Can’t Cook, Will Cook: Goat’s Cheese and Pesto Tartlets

I was waiting for this to happen. When I started my Can’t Cook, Will Cook series, I wondered how long it would take for the first disaster in the kitchen to happen. Post three peoples. Post three. I am an awful cook. There, I said it.

Yesterday I fancied a few goat’s cheese tartlets. As you do. We had a  few things hanging around the fridge from my much better cooking friend SupaSambo who had planted things like fresh pesto, rocket leaves, basil leaves, coleslaw, hummus and dirty processed meats like chorizo which I won’t touch, in our fridge.

I remembered we had some Jus-rol pastry in the freezer, bought recently among nappies and baby food jars in the freezer aisle. (Our Supervalu is small). I thought it might take ages to defrost but it only takes two hours at room temperature so that was good – not too long to wait if you’ve forgotten to take it out overnight.

I cut the pastry up and rolled it out like so.

Next, I cut the pastry into rectangles and that’s where the disaster happened. I decided in my wisdom that the baking tray was a bit small, the pastries were a bit flat and sure why don’t I throw a few rectangles on top of each other. Don’t do this. Don’t ever do this. Only ever use one flat bit of pastry. Before they went in the oven, I added a  spoon of pesto, goat’s cheese, a basil leaf and black pepper.

This is how the tray went in.

And this is how it came out.

If you can see in the very right hand corner one tiny pastry came out right. Just one. The little gem is pictured here.

 

So, should you ever feel the need to make a tartlet, here are my tips, speaking from my expert can’t cook experience.

1) It’s good to remember to defrost the pastry so that you don’t have to wait around when you’re in the mood for a tart. What’s that you say, make the pastry yourself? Pah. I don’t think so

2) Don’t layer the pastry. This pastry ain’t called puff pastry for no reason. There’s a whole lot of puff going on. See above slides.

3) Go easy on the pesto. It was a bit… pesto-y.

4) Prob best not to add basil leaves. They were a bit… crispy.

5) Add sun dried tomatoes. This would have made it a lot nicer. Just sayin.

Stay tuned for more easy cook disasters.

My family are starving on them.