February 13th
2006
...butter! With this line, the movie had already made up for a few over-the-top stereotypical peculiarities. The flick "Last Holiday" (silly title, who was the genius?) we got to see at sneak last Friday was made for a foodie. Starting with a scene showing Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) in the kitchen cooking while watching Emeril, suddenly, out of the blue pulling out a camera and shooting her dish. That was so not expected, making us, including our friends who know about our passion, laugh out loud! The movie is not all about food, but it's certainly part of its metaphoric image representing the joys in life. Other lines that cracked me up included the highly awarded Chef Didier (Gerard Depardieu) being asked to prepare the entire menu from top to bottom for a new guest and Didier happy to be cooking for a "worthy" guest, enthusiastically bursts out: "I like that woman! It was a woman!?"
It's a typical Hollywood flick, don't expect a masterpiece. On the same note, however, it's very entertaining (and it rarely happens, that the audience at "our" cinema applauds afterwards...) and Gerard Depardieu can be seen in a role that suits him spot-on. In the event you didn't know, Depardieu himself is an avid cook, restaurant-owner and even wrote his own cookbook.
So what's the connection between the tartlets and the movie? Well, there is none. Except to say, that those yummy tomato tarts we consciously enjoyed remembering the bottom line of the movie (life is short. live it up. in so many words).
Fry the chopped bacon in a flat pan until crisp, then drain. Add fried bacon, lightly toasted pine nuts, garlic clove, grated parmesan, pepper and olive oil into your kitchen blender and run it for a few seconds. The amount of olive oil can vary, just add enough to get a pesto-like texture.
Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Roll out the (defrosted) puff pastry and cut/stamp into individual circles or rectangles. Our circles had about 10cm (4inch) in diameter. Add a teaspoon of the bacon mixture on to each tart base, leaving a good-size edge. Halve cherry tomatoes, arrange on top, drizzle some olive oil and fresh thyme leaves over tarts, add a few pine nuts and place on parchment paper.
Note: The book suggest to prepare a basil leaves and olive oil mix to be poured over the tarts before and after the baking. Innocent until proven guilty, I followed the books suggestion, just to find my suspicion verified: nearly black basil leaves - contrary to the mouthwatering photo in the book. Yeah, right! For the second batch I applied common sense and only added the basil leaves/olive oil mix afterwards.
On another Note: In the spirit of my experimenting mood, I have -in vain- attempted to create the perfect edge (see the photo above) with a separate layer of puff pastry. Didn't work. The tart turned into a huge tower, tossing the tomatoes all over the baking sheet. So what's the secret to those perfectly even edges?
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the tart crust turns golden brown. Remove from oven and drizzle with the mix of basil leaves and olive oil. Season with sea salt and black pepper to taste, if desired. They're delicious served both warm and cold.
Tomato Tartlets with Bacon Pesto
Recipe source: The Art of the Tart, Tamasin Day-Lewis, p.22, adapted
Prep time: 20min., baking: 15-20min.
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Ingredients (yields 6 mini-tartlets):
6 rectangular sheets of (frozen) puff pastry
6 slices bacon, chopped
1 clove garlic
2-3 tbsp grated parmesan
2 tbsp lightly toasted pine nuts
freshly ground black pepper
3-4 tbsp olive oil
6-12 cherry tomatoes (depending on their size)
additional pine nuts for decoration
fresh thyme
fresh basil and olive oil to drizzle over
coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
oh gosh .... i am making this for my friend that is coming to visit for sure. thank you thank you .... looks amazing! sending hugs, mav
Superb!
Niky & Oliver ... you've done it again. The post is wonderful, the recipe is incredible and the photo ... whew!
I cannot wait to have fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden this summer so I can try this!
Complimenti!
Oh my. They look so amazingly good.
They are look so cute and so delicious, I have a heap of delicious baby cheery tomatoe from my vine so I am so making this!
Beautiful! This is like a way yummier version of a bacon-and-caramelized-onion bruschetta that I like to make. I can't wait to try it!
What gorgeous tartlets, Nicky! The combination of flavors reminds me of a stripped-down, sexed-up BLT sandwich, with basil instead of lettuce and puff pastry instead of bread. Absolutely beautiful, as always. Thank you for the inspiration!
just perfect, I take one
Zum Reinbeißen schön! Marokkanische Kirschtomaten sind im Haus - fehlt nur noch Basilikum. Zum Einkaufen muss es noch etwas wärmer werden, ich fürchte, -10°C würde es nicht überleben...
