Feijoa Tarte Tatin (and environmental integrity)

 

Feijoa Tarte Tatin with ‘Lemon Delicious’ Puhoi Valley brand New Zealand yoghurt.

 

For this little story I get to use my favourite word, synchronicity. On a Friday night, Mum and her twin sister spent a large portion of their evening searching for a recipe for Feijoa Tarte Tatin. With feijoa season beginning in earnest, it was imperative to find this recipe. They searched and searched through book upon book, but could not find one. The next morning, Mum’s sister was listening to the Saturday recipe show on the radio station Newstalk ZB, and fate intervened as, Nici Wickes was reading out a recipe for Feijoa Tarte Tatin – true synchronicity in action. Mum’s sister rang Mum quickly with the happy news. Mum’s sister made the recipe that night, and Mum and I made it the following night.

 

This recipe uses a 20 cm tin. We had a slightly bigger tin, 23 cm, so used 9-10 feijoas.

 

FEIJOA TARTE TATIN

 

6-8 medium-large feijoas, the size of a slender egg

45g (3 tbspn) unsalted butter

1 heaped tbspn caster sugar

1 tsp honey

½ tsp finely chopped rosemary

200g puff pastry (homemade or store-bought) – rolled out to be slightly bigger than the pan you are using

 

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Start by peeling the feijoa with a small paring knife, then halve lengthwise. Melt the butter, sugar and honey in a small ovenproof frying pan (about 20 cm across) over a low heat.* Gently swirl the pan to distribute the syrup evenly and try not to stir it too much, or it will crystalize instead of caramelize. Cook it until the mixture is bubbling and golden brown.

Add chopped rosemary and carefully add the feijoa, tossing to coat in the caramel and cook for a minute or two. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool for a few minutes then spread the feijoas out evenly to cover the whole base of the pan.

Place a circle of pastry, a little bigger than your pan, over the top of the fruit, tucking the edges under the fruit and sugar mixture as far and as neatly as you can.

Bake in the oven for about 25-30 minutes until the pastry is puffed up and golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 5-7 minutes before carefully inverting onto a serving plate. Serve warm with softly whipped cream.

 

*[alternatively use a pot to heat the caramel and to add the feijoas to, and when ready tip the mixture into an oven proof dish before placing the pastry on top].

 

 

Tarte Tatin straight out of the oven:

 

Then invert the Tarte Tatin so the fruit shows on top:

 

 

DESSERT ACCOMPANIMENTS:

We served this with ‘Lemon Delicious’ Puhoi Valley brand New Zealand yoghurt and the combination of lemon with feijoa was lovely. We could have served the Feijoa Tarte Tatin with lightly whipped cream or a scoop of icecream, but the lemon yoghurt was perfect as the sweetness balanced the tartness of the feijoas.

Also, accompanying the dessert we had a Peter Yealands, Hawke’s Bay 2013, Merlot. I was really taken with this wine. For $15.00 (usual retail price, although we found this on special at $11.99) this was a great find. The wine is a rich dark red with strong flavour and is described on the bottle thus: “This merlot shows concentrated notes of plum, dark berries and underlying cassis. The palate is soft with finely balanced supple tannins and a rich lingering finish.”

www.yealandsestate.co.nz

 

TREADING LIGHTLY:

And….we we trod lightly on the earth with this dessert.

Our dessert turned out to be carbon credit friendly. We chose a sustainable and environmentally friendly wine. The Peter Yealands wine is a carbon zero certified product (I think this may be the only carbon zero accredited wine in the world. Whether it is or not, this winery has a huge amount of environmental integrity). Plus we sourced local and organic feijoas – we walked to collect our feijoas, rather than using a car, and we rescued fruit off the ground that would have otherwise gone to waste. All of this offset the use of the oven for baking the Feijoa Tarte Tatin.