Haggis, Potato and Apple Tart

The tart is really lovely on its own and it's possibly the first recipe I ever used that I thought didn't need adjusting or changing any proportions at all. The only addition I made was a little bit of tangy gravy sauce to make it a bit more moist. It will go really well with some greens as well, like broccoli.

I found this recipe in a cook book I picked up for £2 in a charity shop – by far the best cook book I've ever had, if you can get your hands on it get it now.

Ingredients:

• 450g of potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tbsp of salt
• about 1/2 of freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp of ground black pepper
• 400g of ready-made puff pastry
• 300g of haggis
• 2 cooking apples - peeled, cored and sliced
• egg wash (1 egg and a splash of milk, beaten together with a fork)

 1. You will need a rather large tart dish - mine was a bit too small (23cm diameter, 4cm deep), which meant I had leftovers, which meant I had to make an apple strudel... Ah well. ;)

2. Roll out the puff pastry. You will need two discs - one about 25 cm in diameter and one slightly larger. Line the dish with the larger disc. Trim away any uneven edges, but leave a bit of a rim, so that you can fold it in later.

 3. Mix the potatoes with garlic, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Layer half of the potatoes on the bottom of the dish (sorry, forgot to photograph that stage).

Then take the haggis out of its packaging. It will have the texture of sticky play-dough. Roll it out with a rolling pin until it matches the size of your dish and place it on top of the potatoes.

 4. Layer the apples on top of the haggis.

 5. As a final layer, place the remaining half of the potatoes on top of the apples...

6. ...and finally cover the whole tart with the other disc of pastry. Fold the edges together using some egg wash as glue and make a few small cuts in the surface of the pastry to let the steam escape. Brush the whole surface thinly with egg wash.

I also used some pastry off-cuts to make flowers and leaves.

7. Place in an oven pre-heated to 200 degrees and bake for about 40 minutes.

As you can see, my oven insists on burning one side of everything. I think that damn thing hates me.

For the sauce

I cheated here a little bit. I only needed a little bit of sauce, so rather than cooking beef stock from scratch I used gravy granules to make about a cup of beef gravy, and then spiced it up with a good splash of Lea and Perrins Sauce and about a teaspoon of finely ground black pepper. The sourness of Lea and Perrins corresponds really well with the apples, and the pepper matched the spiciness of haggis.


As I said, the tart dish I used was too small, so I ended up with a bit of apples left over. I also bought a big pack of puff pastry, which meant I had that leftover as well. I figured it would have been an absolute abomination not to use it to make a quick and simple apple strudel. :) Have a look here.