Bei den Farben bekomme ich unweigerlich Frühlingsgefühle! An dieser Stelle mal vielen Dank an euch für diese tolle Seite :)
wonderful !
Dear Nicky,
there is a connection between the film and your wonderful tarteletts - … butter, the secret of life and the main ingredient in puff pastry. And if you add to the 2-3 tablespoons butter in the dough of every tartelett all the bacon, olive oil and pine nuts, this recipe is another proof for the theory: We love fat! If we don’t see it.
To prick the center with a fork is a good trick to get it even and not rising that much. Maybe it is better to cut the circles with a sharp knife than to stamp it so they are not pressed at the edges. And it is important that no egg, oil or liquid gets at the edges of puff pastry before and during the baking , because it will stop rising at this points.
wow! those look amazing...could you hear my stomach growl?? :)
Where are you getting such fabulous looking tomatoes at this time of year!? I couldn't be more envious.
And while I heartily (heh, how appropriate...) agree that the secret to life is butter, it's my belief that the second secret is bacon.
To put it more succinctly, your tart looks wonderful.
-Elizabeth
Wo bekommt Ihr in München Bacon? Ich suche schon so lange Bacon wie ich ihn in Melbourne hatte, aber bisher vergebens... kauft Ihr ihn beim Metzger oder im Supermarkt?
Und wie bekommt Ihr Eure Fotos immer so toll hin? Habt Ihr einen Tip, was man machen kann?
Hola, acabo de encontrar tu pagina, estoy encantada con tus fotos, tus recetas, me encanta la forma tan bella y casualmente elaborada en que presentas el Blog, gracias por compartir este espacio con nosotros, besos y un saludo muy grande desde Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, México.
They look great!
Let me just see if I got the recipe right. You don't add the basil leaves until after the tarts are baked, right? The pictures confused me a bit, because you can see the basil leaves in the first uncooked batch.
And the basil and oil mix is made with whole leaves, not chopped, right?
Thanks for clearing that up!
Hello! I came across your blog through my best friend, and I have to say I am hooked. Not only is your blog beautiful to behold, but the recipes you suggest all sound delightfully scrumptious. Thank you so much for sharing your culinary insights!
So so pretty! I especially like the first picture.
This seems very appropriate for the spring-like weather we are having in San Francisco!
That looks amazing...isnt it funny that cookbook pics are always better looking than what we cook, even after religiously following all the instructions. Great pics.
Gorgeous photos. I must say, my mouth waters too much when I visit your site.
When we baked similar tarts in school, we put a wire cooling rack on the top right side up, that way, when the tarts puffed up, the edges were even and they rose uniformly.
Let me know if it works for you.
Alanna, Thanks for the tip! Until now I only pricked shortcrust dough - so simple, don't know, why I never thought of handling puff pastry the same way! And I love the idea of imperfection (the mentioned Amish quilters)!
Maria, Sending back an enormous hug! Finishing an email seems an almost impossible task for me these days ;) Hope you are fine and you got through the last blizzard well...
Kate, You said the magic words: "caramelized onions", I love 'em! Have you already posted about the bruschetta?
Molly, I like your comparison! And since it doesn't take much time to prepare these tartlets, I'd say they almost play in the same league as your mentioned BLT ;)
AnneE, Sorry to say...they're all gone. Even if you had been in the kitchen at the time you'd have had to be very fast ;)
Petra, Wow, marokkanische Kirschtomaten, hört sich toll an, ich glaube nicht, das ich die schon mal bewußt gegessen habe...Überhaupt merke ich aber beim Einkaufen, dass es immer mehr unterschiedliche Sorten an Kirschtomaten gibt. Und ich erinnere mich schon gar nicht mehr, wann ich die letzten richtigen (großen) Tomaten gekauft habe. Aber wenn ich Euren Garten hätte...
Sebastian, No doubt we're on the same page :) Next time I'll try with the fork and cutting the dough vs. stamping it, to see if it helps. Makes sense.
ejm, It's pretty easy to find nice looking AND good tasting cherry tomatoes here in Munich, either on Viktualienmarket or in one of the various supermarkets. But when it comes to regular sized tomatoes, I gave up on those a long time ago...
