Pea, Mint and Ricotta Tartlets with Preserved Lemon

1. Spoon the ricotta into a fine sieve set over a bowl and leave it to drain, 20 minutes for basket ricotta and 30 for the tub kind. Start here and it happens while you do everything else.
2. Bring a small pot of water to the boil with the fine salt in it, and set a bowl of water and ice beside the stove. The ice stops the peas cooking the moment they leave the pot, which locks in the colour a short blanch has just brightened.
3. Tip in the frozen peas. Count 60 seconds from the moment the water comes back to the boil, then drain them and tip them straight into the iced water.
4. Once they are properly cold, drain again and spread the peas out on a clean tea towel. Pat them dry. Water still clinging to a pea ends up in the pastry.
5. Tip the drained ricotta into a bowl with the chopped preserved lemon rind, 2 teaspoons of olive oil and a good grind of pepper, and beat it with a fork until it is spreadable but still thick. Taste before you reach for salt, because the preserved lemon has brought plenty.
6. Crush the peas with a fork, or with a few short presses of a pestle, until about half are broken and half are still whole. Stop there. A food processor turns them into a wet grey puree that weeps into the pastry, and it is the whole peas that make the tray read as peas from across a room.
7. Tear the mint leaves into the crushed peas, add the remaining 2 teaspoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt flakes, and fold it twice. Do this at the last sensible moment.
8. Spoon a heaped teaspoon of the ricotta into each case and level it with the back of the spoon, taking it right out to the sides. It should fill a little under half the shell, and that layer of fat is also the seal between the peas and the pastry.
9. Pile the pea crush on top, heaped rather than flat, so each tartlet has some height to it.
10. Finish with a small mint leaf on each, a few drops of olive oil, and a pinch of chilli flakes over the tray if you want the heat. Grind the pepper over the whole tray rather than one tartlet at a time.
11. Serve within 45 minutes, from a cool bench rather than a sunny table.

Two of the three parts will wait. Drained, seasoned with the preserved lemon and covered, the ricotta keeps overnight and is better for it: the salt has time to travel through. The peas can be blanched, chilled, dried and kept whole in a sealed container, crushed on the day in a minute. The mint and the assembly cannot: mint darkens at every cut edge within the hour, so it is torn in as you build. Keep the cases sealed until the day; a pack that has gone soft comes good after three minutes on a dry tray in a 150°C oven, cooled right down before anything cold goes in.

Questions about pea and mint tartlets

Can I use fresh peas instead of frozen?

Yes, if you podded them yourself that morning from a plant you can point at. Otherwise the frozen bag is both sweeter and greener, because peas sitting in their pods at a shop have had days to turn sugar into starch. If you do go fresh, remember they have not been blanched already: give them 3 to 4 minutes rather than 60 seconds, and taste one before you drain the pot.

Why did my peas turn a dull green?

Nearly always acid, and nearly always lemon juice. Acid converts the chlorophyll in a green vegetable into a browner pigment, and a crushed pea has so much cut surface that it happens within minutes. Overcooking does it more slowly. Blanch briefly, chill hard, and keep the citrus in the ricotta where it cannot reach the peas.

How long will they hold once they are filled?

About 45 minutes of proper crispness, and the first 15 are the best of them. The ricotta layer is the seal, so fill the cases on the platter they will go out on rather than letting a loaded tray stand. Keep the platter out of the sun. If the party is a long one, fill half the pack, keep the bowls in the fridge and build the rest when the first tray goes.

The cases are the part worth having in the cupboard before December, since they keep for months at $9.95 for twelve. Confiletas mini savoury round pastry cases are the 37mm savoury shell, and the rest of the Confiletas range covers the sweet rounds and the vol-au-vent shapes in the same order. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post. If the tray is really a gift for somebody else's table, the same pantry turns up inside our Christmas hampers.