Tomato Time

Heirlooms

It's tomato time ... with all those good market displays of real tomatoes, not those tasteless things picked green, gassed with ethylene to turn them neon red, then shipped hundreds of miles.  Maybe I shouldn't keep bringing up the old days, but I can so well remember the time my mother came home, set down her groceries, and said that the price of tomatoes was going through the roof.  (She liked terms like that.)  They were now 25¢ each, she said.  Well, I just paid $1.75 for one tomato at the farmers' market.  Granted, it was absolutely fresh.  It was flawless.  It was organic.  And it was local.  I mused later about its also being worth its weight in gold but decided I was way off base on that one.  At $3.85 a pound, the tomato came in at about 7¼ ounces.  At today's rate of $1,772 per ounce of gold, the equivalent would have cost $12,850.

I bought the one tomato because I wanted to make a tomato and onion tart for my supper, using a half piece of frozen puff pastry still in the fridge.  I sort of made it up as I went along, but it turned out to be delicious, even if very messy to eat with flakes all over the place.

Here's what I did.

I took a small red onion and sliced it very thinly.  I lightly sautéed that in olive oil, then removed it from the pan to cool.

My small red onion

Lightly sautéed

I then took my beautiful tomato and sliced it thinly as well.  At that point, I realized I also needed to ever-so-gently sauté it in order to extract its juice so the juice wouldn't mush up the tart as it baked.  So I fit a single layer of tomatoes into the same sauté pan then, after a minute or so, turned off the heat and put on the lid.  I took the puff pastry out of the freezer to thaw.  And then went out for my daily walk.  When I returned, I spread the tomatoes onto a paper towel so they'd absorb any left-over juice.

My "golden" tomato

Thinly sliced

A perfect fit in my small sauté pan

Draining off the juice

After turning the oven on to 425º to preheat, I sprinkled flour on a pastry board and rolled out the puff pastry until it fit my sheet pan.  I set the pastry onto the ungreased pan and poked it with a fork.  Then I beat an egg with a tad bit of water and brushed that over the entire pastry.

After applying the egg wash

I had some nice Havarti cheese in the fridge so got that out and grated enough to cover the entire pastry.  (I'd previously used Gruyère mixed with a bit of Cheddar on a zucchini-onion tart, so that would work, too.)  After sprinkling the cheese on the pastry, I carefully arranged the tomatoes in an even pattern ... followed by an equally careful placement of the sliced onions.  I wanted the whole thing to look as if I were off in France and had just happened upon a charming outdoor stall that sold fabulously tempting tarts.

I ended up using about twice this amount

Ready to go in the oven

I might have drizzled a little olive oil over the top, but I didn't think about it at the time.  I did consider adding a few sliced kalamata olives but decided not to.  Finally, I sprinkled on salt and pepper.

Then I set the whole thing in the oven to bake for 25 minutes. 

When I took it out, it looked amazing.  And, I have to admit, it was ever, ever, ever so good!

As good as anything in France

Thanks, K., for putting me onto puff pastry tarts in the first place--you, who made a successful one using asparagus.  (And my zucchini-onion one was also excellent.  If you decide to make it, be sure to separately sauté the thin zucchini and onion slices before arranging them on the pastry.)