Winter is well and truly here and another lockdown means many of us are looking at our kitchens to provide some form of entertainment. If you are anything like me, a good breakfast is a great way to start the day off with a bang and these breakfast tarts are effectively a full english loaded onto puff pastry (I still haven’t found a recipe that is ruined by adding puff pastry).
When making this recipe, I found that a quails egg was the perfect size to top the tart and in doing so, I happily discovered that you can buy local quails eggs from most farm shops. I also discovered a little chicken farm near me that had quails eggs on a stand outside, complete with an honesty box for payment so keep your eyes peeled when on your daily Lockdown walks for something similar near you.
I may or may not have waited for very cold 3 hours early on Christmas eve to pick up my turkey from my local butcher so I think many of us are discovering the joys of local meat from our local butchers. There are local butchers across the county and they work hard to bring us the best in local meat, so I can recommend using local sausages and bacon for this recipe too.
Ingredients
1 packet of ready rolled puff pastry (or homemade puff pastry) 6 sausages
6 rashers of streaky bacon
3 tbsp of tomato puree
6 quails eggs
1 chicken’s egg (to egg wash)
Method
Preheat the oven to 180 fan/Gas 5. Grease and line a baking tray.
Remove the sausages from their skins and break up the sausage meat into pieces. Cut the bacon into 1/2cm pieces. In a frying pan, fry the sausage pieces and bacon pieces together until just cooked (but not browned). Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
Roll out the puff pastry and cut into 6 rectangles. Place these rectangles onto the baking tray.
Spread tomato puree onto each square, leaving a 1/2cm boarder around the edge.
Beat the chicken’s egg and then egg wash the edges of the tart that do not have tomato puree on them (this makes them lovely and golden brown in the oven).
Add the sausage and bacon pieces to the top of the tomato puree (keeping that egg washed edge clear). Try and make sure that the tomato puree is covered as much as possible as the puree can darken quickly in the oven.
Bake in the oven for 25 minutes.
Whilst the tarts are baking, get a sharp knife and the quails eggs ready.
After 25 minutes, the tarts should be starting to look almost done with golden brown edges (if they don’t look at all done, give them a few minutes more in the oven). Remove the tray from the oven. Make a small dent in the centre of the sausage meat and bacon mixture on each tart. Crack the quails egg into the dent using the knife to break the shell. Place the tray back into the oven for 5 more minutes. This should just cook the quails egg. If you would like a firm yolk, cool for 2 minutes more.
Tip – You can make this vegetarian by replacing the sausage meat and bacon with vegetables. If using root vegetables, I would par cook before adding to the tart but some asparagus and halved cherry tomatoes would work well here.
By: Heather Brown
