Pissaladiere

I’m starting to get really excited about our upcoming holidays. I’ve wanted to go to the south of France for ages and in a few weeks we’ll be heading off to Nice for a week of living it up on the Riviera. There’s been a lot of time spent drooling over descriptions of restaurants in guidebooks and on TripAdvisor while I imagine all the delicious local specialities I’m going to gorge on. One speciality I don’t have to wait to try as I have a recipe for i already – Pissaladiere.

This is yet another Stephane Reynaud inspired dish. Sorry if you’re getting bored with me referring to him all the time but his books are fantastic.

Basically Pissaladiere is a white pizza with lots of onions, anchovies and olives. Some variations use tomatoes. You can make it with a pizza like dough or if you’re feeling lazy try it as more of an onion tart using puff pastry as I’ve done here.

Incidentally the rosemary and olive paste you rub on the pastry in this recipe is awesome. I ate loads of it on its own before reluctantly putting the spoon down and spreading it on the pastry. It would be great on a bit of toast or a cracker.

The pissaladiere will feed 4 people as a light lunch or a couple of greedy pigs for dinner (I ate this one all by myself over a couple of days).

Serves 4

3 medium-sized onions, sliced
Black olives
1 jar anchovies
1 block of ready-made puff pastry
2 sprigs of rosemary

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Strip the leaves from the rosemary and put in a blender with some of the olives.
Spread the resulting paste onto the top of the pastry then roll it out into a thin rectangle.
Very gently sweat the onions in a pan with some olive oil for 10 minutes until they’re soft.
Cover the pastry with the onions.
Place the anchovies on the pastry in a criss-cross pattern (you might have to tear them in half to cover the whole pastry) then put an olive in the middle of each diamond.
Cook in the oven for 20 minutes.