Monday, July 11, 2005

I made a lovely tomato tart last night, but accidentally burned it. The tomatoes (9 Early Girl tomatoes from my backyard plants) were totally amazing, some of the sweetest, most flavorful tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life, and still warm from the sun.

I used half the pie crust recipe from Joy Of Cooking (1 1/4 cups flour, 1 stick butter cut into pieces, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp sugar, 1/3 cup ice water) along with some chopped rosemary and a few tablespoons of grated parmesan. Into this I layered snipped leaves of fresh basil; the sliced, seeded tomatoes; pieces of almond cheese, mozzarella-style; parmesan, salt, and pepper. I decorated the whole thing with basil leaves on top, and baked it at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes (it ended up burning when I turned the heat up to broil to brown the cheese, then stepped away for a minute).

Problems with it: too much pepper, too much liquid--perhaps a layer of polenta poured into the bottom would work next time; the inside of the crust never got brown--stayed kind of white and mushy--so perhaps a blind-bake of the crust would be in order next time.

No comments: