Garlic Tart Redaction – Libro di cucina/ Libro per cuoco

CV Garlic tart
Take garlic cloves, peel and boil them.  When they are cooked put them to soak in cold water and then grind them and add saffron, enough fresh cheese, beaten lard, sweet and strong spices and temper the mixture with eggs, add raisins and then make the tart.

 

At Rowany Festival I was trying out a new recipe from a new source to me, the Italian 14th Century cookbook, Libro di Cucina (translation in English from Helewyse de Birkestad, OL  (MKA Louise Smithson) from the transcription of  Ludovico Frati (ed.): Libro di cucina del secolo XIV. Livorno 1899 prepared and made available online by Thomas Gloning. )

I’m always keen to find more vegetarian options and Garlic Tart sounded like an awesome option.

My Redaction

Ingredients

800g of pre peeled garlic cloves

500g of cottage cheese

20g of softened butter

1 tsp each of white pepper, ginger, cinnamon and clove

4 eggs

1 handful of raisins

Pastry for 3 x 9 inch pies

Method

Boil the garlic cloves for 10 minutes or until soft when pricked with a fork. Strain them out and place them in a bowl of cold water for half an hour.

Using a food processor, chop them very finely.

Add to the cottage cheese and mix well together.

Add butter, eggs, raisins and spices and mix well together.

Make up the pastry into pie bases and pour the mix in.

Bake at 180C for half an hour, or until the top is a deep golden brown.

The pies will keep for a week in the fridge, the longer the pies wait until being eaten, the more mellow the garlic will get. They were quite garlicky to start with but melded into a more even flavour. I chose to use butter as the fat rather than lard which the original recipe calls for in order to keep it vegetarian friendly.