Week 2 - Tomato Tart
About a year ago, I picked up The Accidental Vegetarian by Simon Rimmer from the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble and have been awfully pleased with it.
Well, that is to say , all the recipes SOUND really good and the photos are great, but we've only actually made one recipe from it up until now - Morroccan Spaghetti, which we loved.
This week, I knew I was going to be in a hurry, so I decided to take a shot at a "Simple Tomato Tart".
It definitely is simple, you have to give it that - sliced plum tomatoes on puff pastry with salt, pepper, melted butter and a litte sugar to help it caramelize in the oven.
We were pleased-ish with it. I think this dish is only as good as its tomatoes and it IS January, after all. It would be really nice next summer with some awsome fresh tomatoes, but the combination of the plum tomatoes and the sugar made it taste a little spaghetti sauce-y. Next time, I would skip the sugar and raise the temperature of the oven to give the tomatoes more caramelization.
We served it with a lime/roasted peanut coleslaw that worked really well with the pastry/tomato flavors of the tart.
(On the plus side - I got to try the trick of skinning the tomatoes by cutting a small cross in the sharp end, blanching them in boiling water for 30 seconds, then plunging them into an ice bath. I'd always wanted to try that and it worked really well!)
Week 2 - Tomato Tart
About a year ago, I picked up The Accidental Vegetarian by Simon Rimmer from the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble and have been awfully pleased with it.
Well, that is to say , all the recipes SOUND really good and the photos are great, but we've only actually made one recipe from it up until now - Morroccan Spaghetti, which we loved.
This week, I knew I was going to be in a hurry, so I decided to take a shot at a "Simple Tomato Tart".
It definitely is simple, you have to give it that - sliced plum tomatoes on puff pastry with salt, pepper, melted butter and a litte sugar to help it caramelize in the oven.
We were pleased-ish with it. I think this dish is only as good as its tomatoes and it IS January, after all. It would be really nice next summer with some awsome fresh tomatoes, but the combination of the plum tomatoes and the sugar made it taste a little spaghetti sauce-y. Next time, I would skip the sugar and raise the temperature of the oven to give the tomatoes more caramelization.
We served it with a lime/roasted peanut coleslaw that worked really well with the pastry/tomato flavors of the tart.
(On the plus side - I got to try the trick of skinning the tomatoes by cutting a small cross in the sharp end, blanching them in boiling water for 30 seconds, then plunging them into an ice bath. I'd always wanted to try that and it worked really well!)