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This recipe offers a speedy interpretation on pissaladière, transforming a handful of dough trimmings into a quick snack. Store and collect any scraps into a lump and use again as and when required. Dough freezes beautifully in the icebox, and by avoiding two laborious processes in the standard recipe – creating the dough and caramelising the onions – this recipe is ready much more quickly. Alternatively, the onions are cooked flipped, steaming and browning under a layer of pastry with salted fish and black olives for a speedy, playful twist on a iconic French recipe. Should you have not as much pastry, you can always halve the method.

Quick Upside-Down Pissaladière Tarts

The recent trend of flipped tarts, which spread quickly on video platforms and Instagram a recently, may have originated with an appetizing and easy sweet pastry creation or an inspirational savory tart that even inspired a whole book on upside-down cooking. I’ve also been enjoying myself with inverted baking these days, from an lengthy vegetable pastry to these quick small onion tarts. It’s a easy, playful way to prepare something that feels particularly unique.

Produces 4 individual tarts

• 1 red onion
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• Sea salt and peppercorns
• 8 anchovies (or 4, for a milder taste profile)
• Dark pitted olives, to taste
• 120g pastry sheets – flaky or shortcrust works too

Preheat the oven to 210C (190C fan)/410F/gas 6½. Peel and prepare the onion, then chop into four sizable, circular pieces. Cover a heat-resistant baking tray with baking paper, then visualize where you will position each slice of onion. Pour those locations with oil and honey, then flavor. Lay two anchovies on top of each prepared area and top them with a piece of onion. Tuck a few olives in and around the onions, then add with a little more olive oil, nectar, salt flakes and pepper.

Activate two side-by-side stovetop elements to a medium heat, set the tray on top of the burners and leave the onions to simmer untouched for 5 minutes.

In the meantime, on a dusted surface, flatten the dough and trim it into four squares just large enough to enclose each round of onion. Carefully put one pastry rectangle on top of each slice of onion, seal around the edges with the flat side of a utensil, then bake for twenty minutes, until the pastry is browned. Place a serving platter on top of the pastry tray, then flip to flip the tarts on to the surface. Carefully lift off the lining and serve.