WiId Mushroom Tart

15g dried porcini
60g butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
350g mushrooms, sliced (use some wild ones if you can, or cultivated brown, field (Portobello), oyster, shiitake, or a mixture)
Salt, Black pepper
3 organic eggs, beaten
250g mascarpone
60g parmesan, grated
a handful of fresh basil, sliced
24cm (9 ½ inch) shortcrust pastry case baked blind
Soak the porcini in hand hot water for about half an hour, drain, squeeze out as much water as possible, and chop finely.
Heat the oven to 180 and put in a baking sheet to preheat. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat, add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring, until starting to soften, 5 min. Add the mushrooms, raise the heat to high, and cook, stirring, until they begin to brown, about 5 min. Add slat and pepper to taste and allow to cool slightly.

Beat the eggs and mascarpone until smooth (you might want to use a whisk for this as mascarpone is quite thick). Stir in the soaked porcini, pan fried mushrooms, parmesan and basil. Pour this mushroom mascarpone mixture into the pastry case, and put in the oven on to the hot baking sheet (a good tactic to avoid soggy pastry bottoms). Bake until set to a beautiful golden brown, 30-40 min. Transfer to a wire rack and serve warm rather then hot.

From Favourite Recipes Books For Cooks. A book that has been consistently fabulous.

This was so good! Really beautiful and so super tasty. It was wonderful warm on the first day, and the left overs were just as good as a cold lunch on the second day. The mascarpone makes it a satisfyingly creamy filling, which I sometimes prefer to the eggy fillings that a lot of the savory tarts have. Also I just love mushrooms, and this was a really good combination of them.

It’s not at all tough to make either. If you wanted to save time and effort, you could make the crust in advance, or probably even buy a pre made one, then it’s just a little sautéing, a little mixing pour it in and you are good to go. I sometimes find it difficult to tell when an eggy pie is done, because they set a bit after you take them out, but with this one that wasn’t an issue.

I highly recommend trying this one, it’s definitely a winner.