Sometimes, I’ll want to make a recipe. Take this asparagus gruyere tart from Cupcakes and Cashmere via Martha Stewart, for example. I wanted to make it! It looked good! Alas, I got all “gruyere is so damn expensive” at the grocery store, and didn’t get it. I’m not sure if I expected gruyere to magically appear in my fridge or something, but I was like “it’ll all work out, and whatever!” And it did. But it is definitely not Martha Stewart’s recipe.

Sometimes, when I want to make a recipe and don’t have the ingredients, I just Google the ingredients that I think would work together well, just to see if they’re a thing. And you know what? They’re usually a thing! Almost everything is a thing. No pun intended. So this time, when I googled “asparagus + red onion + goat cheese tart”, I got this. Wonderful.

The way I made this tart: Preheat the oven to 350. Unroll a sheet of frozen (but thawed) puff pastry, score a 1 inch border around the edges and poke fork holes in the center of the square. Bake for about 15 minutes.

 Slice a red onion thinly, and sauté in some oil with salt and pepper until translucent and soft. Then add 1-2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar, and approximately 1 tbsp brown sugar, cook until the vinegar is absorbed. Meanwhile, boil the asparagus in salted water until tender-crisp; drain and rinse with cold water.

Spread the caramelized onions evenly onto the pastry square. Layer the asparagus and goat cheese (or ricotta, but I didn’t have any) on top. Bake for about 5 minutes at 350. Enjoy!