Artichoke Tarts with Blue Cheese and Watercress

These artichoke tarts with blue cheese and watercress combine some strong & classic flavours with rich, buttery pastry. Ideal for supper alongside a crisp green salad or made into mini tartlets for parties.

Homemade tarts.  Love them – especially ones with cheese in them. These artichoke tarts combine some quite strong flavours.  There is depth of flavour from marinated artichokes coupled with punchy blue cheese and robust watercress.  And don’t you just love the dark golden colour of the cooked cheese against the pastry shell? They are certainly rich and luxurious, so what’s not to like?

I can’t give you this recipe without making a confession.  But, before I divulge, you must believe me when I tell you I do actually have a life.  I really do.

Okay, here goes:

I have never used a food processor to make pastry. Not once. I don’t even own a food processor.  Actually, two confessions – I also never buy ready-made pastry (with the exception of Filo – I’m not totally insane).

I quite understand why people do process or buy, so I’m not judging – especially since I’ve never given it a go – but the thing is, when I bake it’s about me doing something.  So I’m making no excuses for sticking with traditional techniques – it’s my way of relaxing.  I particularly love pastry making and feeling the changing textures within the bowl.  It also takes me back… way back… to my secondary school days and home economics classes…

When it came to pastry making, my teacher would wander around the room checking our hands – flour on our palms meant we had not been rubbing in correcting.  All you heard as she walked from table to table was ‘fingertips, girls! Use only your fingertips!’ (I went to an all-girls school).  As soon as she was out of vision, our eyes would roll at each other in the way that only kids can manage.  But her words stuck and I clearly learned something. To this day I always check my palms during pastry making – old habits die-hard.  The other thing I always do – again, thanks to the same teacher – is give my bowl a shake towards the end of the rubbing in stage. Any large lumps of fats tend to rise to the top so you can see what still needs to be worked on.  Thanks Mrs E.

Moving back to the present day, I don’t know about you, but I get serious baking envy when I watch chefs on TV preparing immaculate tart cases. They make it look so easy and give great advice. Every time, I convince myself that if I use their technique mine will come out looking just as good.  In reality, it takes me quite a while to prep the cases. And even then, I struggle to get them super neat and sometimes have to do a bit of a patch up job here and there.  I’m slowly improving though and do have a few tips to help if you’re struggling too:

• Do chill the pastry dough before rolling out (but not for too long else it will be hard to roll out – 30 minutes should do)
• Roll out evenly, to a thickness of around 3-4mm
• If lining a large tin loosely wrapping the rolled out pastry around a rolling pin can help you move it into place. Carefully unfold the pastry once positioned over the tin
• Carefully push the pastry into the corners of the tin using a small piece of pastry – rolled into a ball & wrapped in cling film – rather than your fingertips to minimise the risk of tearing your pastry
• Trim the edge of the pastry case by folding back the excess pastry over the outside of the tin and using your rolling pin to ‘cut’ the pastry – simply roll firmly from the middle outwards in both directions then remove the excess pastry
• Finally, gently push the pastry back into the grooves around the side of the tin. This should allow the pastry to also gain height. Aim for the pastry to sit slightly proud of the tin to allow for shrinkage during cooking

Pastry done, these cheesy little artichoke Ttarts are straightforward. The beauty of all tarts is not only the endless combination of flavours you can fill them with, but also the ability to make bite-size, individual or sharing tarts to suit your occasion.  I love to serve these artichoke tarts for lunch with a pile of dressed green salad leaves at the side.  I think they would also be great as canapés with a glass of champagne. I just need a justifiable reason to open a bottle to test this theory.

More savoury pastries to try

Have you made these artichoke tarts? Please let me know how you got along with the recipe by leaving a rating – I always love to hear from my readers.

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