Author and cook Kate Young. Photo: Yuki Sugiura
Let’s hear it for spring onions. “I like the sharpness of their white bottoms, and their more mellow green tops,” says the Queensland-born writer and cook Kate Young. “I like most how alive they taste, how verdant and fresh – a product of a life spent not underground, like their cousins, but growing upwards towards the sun.”
Kate, whose debut novel Experienced (2024) was a queer romcom set in Bristol, is the author of Dinner at Mine?, a new and beautifully produced book with a generous heart. In it she takes 15 simple ingredients, from a punnet of tomatoes to a tin of anchovies, and offers six recipes for each of them. “One for you, one for two, one for a midweek supper for three or four, one for a weekend feast, one for a portable dish …”
Kate lives in a converted factory in the English countryside, and loves having people round for dinner. Of the tart recipe she shares here, she says: “This is just a properly gorgeous meal. It’s so pleasing to put together, is so bright and vibrant and green, and I think it looks much trickier than it is, which always makes me feel flashy and impressive.
“Spring onions don’t often get to be the star, but they really are here; everything else is working in service of their flavour.”
Words by Jane Ferguson
Spring onion tart. Photo: Yuki Sugiura
Spring onion tart
A tarte tatin this is not (technically it would need caramelized sugar), but it borrows the process from the famous flipped and flaky pastry. Here, cooking the tart upside down lets the pastry cook through without charring the spring onions again, retaining the tender sweetness they’ll have after their first roast. It’s a lovely way to cook them, ensuring that their mild astringency is mellowed, green, and bright.
Serves 4
Ingredients
4 tbsp olive oil
300g spring onions
250g ricotta
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
Fronds from 12 dill sprigs
A generous pinch of salt
A pinch of chilli flakes (I love gochugaru here, but you can use any you have around)
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 x 320g sheet puff pastry
150g frozen peas
2 tsp Dijon mustard
100g pea shoots (or watercress, if you can’t get hold of them)
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6.
Drizzle 2 tbsps of the olive oil over the spring onions and arrange in a single layer on a baking tray. Cook for 30 mins, until lightly charred.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the ricotta with the garlic, half the dill (roughly chopped), a pinch of salt, chilli flakes, and the lemon zest and most of the juice.
Unroll the puff pastry sheet on to a chopping board and lightly score into it, a thumb’s width from the edge, all the way around. Spread the ricotta mixture over the rectangle in the centre. Set aside in the fridge until your spring onions are ready for it.
Take the spring onions from the oven and slice the roots off. Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper, assemble the spring onions in a tight line, and flip the pastry over them, ricotta side down.
Return to the oven and bake for 25 mins, until the pastry is risen, crisp, and a deep golden colour. Let it cool for 10 mins, before placing a chopping board over the pastry, then flipping it over.
Meanwhile, cook the peas for a couple of minutes in a pan of boiling water, then cool them quickly by straining them and dropping them into iced water (or running cold tap water over them). Leave them to drain.
Whisk the mustard with the last of the lemon juice and the remaining olive oil. When you’re ready to serve, toss the peas, pea shoots and remaining fronds of dill through the dressing.
Top the tart with the dressed peas and pea shoots, and serve warm.
Dinner at Mine? is published by Head of Zeus (£25)