OK finally made it to put the comments up. Should be some photos up soon too.
Firstly made the potato and goats cheese tart.
- how easy it was to cook...
It wasn't particularly difficult but it wasn't particularly quick. Having had experience of undercooked potatoes on previous recipes and others on here saying about potatoes being a bit hard, I sliced the potatoes then zapped them in the microwave for about 4 minutes to give them a head start. I do think it helped but it then meant I had very hot potato slices to handle and put down in the pan.
It would have been handy to have known how the potatoes should have been put down - I just did concentric circles but it meant that some bits were significantly thicker than other bits. Or if we were aiming for a single layer of potatoes rather than overlapping bits...
Recipe seemed a bit out of order - would have been better to get the onions started first as they are the bit that takes the longest and then get onto the potatoes. Plus it should have mentioned the size of the onion needed and the size as well as the type of potatoes to aim for - I wasn't sure if I needed big ones or little ones. I used big ones sliced thinly but I think if you used little ones you would end up taking ages to lie them out, especially if they were par cooked and hot - unless a random layer was acceptable. Oh and there was no gas equivalent temperature.
I just did the onions in a saucepan - I tend to do onions in a saucepan for things like spag bog a lot as ds1 hates onions so I do them separately and add them after taking his portion off. Also easier to stick a lid on to them initially if they are in a saucepan - so if the heat is low (which it would be useful if the recipe mentioned) you can put a lid on them and let them sweat a bit which means they don't need quite so much looking after and they do a bit more quickly but taste just as sweet. The onions were yummy though, even though they only had dried thyme in (shop was out of fresh thyme). I could quite easily eat the onions themselves as a side dish; despite doing two large red onions in order to pick at as chef's perks quality control them, I think the tart could have handled more of them.
Having been lucky enough to go on the goats cheese tasting event, I am now lucky enough to know that there are loads of different goat's cheeses around so it would have been nice to have a little direction as to the type of goat's cheese that would have worked best. I ended up with a small log with rind that I cut small slices from, popped them around a bit like you would on a pizza which worked well (plus the packet said it was one that was good for cooking).
Took longer in the oven to melt the cheese than the recipe said and longer for the potatoes to look cooked - probably took 10 mins on the hob and 8 mins in the oven.
- whether your family enjoyed it...
DP ended up unexpectedly having to rush off out the evening that I made it and whilst I left him a portion when he got back he wasn't that bothered about trying it, not least because he isn't a fan of goat's cheese particularly and is trying to eat very healthily so the fact it was out of a frying pan made him automatically think it was unhealthy.
I enjoyed it - but as others have said it was a pain to get out of the pan nicely so it just ended up as a heap on my plate. If I had been serving up for dh would have made a bit more of an effort but as it had all taken longer than I expected I was tired and hungry so just left it and ate it as it was. I had salad on the table that the dc were eating so ate it with some of that which went well. I also warmed up a portion the next day for lunch as we were having a bit of a tapas-y pick and mix selection and it went down well in that. Would have been very nice with a bit of my mum's home made cranberry sauce but I've run out of my christmas stash of that so used red currant jelly instead, which gave it a nice extra dimension. It would have been even nicer with lots more onions on!
- if you included your own twist...
I used a bit of butter and some local cold pressed rapeseed oil instead of olive oil to cook with - I prefer the taste plus I had it in and I figure that of all the people to switch to butter in a recipe - well it has to be a James Martin recipe really :o
It was a bit of a funny tart, not least because my potatoes ended up being thickest in the middle (I'd started layering my potatoes around the outside first) which meant it was more of a pile than a tart - I think of tarts having edges to contain the filling whereas on this you were putting the filling onto the thickest bit and there was no edge to contain it. Saying that, some of the underneath bits of the potato got a bit more burnt than I was expecting, not least as they still looked fine on top.
It would have been nice to have had a clearer picture of what the tart was supposed to look like on the printed recipe.
I would also have been nice with the onions and then 'british breakfast stuff' on top - bacon bits, sweet cherry tomatoes, egg each that baked whilst in the oven - might give that a go as a weekend brunch soon. Would also work with other roasted veggies on too. And for all of them with nice red pepper chopped up and cooked with the onion to be all tasty within it.