Toh-mah-toh Toh-may-toh

This afternoon, I tried my hand at baking a savoury tart. Having espied this particular recipe for Ricotta and Tomato Tart from Bill Granger's Sydney Food and being particularly enamoured by the photo of red tomato slices atop the tart, I proceeded to 'finger-tip-rubbed' flour and pieces of chilled unsalted butter until mixture resembled breadcrumbs - the first step towards a 'rough puff pastry' according to Granger's recipe.

Unfortunately, I didn't end up with puff pastry. As picture indicates, mine turned out more like meltingly buttery shortcrust pastry (still delicious but NOT puff pastry). Looks like I will be embarking on a journey to find that perfect puff pastry recipe.

The filling for this tomato tart is both creamy, savoury and slightly peppery, with the use of ricotta cheese and shredded arugula (rocket leaves). Being a 'meat' person, I included chopped ham into the ricotta/arugula mixture to increase the savoury factor. The addition of the layer of sweet ripe tomatoes baked on top of the filling, provided a dash of sweetness.


Recipe adapted from Granger's Sydney Food:

• place sliced tomatoes (sliced from 2 whole tomatoes) in a colander sprinkled with salt and put aside (the excess liquid will drain through)
• mix 1 cup of ricotta (original recipe calls for 2 cups, but that would probably have been too cheesy for my taste), 2 lightly beaten eggs, 1/4 cup cream, 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, pinch of nutmeg, salt and black pepper in a bowl
• to this mixture, I added a cup of finely shredded arugula leaves and about 3/4 cup of diced honey-baked ham
• roll out puff pastry to a circle of about 12-inch in diameter and a quarter inch thick
• place the ricotta mixture in the center of the pastry and spread over the same leaving more than an inch or more in border, fold in border of pastry onto the filling to recreate a 'wall enclosure'
• arrange tomato slices on top of filling
• brush pastry with beaten egg yolk (to produce that lovely yellow baked-in color)
• bake in preheated oven at 200C for 35 to 40 minutes until golden
• finally, sprinkle with chopped parsley and ground black pepper just before serving

I love the way this particular tart photographs, it looks absolutely inviting with its splashes of red (from the tomatoes) and golden yellow (from the pastry) and hints of green (from the parsley), all of which are great food colors (in fact the majority of food items fall into at least one of these three colors).

Addendum: Notwithstanding the great looker that this tart is, hubby is still not convinced that ricotta cheese is edible cheese (which in his books, comprises only Kraft's processed cheddar slices). Very, very sad!