Delicious, great with a glass or two of wine, in addition to a cheese platter, some quince paste  – as just proven by our neighbours and me!

This is a great recipe – one of Helene Meurer’s from the famous Thermomix blog site superkitchenmachine.com

It is fabulous as a small plate with a glass or two of wine, or would be an amazing picnic dish.  You can eat it warm or cold, so what’s not to love about it?   You can make it pretty quickly – I made the onion jam component yesterday night and left it to develop flavours overnight in the fridge, and then put it together this afternoon – so while you might look at the recipe and think – one and a half hours is too much, you  can split it up into components.  If I had have been thinking, I would have done the pastry last night as well, but clearly, I was not thinking! I chilled the pastry for 25 minutes in the fridge and it was fine to work with.  I rolled it out on the thermomat, which worked beautifully, and then inverted the thermomat and placed it over the flan dish, and eased the pastry off. It worked seamlessly – no tears, no bulges, and the pastry itself didn’t shrink while I was blind baking it.

In fact, I actually had a bit of cheat on this recipe.  When I went to put it together this afternoon, I realised that I didn’t have any wheat kernels in the pantry – and, to be honest, it was one of those days when I just couldn’t be bothered getting back in the car and going to the supermarket.  So I did a bit of googling and wondered if there was anything in the cupboard I could use instead of wheat.  So I took a gamble and used barley – and – to my delight – it worked fine!  So, my theory is – if this recipe tasted great with the barley crust, it would definitely be amazing with the wheat!!

I used some of the left over gruyere from the kuzu gnocchi, some parmesan I had on hand, and the regular cracker barrel cheddar – so not the really expensive cheddar.  The cream cheese I used was the stock standard Philadelphia – which is a staple in my fridge since I have been a thermomix owner – you can whip up a dip in two minutes with a pack of Philly in the fridge.

I can’t actually think of any tips that would make this dish any easier to make – it’s a dream!

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