Vegetarian mains
Autumn mushroom and chard torte
A light and creamy oven-baked vegetarian torte filled with mushrooms and greens. You can use spinach for this instead of chard if that's in your veg box. This makes an excellent autumnal dinner with a salad of watercress or radicchio, toasted walnuts, pears and blue cheese.
Ingredients
- 10g dried porcini mushrooms
- 50g butter, plus a little extra for greasing
- oil for frying, e.g. vegetable or sunflower
- 1 onion, very finely diced
- 4 sprigs thyme, leaves only
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 300g chard, leaves separated from any tougher stalks
- 600g mushrooms, finely diced
- a good glug of Marsala wine (or use some of the porcini water)
- 200ml double cream
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 100g Parmesan or Gruyère, finely grated
- 50g dried breadcrumbs
- salt and pepper
Method
-
Step 1
Put the porcini in a heatproof bowl and pour over boiling water to cover.
-
Step 2
Preheat oven to 190°C/Gas 5. Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Grease a 20cm cake tin with a little butter and line with baking parchment.
-
Step 3
Heat the butter and 2 tablespoon of oil in a very large pan. Add the onion and thyme leaves and fry very gently for 8 minutes, stirring now and then, until the onion is soft and translucent.
-
Step 4
While the onion is cooking, cook the chard leaves in the boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain, plunge into cold water to stop the cooking process and keep the colour, then drain again. Squeeze out any excess liquid with your hands.
-
Step 5
Add the garlic to the onion and cook for 2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and fry for 2 minutes. Add the Marsala and cook until the liquid has evaporated.
-
Step 6
Put half in a food processor. Blitz until puréed. Mix in a large bowl with the rest of the mushrooms.
-
Step 7
Finely chop the chard leaves and stir in with the cream, eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs and season with salt and pepper.
-
Step 8
Transfer to the tin. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until set and golden.