Warrigal greens grow like a weed along half the coastline of this country, and for years people walked straight past them on the way to buy imported spinach. That still gets under my skin a bit. This is a crustless tart built to use them, bound with quinoa and eggs instead of pastry, and it sets into neat wedges you can carry to work or cut cold from the fridge on a Sunday.
The quinoa is the trick here. Blitzed with the eggs until it goes almost fluffy, it lifts the whole thing so you get structure without the heaviness of flour. If you can’t lay your hands on warrigal, blanched kale does the job and nobody at the table will stage a protest. A word of warning on warrigal, though: it needs a quick blanch and a drain before it goes anywhere near your bowl. Raw, it carries oxalates that taste chalky and do you no favours. Thirty seconds in boiling water, a plunge into cold, and a good squeeze sorts it out.
I like to roast the garlic and capsicum the day before, along with the tomatoes for the chutney. It spreads the work out and it means the oven does the heavy lifting while you’re doing something else. By the time you’re ready to build the tart, half the flavour is already in the fridge waiting.
Do make the chutney. A tart like this wants something sharp and dark alongside it, and the bush tomato brings a smoky, sun-dried edge you don’t get from a jar off the shelf. Grind the dried bush tomatoes as finely as you can manage; whole, they can turn gritty, and that’s the one thing that’ll let this dish down.
Ingredients
Savoury Quinoa and Warrigal Tart
- 2 cups finely chopped leeks
- 1 cup finely chopped mushrooms
- 1 cup chopped roast capsicum (optional)
- 1 cup chopped warrigal green (blanched) or kale
- 100g cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1 cup fresh herbs of your choice ie parsley basil thyme, finely chopped
- 4 spring onions, white and green part, finely chopped
- 4 cloves roast garlic
- ½ cup pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
- ½ cup crumbled goats feta
- 2 tbls finely grated parmesan (reserve 1 tbls for sprinkling on top before baking)
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup cooked quinoa
To serve
- Golden Door Bush Tomato Chutney (see recipe below)
- Crisp green salad
Golden Door Bush Tomato Chutney
- 1/2 cup vegetable or chicken stock (add as needed during cooking)
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 1 cup finely chopped leek
- 1 cup finely chopped fennel
- 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons dried bush tomatoes, finely ground
- 1 teaspoon finely grated ginger
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 8 tomatoes, roasted and skinned
- 1 teaspoon deseeded and sliced red chilli
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 4 fresh medjool dates, chopped
- 2 tablespoons honey or organic maple syrup
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs such as dill, basil and parsley
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- Finely grated zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
- Sea salt and pepper
Method
Savoury Quinoa and Warrigal Tart
- Preheat oven to 170 Degrees Celsius and line the base and sides of a 25cm round cake tin with baking paper.
- Combine leeks, mushrooms and roast capsicum in a pan with 3 tablespoons water and saute gently for 4-5 minutes. Once soft transfer to mixing bowl and combine with remaining ingredients, except eggs and quinoa, ensuring roasted garlic is evenly distributed.
- Place eggs and quinoa in a food processor and process for about 2 minutes until almost fluffy. Add to leek and mushroom mixture and combine. Transfer to lined tin and sprinkle with remaining tablespoon of parmesan. Bake for 25 minutes. Allow to cool and set. Once cool, remove from tin slice into wedges and serve with bush tomato chutney (see recipe below) and fresh green salad.
Golden Door Bush Tomato Chutney
- Put 2 tablespoons of the stock and the remaining ingredients in a saucepan, season to taste and stir well to combine. Simmer, covered, for 30–40 minutes until reduced to a thick sauce, adding remaining stock as needed while cooking to prevent chutney drying out.
Chef’s tip: Use 1 tablespoon of chutney per serve. The chutney will keep in the fridge for 3-4 weeks.
Serves 8. The chutney makes roughly 1 litre, so you’ll have plenty left over.
Serving, make-ahead and a few swaps
This tart is at its best made a day ahead. The flavours settle overnight and the wedges firm up, which makes them far easier to pack for a lunchbox or slide onto a plate without collapsing. Store it covered in the fridge and it holds for three or four days. I’ll happily eat a cold wedge standing at the bench, but a quick warm through in a low oven brings the feta and herbs back to life if you’d rather.
The chutney is the real workhorse. Batch it, spoon it into clean jars, and it earns its keep well beyond this recipe. It’s good with a feta, sweet potato and eggplant frittata, or alongside a grain bowl in the vein of our mushroom, chicken and quinoa skillet when you want more colour on the plate. It also sits happily next to a plate of chicken with mushroom quinoa if you’re feeding a crowd and want to stretch things. For a lighter meal, cut the tart into smaller squares and set it out with a crisp green salad as part of a shared table.
If you want to freeze ahead, the tart takes it well. Wrap individual wedges, freeze them flat, and thaw overnight in the fridge before a gentle reheat. The chutney I’d keep in the fridge rather than the freezer; it holds its texture better that way. One honest note from me: this is not a fifteen-minute recipe. There’s chopping, roasting and a bit of patience involved. But you do the work once and eat off it for the better part of a week, which is exactly the kind of cooking I’ll go to bat for.
Swaps are fair game. No warrigal greens means blanched kale, silverbeet or English spinach, squeezed dry so you don’t water down the mix. Dairy-free? Leave out the feta and parmesan and lean harder on the olives and roast garlic for savour. Quinoa is naturally gluten free, which makes this an easy one to serve a mixed crowd, and the CSIRO has good plain-English notes on building meals around plants and whole grains at csiro.au. For general guidance on a balanced plate, Nutrition Australia and Better Health are both worth a look. If you’re leaning into native ingredients this week, our notes on nailing nutrition pair well with it.
— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen
