Onion and goat's cheese tart

While I was making mince pies, I thought I'd make a tart for tea - they use the same shortcrust pastry base.

You'll need:

a small log of goat's cheese
two or three large onions, sliced
a handful of black olives
dried thyme
black pepper
enough shortcrust pastry to line a flan tin

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Chuck a slug of olive oil into a large frying pan, and heat. Add the sliced onions, and cook on a low heat for 15-20 minutes (at least - they can keep pottering along for much longer if you need them to), until they've softened and started to caramelise.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry, and line the flan tin. Shortcrust is usually pretty forgiving, so you can patch up corners if you haven't got the shape quite right. I use one of those flan tins with a removable base, just to make getting the damn thing out a bit easier.

Spread the onions over the base, and then top with 4 or 5 slices of goat's cheese. Sprinkle over some olives, thyme and black pepper, and then bung in the oven for 20 minutes or so until the pastry is golden and the cheese is molten.

We ate ours with a salad of spinach leaves - it went well with the oily cheese.