Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel & Christoph and Steffi's Food and Travel EN DE
A savoury cherry tomato tarte tatin flipped onto a board, glossy burst tomatoes scattered with basil
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Main French European Vegetarian Nut-free

Quick Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin

A savoury tatin that takes about half an hour, because whole cherry tomatoes need no peeling, coring or precooking at all. They go straight into a butter, brown sugar and balsamic syrup and burst under the pastry as they bake. Leaving them whole rather than halving them is what keeps the tart from flooding, since an unbroken skin holds most of the juice until the caramel is already thick.

Prep10 min
Cook30 min
Rest10 min
Oven200°C
Servings4
Cook mode

Christoph's shortcut savoury tatin with whole cherry tomatoes, using a balsamic and brown sugar pan syrup instead of a dry caramel.

Ingredients

Written for a 25 cm pan

Units
Temperature
Servings
4

Pan base

  • 40 g unsalted butter
  • 30 g dark brown sugar
  • 30 ml balsamic vinegar
  • 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 3 thyme sprigs
  • 3 g fine salt

Tomatoes and pastry

  • 700 g cherry tomatoes, left whole, mixed colours if you have them
  • 320 g all-butter puff pastry, one ready-rolled sheet, kept cold

To finish

  • 10 g basil leaves, torn, added after flipping
  • 60 g soft goat cheese or feta, crumbled (optional)

Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 200°C.
  2. Build the syrup in a 25 cm ovenproof skillet. Melt the butter with the brown sugar over medium heat, add the balsamic, garlic, thyme and salt, and let it bubble for 2 minutes until slightly syrupy. Take it off the heat.
  3. Tip in the tomatoes whole and roll them around to coat, then settle them into a single tightly packed layer. Do not halve them. Whole tomatoes hold their juice until late in the bake, by which point the syrup has already reduced; halved ones release everything at once and the tart floods.
  4. Cover with the pastry, trimmed to a circle about 2 cm wider than the pan, pricked all over with a fork, and tucked down inside the pan wall all the way round.
  5. Bake 28 to 30 minutes, until the pastry is deep golden and risen. The tomatoes will have burst underneath and the liquid should be dark and syrupy at the edges.
  6. Rest 10 minutes, then flip onto a board or rimmed plate. Resting lets the syrup grip; flipping straight away sends hot tomato juice across the table.
  7. Finish after flipping, with torn basil and crumbled goat cheese or feta. Both would burn or melt into nothing in the oven.

Notes

  • This is the fast cousin of the book’s tomato tarte tatin, which cooks the tomatoes down first for a deeper, jammier result. The difference is about 25 minutes and one pan of washing up.
  • Salt the syrup, not the tomatoes. Salting the fruit directly draws water out before it ever reaches the oven, which is the opposite of what this recipe needs.
  • Serve it warm rather than hot, with a sharp green salad. It is also very good at room temperature, which makes it a genuinely useful thing to carry to someone else’s table.
  • Not a dessert, despite the sugar. The 30 g of brown sugar is there to help the balsamic reduce into a glaze and to balance the acid, not to sweeten the tart.

Good with

From Christoph Mayer

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