Chocolate, Chili and Pistachio Tart

Chocolate, Chili and Pistachio

At the moment I am craving all sorts of tarts – both sweet and savoury.

Yesterday I decided to make my own sweet tarts and began by preparing the pastry from scratch. Making pastry is a fiddly business and I had to take many deep breaths to calm myself down as the pastry kept splitting when I tried to mould it into the cases. I followed a fantastic sweet pastry recipe from Ottolenghi – The Cookbook, which, uses icing sugar and lemon zest.

Rolling The Pastry

 

The whole process took a lot longer than I thought but luckily my guests were late and the tartlets were ready just in time for their arrival. 

I realise that I could do with some training, as I am not the best pastry chef so I have booked myself onto two pastry courses in the New Year – one is at the renowned Leith’s Cookery School.

Serves: 6

500g sweet short crust pastry

Knob of unsalted butter

For the Ganache:

150g dark chocolate

100g unsalted butter, diced

1 free-range egg

1 free-range egg yolk

30g caster sugar

1 red chili, de-seeded and finely chopped

Handful pistachio nuts, chopped

Brush 6 muffin tins (5-7cm in diameter and 3cm deep) with a thin layer of melted butter, and place these in the fridge to set for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, sprinkle a clean, dry surface with flour, roll the pastry to approx 2-3mm thick and use a bowl to cut out 6 circles. 

Gently line each muffin tin with the pastry and place back in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Blind Bake The Pastry

Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees.

Line each pastry case with Clingfilm, fill with un-cooked rice or beans and blind bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the rice/beans and Clingfilm and place the pastry cases back in the oven for 5 minutes to cook the base.

Leave The Pastry Cases To Cool

Remove from the oven and leave to cool down.

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees. 

Chocolate, Chili and Pistachio

Put the chocolate and butter in a bowl, set it over a pan of simmering water and leave it to melt, stirring occasionally.

Separately whisk together the egg, egg yolk, chili and sugar. Fold this into the chocolate mixture.

Fill The Cases To The Top

Sprinkle the pistachio to cover the bottom of each pastry case and pour over the chocolate mixture until each case is filled to the top.

Bake in the oven for 5 minutes. Leave to cool a little, remove the tartlets from their tins and leave to cool down completely.

Serve at room temperature with vanilla ice cream and an extra sprinkle of pistachio nuts.