A Salmon and Nettle Tart - Dish of the Month

As Nigel Slater says: "there is something deeply satisfying about taking a huge, golden tart to the table, a tart we have made ourselves. A tart we can give to others knowing it will give as much pleasure to them as making it did to us"  There is something even more satisfying in making a tart that includes foraged ingredients such as wild garlic and nettles, free food!

 

Look at this lovely tweet I got from himself! He is very generous with his tweets to Dish of the Month participants. Thanks Nigel, you made my day.

When I went to the freezer, I discovered I only had one salmon fillet left, so used a couple of haddock fillets to bulk out the tart, you would never have been able to tell.  I topped it with some of the Wild Garlic butter I made and froze last month.

I baked the fish in the oven for about 15 minutes and then left it to cool.

I'd read in The Foragers Kitchen that you could substitute young nettle tops for spinach, so I donned my rubber gloves and headed round into the back garden to collect some nettles.  Living on a farm means that the fields and hedgerows tend to invade the garden and while this is not great for gardening, it is rather handy for foraging!

 

I made my usual shortcrust pastry recipe  chilled it then baked it blind.  I then added the cooled fish and blanched nettles.  I used 3 eggs, one egg yolk and 300ml of double cream for the custard (Nigel uses 4 eggs and more cream) and then baked the tart for about 25 minutes until the custard had set and was turning golden brown.

I didn't tell anyone about the nettles until they had oohed and ahhed and told me how delicious this tart was.  My mother-in-law surprised me by telling me that she and her step-mother had once gathered nettles and made a nettle broth which she remembered was delicious.

My husband also proclaimed that the tart was even better when we had it cold the next day.  Another success from Nigel Slater's The kitchen diaries II and my entry for Dish of the Month.

If you would like to take part, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
•  Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @serialcrafter or @Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers. 

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe.  Likewise recipes on the Guardian Lifestyle website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.