hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with tomato tart that's right i've
always wanted to visit the south of france but not because of the famous
film festival or those gorgeous clothing-optional beaches no the real
reason I want to visit Provence is so I can enjoy this amazing tart in its
natural habitat preferably accompanied by their equally
famous rose' but anyway I'm very excited to show you my take on this deceptively
simple recipe and we'll begin that by thawing out some puff pastry with which
we're gonna build our freeform rectangular tart shell and ham this
would be way easier if this thing came in a big sheet like in the restaurants
but it doesn't so I'm just gonna go ahead and press together a couple of
these squares to make a rectangle and I'll just sort of smoosh and press
together the seam in the middle and generally thought our puff pastry should
be sticky enough to adhere but if need be don't be afraid to brush on just a
little touch of water and then what we'll do once our rectangular base is
done is cut some strips from the extra pieces and we'll lay those along the
edge to make a border oh and stop me if you've heard this one before but it
doesn't matter how bad it looks at this point as you'll see once this is baked
it's gonna look magnificent even if you do a fairly mediocre job forming the
shell like I'm doing here so please don't be too stressed doing this because
your tart will actually sense that and not taste as good and then what we're
gonna do once our base has formed is we're gonna go ahead and pop this in the
freezer for 10 minutes to firm it back up because for the next step we're gonna
perform the old slash and prick and that is not going to work out unless our
dough is firm so like I said we'll pop that in the freezer for about 10 minutes
at which point we're gonna take a knife and go around the outside making semi
even slashes about I don't know quarter inch apart all the way around including
both ends which is kind of hard to see and by doing that once this is baked
we're gonna kind of camouflage where our seams were and as you'll see it kind of
works and then what we'll do once at set is take a fork and besides give that
Center seam a little bit of an extra press we will go ahead and use that fork
to prick the bottom all over which in the world of baking and pastry is now
called pricking it's called docking and you can go ahead and call whatever
you want I mean you are after all the Dick Tracy of weather calling it
pricking is too racy and by docking the bottom it's not gonna rise up as much
and once this is cooked and pressed down it's gonna help produce a beautifully
crispy bottom which is definitely the kind of bottom we're gonna want and then
what we're gonna do once that bottoms been properly poked is go ahead and
transfer that into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes or
until looks a little something like this okay should be lightly golden and
partially puffed and then what we'll want to do as soon as this comes out
while it's still hot is take the back of a fork and press down the bottom of the
tart all right firmly but gently and please stay away from our beautiful
border okay we're only pressing down the parts we poked and once this
surprisingly fun step is done you can see we produced a pretty decent looking
tart shell except of course for that giant gap in the middle which yes was
really bothering me so what I did is rolled up a little ball of dough and
then secretly cut off a little crispy corner from the bottom and used that to
kind of make a patch and that really wasn't probably gonna cause much of a
problem but it was bothering me so I couldn't help myself
and then whether we're making any repairs or not what we want to do is let
this cool for another 10 or 15 minutes before finishing it off which will give
us enough time to pull the rest of our ingredients together like for example
the star of the show some beautiful perfectly sweet summer vine ripened
tomatoes all right accept no substitutes alright it sounds obvious but I'm going
to say it anyway this turn is only going to be as good as your Tomatoes so make
sure you get some nice ones and then to make this semi legit you're gonna want
to find some herb de Provence which is basically a dried mix of every single
herb you've ever heard of plus a little touch of lavender which doesn't really
sound like it would work but it really really does and then assuming our tart
shells cooled down for about 10 minutes or so we can show you the last major
ingredient and that would be some Dijon mustard and what we'll do is take three
or four generous spoons of that and we will spread that evenly into the bottom
of our shell and we really do want to be generous with this okay that stuff's
gonna be our sharp tangy sort of spicy liaison between our crisp buttery crust
and our soft sweet tomatoes and usually at this point I would tell you to use
any mustard you want but not this time I need you to use the
best strongest French Dijon you can find and then what we'll do once we've
mustered our crust let's go ahead and lay in our sliced tomatoes which I tried
to slice just over a quarter inch thick and in a perfect world this would have
been wide enough to do two rows of tomatoes or we could have made our
shells smaller and narrower and just fit one row but this is what I had to deal
with so after putting four whole slices in offset like that I'll simply go ahead
and use some half slices to fill in the gaps which actually if I do say so
myself made for a pretty nice presentation but bottom line one way or
another we want to cover the surface completely without overlapping the
tomatoes and some people like to overlap but not me because I don't think the
tomatoes cook enough that way so as you can see I'm going single layer and then
what we'll do once our tomatoes are down let's go ahead and season those
generously with some French sea salt or the salt of your choice and we will also
do a little touch of freshly ground black pepper as well as a generous
sprinkling of herbs of Provence which as I'm applying I'm kind of rubbing between
my fingertips to sort of activate it and while we do want to be careful applying
dried herbs or something like this because it can potentially overwhelm the
other ingredients we really do want to make sure we apply enough since it is
one of the signature flavors and then what we'll do after we've applied our
herb de Provence is we'll grate over a very light dusting of Parmesan cheese
the real stuff of course some parmigiano-reggiano and I know you have
a French friend that does this and uses Greer that's fine and also delicious but
personally I do prefer the parmesan and then after the cheese we'll finish this
up a little drizzle of olive oil and that's it once that's been applied our
tomato tart is ready to bake so let's go ahead and transfer that back into the
center of our 400 degree oven for about 25 or 30 minutes or until our pastry is
beautifully browned and crispy and our tomatoes look caramelized and amazing
and then all we're gonna need to do at this point is somehow someway let this
cool down to room temp which we can if we want let happen right on this pan but
if you're brave and more importantly have two spatulas if we're able to
somehow transfer this hot tired on to a cooling rack that bottom will actually
stay a lot crispier once this is finally so I took a chance and it worked out and
I let it cool on that rack for another 20 minutes or so
at which point we'll get this ready for service with a couple final touches
which will include a little extra drizzle of olive oil as well as some
chopped fresh herbs ideally some of the same ones that are in herb de Provence
like parsley and oregano and thyme and some chive like I used here and that's
it once cooled and decorated our tomato tart is finally ready to enjoy and one
thing I love so much about this tart besides everything is that visually this
kind of under promises but when you bite in taste and texture wise it totally
over delivers like way over I mean the combinations and texture and tastes
between that crispy buttery pastry and that tangy sharp acidic mustard and that
sweet caramelized but still juicy tomato is just absolutely stunning and really
must be experienced to be believed I mean it really doesn't seem possible
that something this simple is this delicious but it is I mean it's kind of
funny if someone asked me what my all-time favorite tart was and my answer
was like the only one that doesn't use fruit I know I know
tomatoes technically a fruit and peanuts aren't enough they're a being and birds
are just newer little flying dinosaurs all right I know all that but you know
what I'm saying of all the tarts in the world sweet and savory this is by far my
favorite and I'm enjoying this without a glass of rosy oh by the way does anyone
know if they have a video recipe category in the Khans Film Festival
maybe that's my ticket to finally get over there but anyway no matter where
you enjoy this or whether you're sipping on a glass of rosy or not I really do
hope you give this amazing tomato tart a try soon so head over to food wishes
comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy
you