Pumpkin, potato and feta tart

Pumpkins are now in season in Austria. There are all kinds of shapes and sizes in the shops now. Mostly local people do not eat pumpkin or know how to cook it. However, pumpkin oil is a popular ingredient here
Here's a quick and tasty recipe for a free-form tart using pumpkin and a few other ingredients.

We ate this for dinner, along with some green salad. The squishy and sweet pumpkin complemented the crunchy pastry and the slightly melted feta. And all these ingredients are freely available at any shop, so you could easily whip up this tart on a weekend or after work. If you don't have feta, you could use goat cheese, or ever mozzarella or grated cheddar. I also sprinkled some chopped, fresh parsley for some colour and flavour, but you could also use fresh basil, thyme or oregano.

This would be wonderful served for lunch or brunch. For us it was a late dinner after school meetings.

What you'll need

This tart serves four as a side dish or two as a light meal.

1 piece of puff pastry, 40cm x 30cm
2 large potatoes, thickly sliced
150g pumpkin, peeled, de-seeded and thickly sliced
50g feta cheese, cubed
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 tbl vegetable oil
2 tbl chopped fresh parsley (or substitute with basil, thyme or oregano)
Salt and pepper

What to do

Heat two frying pans over medium to low heat. Add the 1 tablespoon of oil to each. In one frying pan, put the onion and sweat for a few minutes. Add the potato. Season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring and turning constantly until potato is soft and caramelised. This will take about 15 minutes.

In the other frying pan at the same time as the potato is cooking, cook the pumpkin. Stir and turn so that it doesn't burn, but it is OK for it to brown and caramelise. Season with salt and pepper. Once the pumpkin is a little bit soft, remove it from the heat.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Prepare the pastry tart. 

I made my pastry in a free-form shape, as I didn't have a pastry tin in the shape I wanted. If you have a tin you can use, go ahead. First I shaped the pastry into a long rectangle, using my fingers to crimp the edges and squish it into shape. Next I placed the shaped pastry onto a sheet of baking paper, then placed it into a large baking tray. On three sides, the pastry touched the sides of the baking tray, on the fourth, I propped up the baking paper against the side of the pastry with a wooden spoon. This helped keep the shape of the pastry, otherwise it will fall flat once it heats up. Prick the bottom of the pastry with a fork, then place into the hot oven for approximately 15 minutes, or until slightly golden brown.

Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes. The middle of the tart will have puffed up. This is OK. You can leave it as is, as the weight of the ingredients will push it back down.

Assemble the tart.

First layer the potato and onion mixture onto the bottom of the tart, then carefully layer the pumpkin on top of this (just so it looks pretty!). Then insert the pieces of feta (or whatever cheese you use) between the pieces of pumpkin. Sprinkle with the parsley or whichever herbs you use.

Place back in the oven, at 180 degrees Celsius, for 10 - 15 minutes. This is only to reheat the tart and crisp the pastry further, as all the ingredients are already cooked. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

You can serve the tart by itself for a light meal, or as a side dish with grilled fish or chicken. You could also make individual-sized tarts which would be lovely to serve at a dinner party.