With all the excitement of the new herbs in the kitchen, I decided to make a tomato and goat cheese tart. It’s something I had eaten at a French restaurant once before, although their tart had Gruyere cheese on it. For this recipe, I nixed the extra cheese and also made the tart crust all whole wheat flour, resulting in a darker colored crust, but one that has a nutritional content I can live with. Sort of.
Any pastry is going to have a lot of butter, and this is no exception, as I opted to use butter in place of vegetable shortening. Knowing that, I make sure to serve this baby with a large salad and try not to devour the whole thing!
Ingredients:
2 sticks plus 2 tbs butter
1 tsp pepper
3 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c cold water
2 tbs herbs de Provence
2 beefsteak tomatoes, sliced thin, seeded
Salt
Ground nutmeg
Olive oil
Goat cheese
Basil, chiffoned
First, make sure your butter is cold. This makes for flaky crusts. Mix flour, herbs, pepper and water. Cut in butter using a pastry cutter. Failing that, you can always dive in with your hands and mix manually until the butter and flour crumbles. Mix until all ingredients combine into a dough. Chill for 30 minutes.
After chilling, cut into four pieces and roll out to 1/8 in.
Then place in tart pan. This recipe will make four tart crusts. Prick with a fork.
Use baking weights or dried beans to weigh the crust down, or failing those, use a pot lid!
Bake at 375* for ten minutes. Remove the lid, beans or weights and bake twelve more. Let cool slightly and top with tomatoes arranged circularly, overlapping slightly, goat cheese, and basil to taste. Sprinkle with nutmeg and drizzle with olive oil.
Bake for 40 minutes. When done, top with additional basil.
Here’s what the beauty looks like!
Itadakimasu!