SLIDER

semolina and fig tart

It's fig season in Sydney. As the season is so short as soon as figs appeared in the fruit shop, I bought a few and took them home with me.



Normally I'd use them to make a fig frangipane tart but on this occasion I decided to adapt the semolina and raspberry tart recipe from Ottolenghi, the cookbook. I used my own pastry recipe but adapted the filling recipe a little and of course swapped out the raspberries for figs.




Unless the figs are perfectly ripe, they're not very sweet so I added a little sugar to the cut figs before baking.



I increased the sugar in the filling a little but still found the tart wasn't quite sweet enough for my taste buds, so I've adjusted the quantity of sugar a little.




Here’s the recipe for you. For all my recipes, I use a 250 ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon. All eggs are 60 gm and my oven is a conventional oven, not fan forced. If your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the cooking temperature by 20°C.

Semolina and Fig Tart Recipe – makes a 16-18 cm tart (filling from Ottolenghi - The Cookbook)

Pastry
110 g (4 oz) cold unsalted butter, diced
¼ cup icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar)
¼ cup almond meal
1⅓ cups plain flour
1 egg, lightly beaten

To make the pastry, combine all the dry ingredients in a food processor, and whiz for a few seconds until well combined and free of lumps. Add the cold butter and whiz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg and if necessary, a small amount of cold water and whiz until a soft dough just starts to form around the blade.

Remove the dough from the food processor and gather the pastry into a ball; flatten slightly before wrapping in plastic and placing in the fridge. Refrigerate the pastry for 30 minutes. You won't need the whole amount of this dough for the tart. Wrap the pastry in cling film and freeze for another day.

Lightly brush a 16-18cm loose-bottomed cake tin with a tiny amount of oil and set aside. Make sure you have a clean work surface. Dust it with a bit of flour and, using a rolling pin, roll out your dough. You should have a disk that is about 2-3 mm thick. Once you have reached the right thickness, cut the pastry into a circle large enough to cover the tin and most of the sides comfortably. Carefully line the tin and patch up any holes with excess pastry if necessary. Once you lined your tin, trim the pastry with a sharp knife, so you have a nice edge, about 3-4 cm high. Place in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190°C, conventional. Cut out a circle of baking parchment large enough to cover the base and the sides of your cake tin. Place inside the case and fill up with baking beads or dry beans or rice so that the sides of the pastry are totally supported by the beans and won't collapse during baking. Blind bake the case blind for 25-35 minutes or until it is very light brown. Remove from the oven and take out the beans of rice (you can keep it for future tarts).

Filling
80g unsalted butter
180ml cream
350ml milk
75 - 90g caster sugar
½ tsp vanilla paste
60g semolina
1 egg
6 small figs, quartered
1 tbs sugar
50g apricot jam (optional)
icing sugar, for dusting

To make the filling, put the butter, cream, milk and 75g sugar and vanilla paste in a saucepan. Place the saucepan onto the stove and bring to the boil. Let it simmer while you slowly whisk in the semolina. Continue whisking until the mix comes back to the boil and thickens up like porridge. Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg. Taste the filling at this stage and if not sweet enough, add a little more sugar.

Pour the semolina mixture into the pastry case. If you use a 16 cm tin you won't use all the filling, you'll use about 2/3 - 3/4 of the filling. Decorate the top with some of the quartered figs allowing them to show on the surface. Lightly sugar the figs before baking. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the filling is slightly golden. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before removing the tart from the tin.



Put the apricot jam in a small pan with a tablespoon of water and bring to the boil. Strain it through a sieve and brush over the tart. Finish with the remaining figs and dust with icing sugar.



Now I'm itching to make this again but this time with the raspberries!

See you all again next week with a little shopshoot.

Bye for now,

Jillian
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