I am very fortunate to be married to someone who does all of the cooking (thanks, Tom!), but whenever we host a vegetarian dinner guest, I usually make a savory vegetarian tart -- it's really not all that different from making a dessert tart. Last weekend, I decided to make the recipe for "Tomato Confit and Marinated Tomatoes Served on a Crispy Tart" from epicurious.com. What attracted me to this tart is that is is fairly light, in contrast to many vegetarian tarts I've made that are held together with melted cheese. This tart is essentially just greens and tomatoes topped off with shaved Parmesan and fresh basil -- it seemed like a great choice for a casual outdoor summer meal.
The crust for the tart is made in the food processor from flour, salt, chilled butter, egg yolks and water. The dough needs to be chilled before being rolled. The recipe directs you to make a free form tart 12 inches in diameter. Since it only takes an extra 30 seconds to put the rolled out dough into a tart pan, I put the dough into a 10-inch diameter tart pan. You pierce the crust, brush it with egg glaze, and then bake it until it's golden.
The cooled tart shell is then topped with greens lightly dressed with olive oil and salt (I used baby arugula), and both tomato confit and marinated tomatoes. The confit is made by roasting quartered and seeded tomatoes for a couple of hours along with thyme, garlic cloves, and salt, and then removing the tomato skins. You make the marinated tomatoes by covering peeled, quartered, and seeded tomatoes with olive oil; adding garlic cloves, thyme and salt; and leaving the mixture at room temperature for two hours. The final layer of the tart is shaved Parmesan and basil leaves.
I didn't think that the marinated tomatoes were anything special, but the tomato confit is crazy delicious. Roasting the tomatoes with the garlic and thyme results in heavily fragrant, intensely flavorful, concentrated tomato goodness that captures the very essence of summer. You could use this tomato confit as a pasta sauce, on top of toasted bread, or in any number of other applications.
The tart as a whole -- with the crispy crust, spicy arugula, tomato confit, Parmesan, and basil all together -- is just fabulous. It's also light and refreshing, perfect for summer. My only complaint is that the tart shell was quite fragile and crumbly. Nonetheless, I was completely happy with the way the tart turned out (I didn't mind chasing bits of crumbled tart shell around my plate with a fork), and the leftovers were terrific even after a day in the refrigerator.
Love, love this tart.
Recipe: "Tomato Confit and Marinated Tomatoes Served on a Crispy Tart," from epicurious.com.
The crust for the tart is made in the food processor from flour, salt, chilled butter, egg yolks and water. The dough needs to be chilled before being rolled. The recipe directs you to make a free form tart 12 inches in diameter. Since it only takes an extra 30 seconds to put the rolled out dough into a tart pan, I put the dough into a 10-inch diameter tart pan. You pierce the crust, brush it with egg glaze, and then bake it until it's golden.
The cooled tart shell is then topped with greens lightly dressed with olive oil and salt (I used baby arugula), and both tomato confit and marinated tomatoes. The confit is made by roasting quartered and seeded tomatoes for a couple of hours along with thyme, garlic cloves, and salt, and then removing the tomato skins. You make the marinated tomatoes by covering peeled, quartered, and seeded tomatoes with olive oil; adding garlic cloves, thyme and salt; and leaving the mixture at room temperature for two hours. The final layer of the tart is shaved Parmesan and basil leaves.
The tart as a whole -- with the crispy crust, spicy arugula, tomato confit, Parmesan, and basil all together -- is just fabulous. It's also light and refreshing, perfect for summer. My only complaint is that the tart shell was quite fragile and crumbly. Nonetheless, I was completely happy with the way the tart turned out (I didn't mind chasing bits of crumbled tart shell around my plate with a fork), and the leftovers were terrific even after a day in the refrigerator.
Love, love this tart.
Recipe: "Tomato Confit and Marinated Tomatoes Served on a Crispy Tart," from epicurious.com.
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