Gluten free roasted squash, caramelized onion, and ricotta tart

Deb at Smit­ten Kitchen had a recipe for a But­ter­nut Squash and Caramelized Onion Gal­lette that looked deli­cious. Since I can’t resist tin­ker­ing, and since I wanted to make a gluten free crust, my end result has a more cracker-y, pizza-like crust, but it’s still a good way to use up my Boston Organ­ics squash and onions.

Heat oven to 425F. Peel and chop a but­ter­nut squash into small chunks. Place on a bak­ing sheet (lined with foil or a Sil­pat is eas­ier clean-up), and sea­son with salt, Mignonette Pep­per and Pow­dered Rose­mary. Spray with olive oil cook­ing spray until coated, and roast in oven 20 min­utes. Stir squash, roast another 10 minutes.

Peel and halve, then thinly slice three small yel­low onions. In a large saute pan, melt 1/2 c. salted but­ter, add the onions, some salt, rose­mary, and mignonette pep­per, and stir. Reduce heat to low, and cover, stir­ring occa­sion­ally until golden and caramelized, approx. 30 minutes.

Once the onions and squash have started cook­ing, make the dough. In a food proces­sor, place 1 stick salted but­ter, chopped straight from the freezer into tbsp. size chunks. Add 3/4 lb. chick­pea flour. Pulse until it forms a coarse meal. Add 2 tbsp. lemon juice, 1/3 cup full fat plain yogurt or sour cream, 1/4 cup cold water. Pulse until it forms a thick bat­ter, stop­ping to scrape down the sides of the work­bowl and redis­trib­ute clumps. The dough will be very sticky. When the dough has come together, scrape it out of the work­bowl onto a lined cookie sheet. The dough should have the tex­ture of a pasta frolla or pate sucree– very short, very soft, very greasy and mal­leable with the hands. Pat the dough out until it cov­ers the cookie sheet and is an even width.

Spray with olive oil cook­ing spray, pierce with a fork, and par­bake, 10 minutes.

Your roasted squash should look some­thing like this:

Your onions should look some­thing like this:

When the dough is done par­bak­ing, take it out, and sprin­kle the squash and onions across the dough, so there is a thin coat­ing across the dough.

Grate on a nice shower of parmesan.

Add half-spoonfuls of whole milk ricotta. (I used to work at Bertucci’s, and am greatly enam­ored of baked blobs of ricotta.) Spray the whole mess with some more olive oil cook­ing spray, and put it in the oven.

After twenty (20) min­utes, your tart should look browned at the edges, and the ricotta should have spread a bit. The crust will be firm and quite crisp and crack­ery at the edges. It should taste sweet and nutty. If it’s at all pasty tex­tured, it’s too thick and needs more baking.

Slide the tart off your Sil­pat or tin­foil onto the counter, slice, and enjoy. Goes well with a ries­ling, guer­w­ertz­trau­miner, or un-oaked chardonnay.

I was really happy with this, since I just fudged the crust recipe, using the liq­uid and fat quan­ti­ties called for in Deb’s recipe, and then just adding the chick­pea flour until it seemed like the right tex­ture. I did make it too dry, and there­fore added in a lit­tle more yogurt (Deb’s recipe calls for sour cream, which I didn’t have) to moisten it back up again. Next time, I might serve lemon wedges to squeeze on the tart at the table, and if I had fresh herbs, I would def­i­nitely have used them on the final bak­ing. I also would have grated some fresh nut­meg and mixed it with the ricotta. It might also be good with lemon zest in the ricotta.

This tart dough is going to be a repeat for me for savory tarts all win­ter. Some­times you feel like a pizza riff, and this does the trick, while being sub­stan­tial enough to hold up to some heav­ier toppings.