have some in the fridge. I was running low and roasted Five heads Saturday. I also did a lot of holiday cooking over the weekend. I need to roast another batch.
 
ElizabethB said:
I am a HUGE fan o f roasted garlic. I always have some in the fridge. I was running low and roasted Five heads Saturday. I also did a lot of holiday cooking over the weekend. I need to roast another batch.
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Please note that the original recipe in this thread doesn't contain roasted garlic - I'm not sure if you meant you used 'roasted in the oven' garlic @The Late Night Gourmet?

Anyway, I too am a huge fan of roasted garlic - it is literally transformed from its raw state.
 
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