CARAMELISED ONION & GOATS' CHEESE PISSALADIERE WITH BACON & ROASTED PEPPERS

Whenever I see a French recipe in a magazine, I will normally cut it out and cook it for Pascal, just like I did here. A Pissaladiere is a pizza style tart from Nice in the South of France - traditionally it is a pizza style base topped with caramelised onions, garlic, olives and anchovies. Obviously we had to mix it up and involve cheese somehow!! Unfortunately little did I know Pascal doesn't like caramelised onions (and neither does Arabella) - whoops!

Ingredients for 4-6 people:

4 roasted red peppers (you can buy them in a jar or roast them yourself)
50g butter
4 red onions, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp Marmite
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
375g ready rolled puff pastry
8 rashes of smoked streaky bacon, chopped (you could probably use lardons instead)
150g goats' cheese
Rocket leaves, Parsley or Basil, to serve

Melt 50g of butter in a frying pan and gently cook the onion and garlic over a low heat until they are soft and golden brown. This will take around 30 minutes. While these are cooking, preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 C(fan) / gas mark 4 and take the pastry out the fridge.

Then stir in the Marmite and thyme. The Marmite gives the onions a more meaty, richer taste.

Unroll the pastry onto a baking sheet (I used a dish) and prick all over with a fork.

Spread with the caramelised onions.

Then cut the peppers into strips and add them.

Scatter over with bacon and roast in the oven for 20 minutes.

Then add the goats' cheese and cook for a further 10-15 minutes (you just need to make sure the bacon is cooked).

To serve scatter with some green leaves.

I really really liked this, even though I am not a Marmite fan, it added a great flavour to the onions which went brilliantly with the goats' cheese, bacon and peppers. Unfortunately neither Pascal or Arabella were that enamoured with the recipe….Arabella even went so far to say it was the most revolting thing she had ever eaten…she did eat it though! The offending ingredient was the onions, so I will do this again for them but with a tomato base (more pizza than pissaladiere) or I will have to make it for fellow onion lovers like myself.

One thing I have realised is when I do rip these recipes out of magazines for Pascal, they are actually more for me than him ;-)