Tomato Tart Tatin

Here’s the thing about tomatoes. They might be my favourite veggie (I know I know, they’re a fruit, but you know what I mean.). They’re sweet, they’re savoury, they’re juicy.

Here’s the other thing about tomatoes. If you put them in the fridge, they suck. They get grainy, they get flavourless, they loose everything special about them.

Here’s the thing about my local green grocer: they put their tomatoes in the fridge at night.

So when I got all excited about fresh tomatoes the other day and they were all warm from sitting in the sun I grabbed myself a big bag full. And then I got home to find grainy sad tomatoes, far from their peak.

Here’s the thing about sad grainy tomatoes: they’re still pretty good when you cook them. Usually this means tomato sauce, but the other day it meant this fabulous tart tatin that was on Design*Sponge a couple weeks ago. This is a damn good tart, it’s very savoury (a lot of veggie tatins tend to be a bit sweet for my taste) the pastry is flaky and light, but just buttery enough to have enough flavour to hold it’s own with the tomatoes, and the onions and cheese help bring a depth to it that rounds the whole thing out.

I didn’t use the crust from the original recipe, because I tatins should always be made with puff in my books, and after last Tuesday’s Tutorial on quick puff we’re all pros right? Right.

Tomato Tart Tatin

(Adapted from Design*Sponge)

Dough:

1 cup Cold Butter, unsalted, cut into cubes

2 cups AP Flour

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2-3/4 cup Ice Water

For a full tutorial on making this dough with lots of pictures, click here!

On a clean surface toss the butter cubes with the flour and salt.

With a rolling pin roll out the butter so that all of it forms into long thin strips.

Add the water, a couple tablespoons at a time and fold the dough, push it out, add more water, and fold the dough again.

Continue this until it has come together as a cohesive dough.

Wrap with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for at least an hour, or up to two days.

Tart Tatin:

1 recipe of quick puff pastry dough (aboce)

10 Roma Tomatoes

1/4 cup Grated Parmesan Cheese

1 Onion, thinly sliced

2 tbsp Olive Oil

1 tbsp Fresh Thyme Leaves

Preheat oven to 400F

In a medium pot over medium heat warm up 1 tbsp of the olive oil.

Add in the onion and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until they are soft and just starting to brown on the edges.

Grease a pie pan with the remaining olive oil. Cut a circular piece of parchment and line the bottom of the pan.

Slice the tomatoes in half and put them skin side down in the pan. They will shrink up as they cook so overlap them a bit so that when they are cooked they will still cover the bottom of the pan.

Top them with salt and pepper, the onions, parm and thyme.

On a lightly floured surface roll our the dough into a circle just larger than pie pan.

Cut the edges to clean them up and put it into the pan.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until the pastry has turned a nice brown and the juices bubbling up the sides are browned as well.

Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before flipping it onto a plate.

Serve while warm or at room temperature.  

Tuesday Tutorial- Quick Puff Pastry

The rains have started. We’ll probably have a couple more sunny days, but mostly it’s Fall here. Our mountains won’t turn red and orange, they’ll stay a blackish green, but the tops will fall under a fog. Even though it’s still warm now, it will be sweater weather soon. As much as I love summer, and I still have a small vacation to take, I’m looking forward to the cold. The cozy feeling of watching the rain fall with a cup of tea in your hands. The gentle scratcing of wool scarves at your neck. New boots.

The time of year to take things a little bit slower, and to make pastries by hand.

This is my absolute favourite kind of dough to make, I remember my mom teaching me as a little girl. Gently breaking up the butter with my hands and kneading the dough were two of my favourite things as a kid. I have since made it hundreds, if not thousands of times in my life. It is the kind of pastry that normally takes a few tries to get right, but this little trick- curtesy of the Tartine Bakery Cookbook- in which you roll the butter, makes all the difference.

I like to call this dough a rough puff pastry, it’s not quite as light as a puff, but it’s not far off, and while the method is closer to a pie dough, it’s much flakier and crisper than that. I rarely have the energy or patience for puff pastry, and almost any recipe that calls for it gets this instead. I use it for pies, tarts, cookies, savoury tarts, mini cinnamon buns. Nearly anything that calls for pastry, you could use this. It’s the ultimate pastry in my books.

Rough Puff Pastry

2 cups AP Flour

1 cup Butter, unsalted, cut into cubes

1 tsp Salt

1/2 cup – 3/4 cup Ice Water

On a clean flat surface sprinkle the flour and salt.

Break the butter apart into the cubes and toss to coat them in the flour.

With your rolling pin begin to roll the butter out. It will stick to your rolling pin and the counter but don’t worry. Use a pastry scraper, or a spatula and scrape the pastry off. Then keep rolling.

Push the butter bits from the outsides in to make sure all of the butter has been rolled into thin strips.

Pour about 1/4 cup of water on top of the flour mixture and, again using the pastry scraper or spatula, fold the dough on top of it’s self.

Add more water, a couple table spoons at a time, and keep folding the dough over, pushing it down, and folding it again until some flour remains on the surface but it’s holding together. It shouldn’t be sticky to the touch but it shouldn’t be falling apart either.

Keep folding the dough, pushing it out, and folding it again. This is putting the layers into your pastry that will make it so light and crisp.

The dough should be soft to work with, as soon as you start to notice it resisting your touch stop.

Wrap with plastic wrap and refridgerate for at least an hour. I usually make two batches and keep one in the freezer, so I always have some on hand.

It will last 2 days in the fridge, or a month in the freezer.