One way to scare away vampires and potential boyfriends is to eat lots of garlic and softly whisper poetry in their ear. The result? You are left alone clasping a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets to your chest.

But… the combination of balsamic vinegar, sugar, rosemary, goats cheese and crumbly pastry will set any heart on fire (and perhaps be an inspiration for a new vampire TV series. Anything could happen).

This is one of my all time favorite recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi and I’ve tweaked it every so slightly* to make it something delicious from Ceire’s Kitchen!
*I added mushrooms, tarragon instead of thyme and I made my own short cut pastry from scratch!

Ingredients:

• sheet of puff pastry
• 3 heads of garlic (cloves separated and peeled)
• punnet of thinly sliced button mushrooms
• 2 TBS balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 3 sprigs chopped rosemary (plus a little to garnish)
• 3 sprigs fresh tarragon (or thyme)
• 120g soft goat’s cheese
• 120g hard goat’s cheese (or sheeps feta–depending on how flavoursome you’d like your tart to be )
• 2 free-range eggs
• ½ cup greek yoghurt
• ½ cup crème fraîche
• ¼ cup milk
• olive oil, salt and black pepper

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180’C.
• Grease your round pastry dish and line it with a sheet of puff pastry. Place on some baking beans and bake in the oven for 20 min or until golden brown.
• While the pastry is cooking blanche the garlic cloves in a saucepan for about 3 min.
• Drain away the water, place your saucepan back on a medium heat and for a couple of minutes, fry up the garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil.
• Add the balsamic vinegar and water, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 10 minutes.
• Add the sugar, herbs, mushrooms dash of salt and continue cooking until most of the liquid has evaporated and the garlic and mushrooms are coated in dark caramel syrup.
• Take saucepan off the heat and empty the garlic and mushrooms into your cooked party case.
• Evenly crumble in the cheese.
• Whisk together the rest of the ingredients with a pinch of salt and some black pepper, pour into the tart and bake for 35-45 minutes, or until the tart filling has set and the top is golden brown.
• Once cooked, sprinkle over some herbs and serve with a simple, fresh rocket salad!