Supper Club: Tomato and goat’s cheese tarts

Theresa Storey’s tomato and goat’s cheese tarts

We have these tarts quite often in our house, especially during the summer when I’m harvesting gazillions of deliciously sweet cherry tomatoes from the greenhouse. I usually buy puff pastry, as it’s almost as good as homemade and because I seldom have the time or inclination to make it from scratch. (Bought puff pastry comes in lots of different sizes, so adjust the recipe to suit.) I use a green basil pesto, but you can try it with smoked sundried tomato pesto or any kind of pesto you have. If I have pine nuts in the house, they finish the dish perfectly.

Makes 9 tarts

Ingredients

• 500g package of puff pastry
• 2-3 tbsp (heaped) pesto
• 200g cherry tomatoes (halved or quartered)
• 200g log of soft goat’s cheese (sliced into 6mm rounds)
• 1 tbsp pine nuts (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200?C/gas mark 6. Roll out the puff pastry until it is about 3mm thick. Cut into 9 equal pieces (as square as possible) and then score a square with a knife 2.5cm inside the edge of each piece, cutting halfway through the dough. Inside this scored square, spread about a – tsp of pesto. Divide the tomatoes and cheese between the tarts. Sprinkle a few pine nuts on each, if you are using them.
2. Place the tarts onto a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the pastry is risen and golden brown. Take the tarts out of the oven and let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving.

Variations: If you don’t like goat’s cheese, you can substitute mozzarella or cheddar.

Extracted from Fruit on the Table by Theresa Storey (The O’Brien Press). Text – Theresa Storey, 2016.

Photographs by Valerie O’Connor.