Vegetable Spiral Tart from Home Made Christmas

As a part of the ABRAMS Dinner Party again for 2018-19, I will be sent most of the cookbooks for their season. This is how I ended up thumbing through Home Made Christmas by Yvette van Boven several months before Christmas! I marked a few sweet recipes to try, as I tend to do, but I kept coming back to a few savory dishes. One that topped the list is the vegetable spiral tart. In the cookbook, Yvette has made a beautiful tart with all one spiral. As I attempted to force my vegetables into submission, I decided it was going to be easier to make rosettes surrounding a central spiral. It isn't quite as perfect as the picture but it was tasty, and will do just nicely for lunch later this week as well!

Vegetable Spiral Tart with Avocado-Curry Cream

For the crust:

About 1 pound (450 g) sweet potatoes, peeled*
1 egg
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the filling:

3 large carrots (about 11 oz/300 g, peeled)
2 parsnips, peeled
1 eggplant
2 eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp (150 ml) heavy cream
1 small clove garlic, pressed or grated
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp caraway seeds

On the side: 

1 avocado
1 tsp curry powder
Grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup (125 ml) crème fraîche

Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).

Cut a piece of parchment paper to size so it fits a 9-inch [tart] pan. Grease everything, including the parchment paper.**

Grate the sweet potatoes in a food processor using a coarse grater.*** Beat the egg with some salt and pepper and combine it with the sweet potato. Press the sweet potato mixture into the [tart] pan, forming an even layer on the bottom and up the edges. Prebake the crust on the lower rack in the oven until half done and the edges begin to brown, about 25 minutes. Let cool somewhat on a rack.

Increase the oven temperature to 400 F (200 C).

Meanwhile, make the filling. Shave the vegetables as thinly as you dare into strips. I use a vegetable peeler for the carrots and the parsnips. That works better than you might think. For the eggplant I use a chef's knife to cut very thin slivers.

Whisk the eggs and cream together with the garlic, curry powder, and caraway. Season with salt and pepper.

Fit the vegetables in the pan in circles, artfully alternating among different colors so it will look beautiful. Continue until all have been used up. After filling the whole pan I always stick the final slivers left on the counter in between the vegetable spirals. You can really use everything!

Pour the egg mixture over the vegetables, carefully spreading it out. Bake the tart for at least 45 minutes, until done. Let rest for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. If you are planning to serve the tart later you should bake it for only 35 minutes. In that case it will go back into the oven just before serving. Let cool, cover, and store in the fridge until ready to serve.

Make the avocado cream. Puree the avocado together with the curry powder and the lemon zest and juice in a food processor until completely smooth. Stir in the crème fraîche. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Allow the tart to reach room temperature (if it's been in the fridge.) Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C). Bake the tart for about 15 minutes, until nicely done and warm throughout. Serve with the cold avocado cream.

Notes from JennyBakes:

Overall, this was tasty if a bit fiddly. The crust was simple but delicious, so I'm already thinking of other ways I can use it... maybe as a crust for a savory cheesecake! I would like to know if I could do a simpler version of this without having to shave and arrange the vegetables. Also for my tastes, eggplant is not really working here, but I know I'm not a huge fan the way other people are.

* This was just one average sweet potato

** Really listen to this step. I skipped it and will have a messy oven floor to clean sometime soon.

*** I didn't pull out the food processor, just used a handheld grater and it was fine.

I keep saying [tart] when she says pie pan, because the ingredients fit perfectly in a tart pan, the recipe title is tart, the picture looks like a tart, and I think there wouldn't be enough to fill a pie pan. The cookbook author is Dutch so I wondered if tart and pie are the same English word. No big deal, but you might want more of at least the egg mixture if you're going pie plate.

I didn't make the avocado-curry cream but it would have been good, adding some acid it probably needed. The curry flavor in the egg mixture comes across pretty strongly already, so you may want to reduce it in one of the two places if you're making both the tart and the cream.

Home Made Christmas
by Yvette van Boven
Abrams Books
Publication Date: 16 October 2018

Recipes are divided into the type of dish, with fun menu ideas in the back. Others I've marked to try include Ginger Hot Chocolate, Squash, Feta & Sage Pull-Apart Bread, Curry Cauliflower Christmas Pasty with Almonds & Apricots, Carrot Tatin with Goat Cheese, Trifle with Salty Caramel, Cheesecake Cream & Chewy Brownies, Hazelnut Meringue Log with Frangelico Cream & Caramel. (I actually bought everything for the Curry Cauliflower Pasty except... the cauliflower. Doh! So I need to make another trip to the store.)

This post is sponsored by ABRAMS Books, as part of the ABRAMS Dinner Party.