Grow and cook: courgette and fennel tart recipe
Courgettes are a must for the patio vegetable garden. They provide a welcome flash of colour, with their sunny yellow flowers followed by a tasty and truly versatile crop. You can eat them raw, stir-fried, pickled or roasted.
If you pick them often, you will have a steady harvest all summer long. Teaming this crop with tall, frondy fennel gives this display height and structure, not to mention a delicious flavour combination in the finished dish.
If you don't have space to grow your own, skip to the recipe for a list of ingredients and instructions on how to make this delicious tart.
For the garden, you will need:
- 5 x Florence fennel Sirio seed
- 1 x courgette Piccolo F1 seed
- 5 x onion Forum sets
- 1 x pot marigold (Calendula officinalis Indian Prince)
- 1 x 50cm/20 inch-diameter container
- Multipurpose or soil-based compost
- General organic vegetable fertiliser
Grow me
Plant in early spring; sow in mid-spring
1. Place the container in a sunny, sheltered position and fill it with compost, mixing in the granular organic fertiliser to release nutrients slowly for steady growth and a high-quality crop.
2. If planting onions in rows in the ground you would aim to space them 10cm/4 inches apart, but they can be a bit cosier in containers if you are not fussy about harvesting slightly smaller – but equally tasty – bulbs.
The trick is to harvest one or two bulbs early, allowing the remaining few bulbs to mature to full size. In early spring, plant the sets in a group to one side of the container.
Make sure their tips are just poking out above the surface of the compost.
3. Wait until mid-spring to start off the fennel, courgettes and pot marigolds indoors, in modular trays. Sow courgettes one seed per cell, pot marigolds two seeds per cell and fennel seeds around three per cell; thin when about 5cm/2 inches tall to one seedling per cell.
Plant the seedlings out into the container when all risk of frost has passed in late spring – look for signs of the roots at the bases of the trays as an indication that they are ready for their final position.
4. Keep well watered and feed every two weeks. Cover half the depth of the fennel bulb with more compost when it starts to swell. Keep picking the pot marigolds to prolong flowering.
Time to harvest
By the time the fennel is ready for harvest in late summer, 14–16 weeks after sowing, you will be able to lift the onions too, as their foliage will be turning brown by then. This compact variety of courgette will most likely give you more courgettes than you might need for this dish.
Feel free to pick the fruits even if you are not ready to make the tart because this will stop the fruits getting too large and will provide you with a continuous supply of produce. Pick the pot marigold flowers just before serving your tart.
Ingredients
- 3 courgettes, thinly sliced
- 1 fennel bulb, hard core removed, thinly sliced
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 1 splash olive oil
- 1 pinch salt and pepper, to taste
- 1 handful chopped parsley
- 500 g pack puff pastry
- 100 g mature cheddar, grated
- 1 handful marigold petals
Details
- Cuisine: British
- Recipe Type: Main
- Difficulty: Medium
- Preparation Time: 15 mins
- Cooking Time: 30 mins
- Serves: 4
Step-by-step
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.
- Put the courgettes, fennel, onion, oil, salt and pepper in a roasting tin and toss until evenly coated. Cover with aluminium foil and roast for 30 minutes. Remove and leave to cool.
- Drain excess juice from the vegetables and mix in the parsley.
- Roll out the puff pastry to about 20 x 30cm/8 x 12 inches and lay on a baking sheet. Score a line about 2.5cm/1 inch from the edge without cutting all the way through.
- Scatter the roasted vegetables over the pastry and cover with cheese.
- Bake for 20 minutes until the pastry has risen and browned.
- Remove and serve hot or cold. Scatter the marigold petals over the finished dish for a splash of home-grown colour.
Recipe extracted from One-Pot Gourmet Gardener by Cinead McTernan, photography by Jason Ingram. Published by Frances Lincoln
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