I don’t think my tarts look particularly good because I didn’t have a deep enough tart tray and I should have made the pastry thinner, but they still tasted really good and I’ll know better next time.
I have to thank Niranjana for this recipe from Niranjana Brown Paper. You can see it here and view how the tarts should look! This one is from a cookery book for vegans. I didn’t know that vegans could eat margarine. Presumably butter can be used if you want but I just stuck with the marg.
The recipe calls for flax seeds and I managed to buy a sachet from Holland and Barrett health food store. It was very cheap for a 30g packet and I wouldn’t leave this ingredient out because I think it probably contributed a lot to the rich flavour.
I made the pastry from scratch but it’s a lot easier to just buy the frozen sweet shortcrust pastry. It tastes just as good, I think.
The next time I do this recipe I think I might put meringue on top just for a change because my pastry recipe uses 1 egg yolk, and I could use up the white in that way.
That looks good!
I add flax seed to a lot of things–cereal, soups, etc. It has a nice nutty flavor. Flax seed oil is foul though…
I’m definitely going to bake them again but they’ll look better next time. I had never heard of people eating flax seed. The flowers are grown around here sometimes.
I think the oil from them is still used in the manufacture of linoleum. I suppose the oil tastes like linseed. Fine for furniture polish though!
I’ve never had linseed oil, but flax seed is really bitter. I guess it polishes up your insides 🙂
I haven’t seen flax seed oil but I think linseed oil would probably kill you, or if it didn’t, you would wish that it had! Do you put only ground flax seeds into your cooking? I did see big bags of whole seeds in the shop and wondered what they were used for. Maybe I could add them to rice or couscous, which I find very bland.
Have you been watching the Commonwealth Games? I’m not really into sport but I loved the opening ceremony and the scenes of life in India. I can almost smell the food from the street vendors!
I buy pre-ground flax seed–it’s pretty widely available here. I add it to my oatmeal, to pad thai–any food where nuts are a natural compliment. I am a purist when it comes to rice though–I don’t let anything mess with my Basmati!
I’m not into sport or television, so not really watching the Games. But gosh, I would kill for some Indian street food 🙂
Niranjana,
Thanks for the info. I hadn’t thought of adding it to porridge, I’m going to try it. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone though because adding anything to porridge is sacrilege in Scotland!
The trouble with my rice is that my husband doesn’t like Basmati. He likes plain long grain rice which I find quite tasteless, but I’ll try him with the ground flax seed added.
Katrina.