Sweet and Savoury Fig and Feta Tart

There are occasions when opposite flavours can be successfully matched together. Cheese paired with sweet fruit or marmelade, cheesecake with berries are heavenly marriages. For everyone who savours a sweet and savoury taste mixing in the mouth here is a tart that is weighing its options whether to fall into the sweet or savoury category or stay balanced in the middle.

Sweet and Savoury Fig and Feta Tart
Ingredients

The dough:
200g butter
100g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
2 eggs (S/ 53g)
250g darker plain four (Germam: Halbweissmehl)

Baking beans

Filling:
200g feta cheese, crumbled
3 tbsp soft honey
a pinch of herbes de Provance (optional)
8-10 ripe figs, cut into 8 sectors

Whisk the butter with salt, sugar (and vanilla) until smooth. Combine the eggs and then sift in the flour.
Quickly mix everything into a smooth dough. Wrap the dough ball into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.

Set the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (370 F). Prepare a tart tin either with baking paper or butter it well and flour it lightly.

Roll the dough to 5-6 mm thickness and transfer into the tin covering all sides. Cut off the excess dough.
Place a sheet of aluminium foil or baking paper on the dough and the baking beans on it.
Bake for 12-15 minutes.

Mix the crumbled feta cheese with honey. Prepare the figs.

Take the dough out of the oven, remove the beans and the foil.

Spread the feta and honey mixture on the dough. Sprinkle with the herbs de Provance if you choose to use them.

Arrange the figs on top of the feta. Drizzle a little honey on the figs.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the dough turns brown on the edges.

 

More goat cheese and fruit recipes:
Fresh figs with feta cheese
Bruschettas with goat cheese, persimmon and pear

Food from the forest: Wild berry loaf cake with ricotta and lingonberries

Lingonberries, Ger:Preiselbeere, Est: Pohlad

Lingonberries from Estonian forests

The berries in the picture are wild lingonberries. They grow in forests in Estonia and other northern European countries. I haven´t been to the Finnish forests however judging by the amount of lingonberry recipes in Finnish cookbooks I know that the neigbours in the north have the wild berries close to their hearts too.

Lingonberries are Preiselbeere in German. Sometimes they are mistaken for cranberries, indeed both are red, but these are two different species and they grow in different soil.



Lingonberries and cranberries are different spieces.

This year it has been a generous lingonberry year. Recently I described the special berry or mushroom places, a sort of special knowledge passed on from generation to generation or between the enthusiasts sharing the passion for food from the forest. During my latest trip to Estonia I discovered that my sister had recorded a new route, a "Lingonberry Place 2", in the GPS. Evem though it was already rather late in the season, the place was red with lingonberries. Just find the plumpest berries and "rake" them together following the first principle of choose the best of the best, the the best of of the worst and then everything else.

I was driving around in south Estonia and couldn't help but notice how the places had changed because the public government owned forest areas got a clean-up or the privately owned forests get felled and probably became an export article. This is leaving an impact on the foraging places.

Wild lingonberry ricotta loaf cake

Ingredients

3 large eggs, the 73g+ ones or 4 smaller eggs

200g brown sugar

220g ricotta
0.5 tsp vanilla extract

90g butter, melted and cooled

250g flour (half dark weat four is what I used)

20g baking powder

2 handful (ca 2 dl) fresh or frozen lingonberries, or more or less to your taste

Powder sugar (optional)

 

Instructions:

1. Set the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (340 F)

2. Keep the eggs at room temperature.

3. Beat the eggs and sugar into a thick foam.

4. Add ricotta and vanilla extract and beat again until smooth.

5. Pour the cooled down melted butter into the mixture.

6. Mix the baking powder with the flour and sieve the flour into the dough.

7. Lastly, add the lingonberries, mix briefly.

8. Fit a loaf baking form with baking paper and pour the dough into the form.

9. Bake for 50-60 minutes until the dough does not stick to the knife or match stick when piercing it to check doneness.

10. Take out onto the cooling rack. When the cake has cooled, decorate with powder sugar.
 

The lingonberries can be replaced by wild or industrially grown blueberries or black currants.

For more wild berry recipes see:
Wild blueberry and ricotta "boats"
Wild blueberry soup with fluffy semolina pudding
Cranberry dessert - pink semolina

Food from the forest: wild blueberry and ricotta "boats"

Freshly baked pastry out of the oven, a cup of coffee... that´s the kind of morning I like.



July and August is the wild blueberry season in the north of Europe. Lots of people take the opportunity to wander into the forest. I was reading how one of the Finnish Government ministers was motivating people to go and pick wild berries. He said that the Finnish forests are full of these berries, the problem is to get them out of there as food for people. He couldn´t be more right, same goes for Estonia.

The wild blueberries, or any other wild berries for that matter, are full of top antioxidants you can´t buy in any pharmacy, and besides the nutritional benefits I can say with confidence that the taste is just uncomparably top of the world. There is nothing more "Eco" or "Bio" than these berries that have grown without any drop of forced irrigation and the journey from picking it to the mouth is a couple of seconds long. Eat as much as you can. And when you get tired you can sit down on the soft moss and reach out for more like a panda bear.

Now then. Following the neigbour country´s minister´s call we grabbed our "baskets" and made our way to the forest that we know has been a good place for blueberries.
The thing is that the good places for any forest crop are more or less kept secret among a close circle of family and friends. By the forest crops I mean berries like wild blueberries, red lingonberries, yellow cloud berries, chanterelle or other mushrooms. Cloud berries are more available in Finnland,  further north from Estonia. Or perhaps we don´t know the right places.

There is plenty of time to let all sorts of thoughts fly through the head when foraging in a forest. I was contemplating that there is even a special word for a small basket in the Estonian language. It is called "marjakorv", meaning simply a berry basket. In the past, I mean in the centuries before the 21st, it was customary to pick the wild berries into a nice basket. The modern times provide more comfort and more practical materials like plastic. Especially the wild blueberries have a habit of leaving stains and it is pretty hard to wash a basket. Whatever the container may be that carries home the sun warm juicy berries, the result of your hard work of bending your back a hundred times, the berries are worth the sweat.

The cultivated blueberries have a much longer season and can be used instead of the wild ones. Nothing complicated. Here is how it goes.

Wild Blueberry and ricotta "boats"
Ingredients for 6 bigger portions
200g ricotta
2tbsp sugar
1 egg yolk
1 egg white, beaten hard
500g puff pastry, yeast based if available

The cuts in the puff pastry makes it rise at the edges, blueberry-ricotta filling

Instructions:
1. Roll the dough into a 5mm thick layer. Cut into suitable size rectangles.
2. With a sharp knife cut into half the thickness of the dough on all sides, circa 1cm from the edges. This will make the edges rise nicely during baking and keep the filling in the "boats".
3. Mix ricotta, egg yolk, sugar.
4. Separately beat the egg white until hard.
5. Add the egg white to the ricotta mix and combine lightly.
6. Spread a good tablespoon of the ricotta mixture on each "boat", leave the cut edges free from the filling.
7.Place a handful of fresh wild blueberries onto each boat.
8. Bake in the middle of the oven for ca. 20 minutes until the dough has taken on a light brown colour and feels cooked. Tapping lightly on the dough and if it feels crisp is a good sign.

Blueberry Ricotta pastry "boats"

More wild blueberry recipes:
Sweet wild blueberry soup with fluffy semolina dessert
Wild blueberry ricotta cake
Wild blueberry - banana smoothie