Antipasti and Goats' Cheese Tart

My first savoury dish was picked out the hat last week being the Antipasti and Goats' Cheese Tart. I wasn't particularly looking forward to making it as I'm definitely more of a sweet person, however, after all the cakes I've made recently it was nice to have a change.

I'd never heard of antipasti, I'm still not 100% sure what it is, but I looked it up before I went and looked carefully at the photo to get some idea. Unfortunately my supermarket didn't sell this in a packet so I had to work out what I wanted and bought it jars. I got a jar of artichoke hearts, roasted peppers and then some dried sun-dried tomatoes. We also weren't quite sure which goats' cheese to get so we ended up buying a hard block and hoping it'd be alright. We bought the puff pastry and for once we actually used fresh herbs.

In order to prepare the sun-dried tomatoes I had to soak them for 30mins in boiling water. So I did this first.

This recipe was incredibly easy to make. Open up the ready rolled puff pastry and score a square around the outside. Place the cheese down the centre.

Pastry with the goats cheese lined up..

Then drain off the veg and place this over the top. I didn't weigh this out carefully or do it precisely, I just added enough to make it look like a decent topping.

Veg is layered on top

Then chop up some thyme and add this to the top and place it in the oven for around 40mins.

Placed in the oven

I didn't really time it properly in the oven just did roughly that time and then checked it. It was beautifully golden and had puffed up nicely.

Looking very tasty once out of the oven..

The final step was to add some freshly chopped basil levels and then chop up a small square to eat for lunch.

Me and my husband ate it with a lovely salad.

All finished with a garnish of basil.. ready to be eaten

My lunch is now complete... where's the salad?

The description for this tart states that it's a "great tart to serve for lunch" and it's "perfect with a rocket salad". On both these accounts I completely agree. It made a lovely lunch but I wouldn't want it was my main meal of the day.

My husband and I have different tastes when it comes to food like this.. I like sun-dried tomatoes, roasted peppers etc but don't like pastry. He on the other hand likes pastry but not so keen on the veg. However, we both really enjoyed this tart. The combination of goats cheese and veg was really nice and complimented the flavours nicely. It was so easy to make and really tasty. My husband commented that it would also be nice with some chicken on it so maybe that would make it slightly more of a main meal but I liked it just the way it was. It's something I would certainly consider making again.

The negatives for me were, pastry, not so keen on this but I wouldn't be able to take it away from the recipe because it does go very well. But the main negative is the cost. To make the tart we had to buy lots of ingredients that we don't usually stock and having to buy each veg separately made the prices go up. We have enough for another tart, which I'd like to do, but overall the cost is too great and doesn't travel far enough for this to become a regular. Maybe a special occasion lunch.

So scores.... Today I give the tart a 9/10... I really enjoyed it whilst eating it but the cost brings the score down and I'm not overly keen on pastry even though I liked this. My husband gives 7/10... close to an 8 but not quite. He says he wasn't keen on the veg and this brought it down for him. So the total score is 16/20.