Quick Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin
Units
Temperature
Servings
Ingredients
Pan base
- 40 g unsalted butter rounded
- 30 g dark brown sugar rounded
- 30 ml balsamic vinegar rounded
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced rounded
- 3 thyme sprigs rounded
- 3 g fine salt rounded
Tomatoes and pastry
- 700 g cherry tomatoes, left whole, mixed colours if you have them rounded
- 320 g all-butter puff pastry, one ready-rolled sheet, kept cold rounded
To finish
- 10 g basil leaves, torn, added after flipping rounded
- 60 g soft goat cheese or feta, crumbled (optional) rounded
Method
Method
- Heat the oven to 200°C.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.