Olive, Spinach + Pine Nut Tart

This Olive, Spinach and Pine nut Tart is great with a salad and chutney.  It can be served hot cold, and travels well so it is good for a picnic.  I think this is one for true olive fans as the olives give the tart a real salty kick.  I loved it, but David (Simon’s brother) was not as enthusiastic – I ate the rest before Simon could try it!

I find photographing rectangular shaped food hard as we usually use landscape photographs on our blog and I find it hard to get the composition right.  The funny thing about editing the pictures for this post was that I noticed the subject matter kept becoming less and less as I kept playing around with more ideas, cutting pieces of the tart off and eating them.

Ingredients:
2 sheets frozen shortcrust pastry, thawed
200g baby spinach leaves
1 cup pitted Kalamata olives (my fave!)
125g cream cheese, cubed or broken into chunks
4 eggs
½ cup cream
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons pine nuts

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Line a 33 x 9 cm lose based tart tin with the pastry.  Trim off any excess pastry and prick the bottom all over with a fork.  Bake for 8 – 10 minutes until lightly golden.  Set aside to cool.  Drop the oven temperature down to 160°C.
In a frying pan, stir the spinach and olives over a medium heat for 1 – 2 minutes or until the spinach has just wilted.  Cool slightly.
Spoon the spinach mixture over the base of the pastry.  Layer the chunks of cream cheese over the top.  Whisk together the eggs, cream, salt and pepper, and pour over the top.  Sprinkle the pine nuts over the top.  Bake for about 20 – 30 minutes or until set.