Bloggers Banquet.. the recipes

Fig, Blue Cheese and Caramelised Onion Tart.

Take 3 large red onions, slice very fine on a V slicer. Sautee until very golden in unsalted butter. While they're bubbling away, use some of the melted butter to grease a large baking tray. Divide a packet of good quality phylo pasty into 1/4's. On this tray, lay a 1/4 of a packet of phylo pastry. Brush with melted butter. Roll the 3 remaining 1/4's into sausages (for the sides of the tart. 2 rolls will be exactly long enough and one will need to be cut in 1/2)

**NOTE** In all the excitement, I forgot to brush the rolls as I went, as I was rolling them up... This meant when I served it, the sides of the tart were dry and a bit nasty. Note to self.. brush butter as you roll!!

Place sides on base to form tart case. Brush with melted butter.

When onions are done, taste test for sweetness. Mine weren't as sweet as I had hoped, so I added a little home made Balsamic reduction. Spread the onions evenly over the tart case. Sprinkle with fresh thyme (from my own garden). Top with crumbled blue cheese (in this case Red Hill Cheese's "Granny's Blue" ), 8 figs, (also from my garden) quartered and a further drizzle of Balsamic reduction.

Bake at 180C for 20 minutes until pastry is golden. Allow to cool to room temp and serve.

Now THIS recipe was the funniest event of BB II! I had defrosted a rolled roast of lamb from Rutherglen Lamb, just incases we didn't have enough food (like, riiiiight, as my 16 year old daughter would say!) My theory was, that if I didn't use it for BB, we had gorgeous friends out from Canada, so I'd use it sometime over the weekend.

So there is was, sitting forlornly in the fridge.

And as I watched each new blogger come in, each seemingly carrying ANOTHER SWEET TREAT, I got more and more aprehensive! Thanh and his lemon/white chocolate/coconut cake (although he did bring poor man's potato's as well!), Vida with her Oblatna, Michael with his Chocolate & cream cheese Brownies (Thank goodness for Cindy's tofu balls!), Jon with his chocolate ganache tarts, Duncan with his macarons, Claire's Layered freeform cheescake with stewed cherries, rhubarb and hazelnut brittle..

Agnes was my only hope, and she bought smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, and carmelised onion tarts!

Hurriedly, I grabbed some random ingredients, a couple of anchovies, some sundried tomatoes, a woj of fetta, some black olives and stuffed the roll with said ingredients, I grabbed some fresh oregano from the garden and mashed it with some olive oil and smeared the whole shebang with it.

Popped it into the wood fired oven for about 2 hours and voila!!

Let's do it again some time, yes??


Photos courtesy of Jon from Melbourne Foodie.