Tomato Tart is a really easy to make recipe with minimal ingredients. To me this tomato tart really showcases tomatoes and features them truly as the focus of the dish.

About 13 years back as a graduate student i saw the frozen puff pastry sheets in the grocery store and excitedly bought them. In India puff pastry is filled with a mixture of boiled potatoes, peas and ginger with some garam masala. These are known as curry puffs in hyderabad and pattice in Pune. These were nowhere to be found in USA and i had an immediate craving to have them once i saw that the most skilled and labor intensive task in that recipe of making the puff pastry was made easy. I tried them out and they worked really great. Soon me and my friends made about 300 of them for a cultural event and were sold out in a couple of hours.

Here is a recipe from our friend at “Love at first bite” blog and Here is a wonderful recipe which also makes puff pastry from scratch. Over the years many others have had the same discovery and the curry puff or pattice is a very pervasive and popular recipe. In fact even most of my cooking shy friends also make it now and that is great for me because i get to enjoy their creations.

As with discovery of exciting products you soon see a lot of recipes using the product differently to create new dishes. Same is true with puff pastry.

So tomato tart is my contribution to use up your puff pastry when you need a snack fairly quickly. Its absolutely delicious and it will surprise you how this brings out the sweetness and complexity of a simple everyday ingredient like tomato.

The tomatoes done cook very long at all in this dish. One of my cousins works for a tomato canning enterprise and he let me on a trick once. He said that if you microwave the tomato for half a minute to a minute it develops great flavor color and mouth-feel.

I use this tip for the tomato tart. We broil very thinly sliced tomatoes for about two minutes and their transformation is unbelievable. They turn glossy, juicy, gelatinous and take on a complex sweetness which is cut by pungent sliced garlic.

We first bake the puff pastry sheet separately till its crisp. We fork the sheet to pierce it so that it does not rise or puff up too much making it a crunchy bite which can also carry our tomatoes.

We then cut the tomatoes into as thin a slice as possible. Thinner the better for this tomato tart. Use a very sharp knife so that you actually cut the tomato and not crush it. You can use a mandolin slicer if you have one and if it works well with your tomatoes. We slice the garlic into thin slices as well. We choose simple low moisture mozzarella slices. We don’t want the cheese to melt and leave out all the moisture to make the puff pastry soggy.

We tear off pieces of cheese from the slice and place them on the baked pastry. We don’t need to cover all of it and we don’t need to lay it on thick. A slice easily covers two pastry bases. Then add the thin slices of tomatoes making at-least two to three layers overlapping each other if you did manage to get your tomatoes really thin. Then add a sprinkling of sea salt  and lay down the garlic. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil on our tomato tart and broil the tomatoes on the puff pastry for about two minutes till the cheese melts. I keep the oven door open as it broils and watch the cheese melt and tomatoes transform into shiny deliciousness. That’s it! That’s our tomato tart, It could not be simpler.

We dress with chives as whole if they are thin else add chopped chives or even parsley. We try and avoid using cilantro or basil to let tomato flavor shine through. I give it a drizzle of olive oil just before serving.

To impress guests when i have a little bit more time on hand i make a x at the bottom of tomatos and insert them in boiling water briefly and peel the skin before slicing them. This was when you take a bite you dont drag neighbouring tomatos by accident because of not getting a clean bite off the skin. These turn out even more fantastic in summer at the peak of tomato season. If you can accquire multi colored cherry tomatoes this looks even more delightful.  Try them out, these can make a great appetizer for your dinner party.

Tomato Tart

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★★★★

4 from 1 review

• Author: www.breakingnaan.com
• Total Time: 35 mins
• Yield: 4 Tarts 1x

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Description

We showcase tomatoes in this simple recipe. We bake puff pastry seperately to get it crispy and broil the tomotoes only for two minute to bring out its gelatinous mouth-feel and and complex sweetness.

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 4 puff pastry squares
• 2 large tomatoes sliced as thin as possible
• 2 slices low moisture mozzarella torn into random triangular pieces
• 4 cloves garlic cut into thin slices
• 1 tsp coarse sea salt
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 6 long and thin chives cut into half (alternatively 2 tsp chopped chives)

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Instructions

1. Lay frozen pastry squares on a baking pan over a silicon mat or greased baking paper. If you need to cut your sheet into squares you can wait a few minutes till it defrosts and can be cut.
2. Pierce the sheets by marking them with fork all over so that they don’t puff up too much when baked.
3. Bake according to instructions till crispy. We baked ours at 400 F for about 18 minutes in a pre-heated oven.
4. Take the pan out.
5. Set oven to broil.
6. Add torn slices of cheese on baked pastry. It is not required to cover the whole pastry but just dot it with some cheese.
7. Lay the thin slices of tomato in two or three overlapping layers depending on thickness of your slices.
8. Sprinkle with some salt.
9. Add sliced garlic.
10. Drizzle with some olive oil.
11. Set pan on middle rack and broil with oven door open and watching the progress. In two to three minutes the cheese should start to melt and the tomatoes would turn shiny and juicy. Take pan out.
12. Plate the tomato tarts.
13. Drizzle with olive oil and garnish with chives to serve.

• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Cook Time: 25 mins
• Category: Appetizer
• Cuisine: World