This savoury version of a traditional French apple dessert makes for a delicious open-faced pie no matter the season. For dedicated carnivores, place a few slices of chorizo in between the sweet potato before baking or crumble over crispy pieces of speck before serving.
Ingredients
(Serves 8)
100 g spelt or wholemeal plain flour
150 g plain flour
200 g + 50 g unsalted butter, diced
½ tsp salt
½ cup sour cream
1 tbsp fresh thyme, leaves stripped from sprigs
1.2 kg med sweet potatoes, peeled
½ cup toasted hazelnuts, roughly chopped
salt flakes & freshly cracked black pepper
1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar
100 g feta
thyme sprigs, to garnish
Method
Preheat oven to 200˚C.
Place the flours, 200 g unsalted butter and salt in a food processor and pulse until the texture of coarse breadcrumbs.
Add the sour cream and continue to pulse until the pastry dough starts to form but is not yet a mass.
Tip out onto a bench and press into a flattened ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate.
Heat the remaining 50 g unsalted butter in the bottom of a deep large heavy-based stove-to-oven frying pan until nut-brown in colour. Remove from the heat and add the tablespoon of thyme.
Cut the sweet potato into 3 cm thick slices and place in the nut-brown thyme butter on the bottom of the frying pan. Sprinkle over the roughly chopped hazelnuts.
Roll the pastry out on a lightly floured bench, until slightly larger than the diameter of the pan. Lay on top of the sweet potato and tuck the edges in around the edge.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 180˚C. Bake a further 30 minutes and then leave to cool for 5 minutes before inverting onto a large serving plate.
Season with salt flakes and freshly cracked black pepper before drizzling over the Balsamic vinegar, crumbling the feta over the top and garnishing with more thyme sprigs.