Dorothee, den (Frühstücks-)Speck hab ich bei unserem kleinen Metzger um die Ecke gekauft (Vogl, Steinstraße), wobei ich natürlich nicht weiß, ob Du was bestimmtes suchst? In Sachen Fotos: Wir haben als absolute Laien angefangen und verfahren einfach nach dem Prinzip "Trial and Error". Wichtigste Regel für uns: Nur bei ausreichend Tageslicht (ohne Blitz fotografieren).
Joana, Yes, you're right - sorry for the confusion. On the first two pictures you see my first batch, the one where I added the basil also before baking. The outcome was anything but photo-worthy, all the basil leaves had turned black (not really unexpected though...). Now the last picture shows a tart from the second batch, where I added the leaves after baking the tarts... This is the way to go!
Anita, How about this: I make some tarts for you, if you can convince San Francisco's spring weather to come straight to Munich..., let's say next week?
Mochene, Another good tip - I'll let you know, once I tried it!
hi nicky, what a stunning series of photographs - i'm breathless at their beauty. i love tamasin day-lewis' books (i have both art of the tart and tarts with tops on), and this was definitely one of the recipes on my hitlist! thanks for sharing
Just discovered your blog via the bloggies nominations and have to say, that yours is fantastic! Great style and design, mouthwatering photography!
those who absolutely amazing! the size of it makes it all the more appealing. I must try it out for my next tapas dinner. Keep up the excellent work on your blog. Its awe-inspiring for small bloggers like myself.
Bacon is one of those things that makes *anything* good.
The photos are absolutely brilliant. I love tarts like these which are simple yet burst right into spring in my mouth. Fabulous!
Wow. You give new meaning to the term "food porn". Incredibe edible pictures.
Ohh My!! This is so awesome! I definitely have to try them out... You are a genius!! :o)
Do check out my blog for some interesting recipes as well!1
absolutely wonderful!
Hello!
Thanks for posting this fantastic recipe, cant wait to have a go at it!
Regarding getting the perfectly even edges: Not long ago I made a recipe for rhubarb puff pastry tarts form Nigel Slater. Although they were square tarts, I think the same can apply to round ones.
"With the point of a knife, lightly score a border on each piece of pastry about 2 cm in from the edges to create an inner circle/rectangle. (...) Bake the pastry pieces for 10 minutes in a 200°C oven. Remove form the oven and push down the center of each pastry with the back of a fork, leaving the borders puffed up (...)"
Then you con procede to put the filling in the tarts and return them to the oven for the remaining time.
The rectangular rhubarb tarts that I made looked amazing, and with perfect edges.
The recipe is from February's edition of Sainsbury's Magazine.
These pictures are beautiful, it's rare that pictures actually do a dish justice, but I think you've certainly accomplished that. Lovely.
I've seen a lot of great photographs. Are you taking those yourself? They are wonderful. What camera are you using to do it??
D
Mouthwateringly spectacular!
Doesn't really matter what kind of tomato here in Toronto. They are pretty dismal just about any time of year (don't get me started). They might look okay sometime but the taste is completely blank because they are picked so green and allowed to ripen off the vine out of the sun.
There is usually a window of opportunity for great tomatoes at the market sometime in early September.
So if you have good cherry tomatoes now, that's it. I'm moving to Munich!
-Elizabeth
Hey Nicky, quite a while ago, I was so intrigued by this post that I just had to produce my own version of these delicious tartlets. I've finally gathered the courage to post about it (with pictures) to my blog. Here's the link for those people that are interested (or click my name below for a link to the blog)
http://journal.ngaloppo.org/archives/2006/05/13/tomato-rucola-pesto-tartlets/
Thanks for this excellent inspiration!
Hi, thats great. When I read this i get hungry. The description and the pictures are excellent.
As always, inspiringly beautiful! I often do little tarts like this with puff pastry. Before filling, I prick the center with a two-pronged sharp fork, leaving the rim untouched. That seems to do the trick. Or maybe, you can just follow Amish quilters, who purposely create a mistake in each quilt to symbolize that it is only God who can create perfection.