Caramelised onion, olive and goats cheese tart
Three ingredients do all the work here — onions cooked to jammy sweetness, briny olives, and sharp goat’s cheese — on a sheet of bought puff pastry. It looks like you tried much harder than you did, which is the mark of a good tart.
This is peasant cooking dressed for company. The whole idea rests on a contrast the south of France has relied on for centuries: sweet against salt against sour. Slow-cooked onions turn deeply sweet and jammy; olives bring the salt and a resinous edge; young goat’s cheese brings a clean, lemony tang that cuts through both. Puff pastry, thawed from the freezer, does the structural work so you do not have to. There is no technique to fear — if you can be patient with onions, you can make this.
The one rule: don’t rush the onions
Everything good about this tart comes from properly caramelised onions, and that cannot be hurried. Slice four brown onions and cook them low and slow in olive oil for a good twenty minutes or more, stirring now and then, until they collapse to a soft, golden, sweet tangle — not the pale, sharp, half-cooked onions you get from ten rushed minutes on high heat. A pinch of sugar and a splash of red wine vinegar near the end sharpens and glosses them. Remember they shrink dramatically: four big onions become a modest heap.
Building and baking
Roll the thawed puff pastry to a rough rectangle, a few millimetres thick, and score a border a couple of centimetres in — that rim will puff up and frame the filling. Spread the cooled onions inside the border (hot onions make pastry soggy), then dot over pitted Kalamata olives and rounds of goat’s cheese. Bake in a hot oven, around 200 °C, until the pastry is crisp, risen and golden underneath — lift a corner and check the base is cooked through, not pale and damp. Scatter with thyme and serve warm, not scalding.
Which olive, and other swaps
Use a proper Kalamata or another good black table olive — winey, meaty, characterful — not the pale, uniform canned ‘black ripe’ olive, which is too mild to register against sweet onion and sharp cheese. Pit them yourself if you can; loose pitted olives are softer and blander. From there the tart is endlessly adaptable: swap thyme for rosemary, add anchovy for a pissaladière lean, scatter pine nuts for crunch, or trade goat’s cheese for feta. Keep the sweet-salt-sour spine intact and almost anything works.
| Serves | 4 as a light meal or starter |
|---|---|
| Hands-on time | About 15 minutes |
| Oven time | About 30 minutes at ~200 °C |
| Base | Bought puff pastry, thawed |
| Filling | Caramelised onion, Kalamata olives, goat’s cheese, thyme |
| Make ahead | Caramelise the onions a day early; assemble and bake fresh |
Ingredients & method
You need: 1 sheet puff pastry (thawed); 4 brown onions, sliced; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 tbsp brown sugar; 2 tsp red wine vinegar; salt and black pepper; a handful of pitted Kalamata olives; about 100 g soft goat’s cheese in rounds; a few sprigs of thyme.
- Cook the sliced onions gently in the oil, 20 minutes plus, until soft and golden. Stir in sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper; cook 5 minutes more, then cool.
- Heat the oven to about 200 °C. Roll the pastry to a rectangle and score a 2 cm border.
- Spread the cooled onions inside the border. Dot with olives and goat’s cheese.
- Bake 25–30 minutes until crisp, puffed and golden underneath.
- Scatter with thyme and serve warm.
Onion, olive & goat’s cheese tart: common questions
Can I make it ahead?
Yes — caramelise the onions up to a day in advance and keep them chilled. Assemble and bake the tart fresh so the pastry stays crisp.
Which olives work best?
A proper Kalamata or another characterful black olive. Avoid the mild canned ‘black ripe’ olive, which gets lost against the sweet onion and tangy cheese.
Why is my pastry soggy underneath?
Usually the oven was too cool, the base underbaked, or the onions went on hot. Bake hot, cool the onions first, and check the underside is golden.
Can I use a different cheese?
Yes. Feta is a natural swap; a blue cheese or a firm ricotta also work. Keep something tangy to balance the sweet onions.
Do I have to make my own pastry?
No — good bought puff pastry is ideal here and saves real effort. Just give it enough time in a hot oven to cook through and puff.
The whole tart lives or dies on the onions, and impatience is the only way to ruin it. Twenty minutes low and slow gives you a sweet, jammy tangle; ten minutes on high gives you sharp, pale onions that fight the cheese instead of balancing it. Cool them before they touch the pastry, use a real Kalamata rather than the bland canned black olive, and bake hot enough to crisp the base. Do that and it looks — and tastes — far more accomplished than the effort it took.
An original olives101 recipe in the Provençal tradition.