Roast Red Onion, Carrot, and Hazelnut Tatin
This was a recipe from the Guardian and sounded really good, not needing much beyond store cupboard ingredients (the puff pastry) it seemed like an easy start to the goal of making at least one new recipe each month.
I’ve already scribbled down changes to the ingredient amounts a little bit as I thought there wasn’t quite enough of the roast vegetables, we also thought that the hazelnuts would be better roughly chopped rather than whole.
Ingredients
- 3 medium to large red onion
- 6 medium to large carrots, peeled and cut into smallish chunks
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- half a tsp of salt
- 30g blanched whole hazelnuts, roughly chopped
- 15g butter
- 15g caster sugar
- 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
- 150g shop-bought puff pastry
- a little bit of thyme or savory to garnish
Putting it together
Heat the oven to 230C (210C fan)/450F/gas 8. Peel then cut the onions into eight wedges lengthwise.
The carrot chunks and onion wedges go into a large roasting tray with the oil and salt, toss to cover all the veg and spread out over the base of the tray. Roast for about 25 minutes or until the vegetables start to colour (or a little longer if you like the caramelised edges), add the hazelnuts and roast for five more minutes.
About 10 minute before the veg would come out of the over, in an ovenproof frying pan, gently warm the butter, sugar and balsamic vinegar until the sugar dissolves, you can tell when the liquid goes smooth, then up the temperature cook until it has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the roast vegetables and nuts to the syrup and coat, then let cool for 10 minutes.
Roll out the pastry into a 1cm-thick circle large enough to cover the frying pan. Pile the filling in to the centre of the pan, so there is a bit of a gap all around the edge, cover with the pastry, there will be a bit of a lip but that’s fine, try to tuck this under a bit. Make sure to prick the pastry all over with a fork.
Put back into the oven for 20 minutes, until the pastry is puffed up and golden. Using a tea towel or oven gloves, remove the pan from the oven, place a large plate on top and flip over. Sprinkle over thyme or savory to taste.
For our first meal with this we served it with broccoli, but it would be great with a big leafy salad especially one with a bitter leaf in it.
We also thought it would be really tasty with some feta cheese crumbled over the top.
