Sunday, April 15, 2007

Chèvre Tomato Tart with Roasted Garlic



Ah, almost summer! Sweden has had a really warm weekend, with blue skies and lots of sun. Today will be spent in our tiny garden, planting some new kitchen herbs (I'm thinking thyme, mint, sage, rosemary, tarragon) and then grilling up some sausages. My sister Ehva is coming over to help us, and my parents are popping over later.

I'm not making this tart today - but I could have. It's not super dependent on great tomatoes, since roasting them brings out whatever flavor there is. But obviously, the better your tomatoes, the better the final product. I don't need to tell you that. Anyway. It's a great tart! Perfect as a light meal for four, with a salad on the side. Or make it snack-sized and serve with drinks!

I got this recipe from Cuisine Capers, and well, adapted it a bit but pretty much kept it the way it was.

Chèvre Tomato Tart with Roasted Garlic
Serves 4

1 sheet of puff pastry (ready-made)
3-4 large tomatoes, sliced
1 bulb of garlic
4 tbsp olive oil
150 g chèvre cheese
1 tsp fresh thyme
salt, pepper

Optional toppings - like balsamic vinegar, olive oil, black olives, basil or parmesan

Slice the tomatoes and let them dry a bit on paper.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Start by roasting the garlic. Divide the garlic bulb into cloves, but don't peel them. Toss with a tbsp of the olive oil in a roasting pan, and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the cloves are soft. Remove from the oven, peel the cloves and put them in a bowl. Add olive oil, chèvre cheese, thyme, salt and pepper, and mix with a handheld blender. (Or do this in a food processor.)

Roll out the puff pastry. Mark a border all along the edge. This makes the edge puff up nicely. Spread with the garlic-cheese mixture, and top with the tomatoes.

Bake for 25 minutes. When you take it out, top it if you want to, with balsamic vinegar, some extra olive oil, olives, basil and/or parmesan cheese.

Recipe in Swedish:
Tomatpaj med rostad vitlök och getost

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mmmm. That looks really good. I will definitely have to try it. I think I will wait a month or so, though, until I can get fresh, local, organic basil for shreding on top!

It's still cold, wet, and dismal here in eastern Canada. :-(

Jeff.

Jeanne said...

Oooh, that looks marvellous. And judging by the number of beautiful tomatoes at Borough Market recently, it won't be long before I can make it with top quality properly ripe tomatoes. I can hardly wait :)