French tomato tart

I think i am coming over all nostalgic with all these French tarts, and this tart has been a labor of love. Again another learning curve as i have never made pastry before and wanted to push boundaries for myself and make puff pastry which took 3 days in itself to do with all the rolling, folding, resting.  I think the pastry got more attention than my poor husband.  The tart is made up of a number of different aromatic flavours and i have to say its like a party in the mouth.  If you want to find out how to make puff pastry find it here 

Thankfully the tomatoes only took 4 and bit hours to do but im used to making these and they are a staple for autumn.  After skinning the ripest tomatoes i could find then de pulping and leaving to drain for an hour they were dressed in garlic and thyme, salt and sugar and roasted off for 3 hours before putting in a jar of olive oil and leaving for a day or so to mingle up.

 The Tapenade is wonderful and is not only great for this tart but lovely with griddled lamb steaks.  

170g Black olives

70g Capers

70g Anchovys

10g Fresh mint

Zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2 lemon

all of the olive oil from the anchovy tin aprox 30- 40g

2 onions were slow fried for 2 hours in butter and the last 10 mins of cooking i added fresh rosemary and thyme 1tsp of dijon mustard and 20g of sherry vinegar and leave to cool 

Next a lovely basil mascarpone cream to serve alongside the tart. this is fresh from the basil and cheesy to go with the tomatoes and just rounds everything off.  Fresh pesto is made find out how here and then mixed into 200g of mascarpone.  This mascarpone is wonderful on pasta and i now make it for Sophie's tea and i also roast off some streaky bacon so its crispy and break this into the pasta and pesto sauce YUM!

FINALLY TO MAKE THE TART now all the elements are made this is a Heston Blumenthal recipe so you can only dream of what this tastes like absolute heaven with lots of aromatic flavours bouncing around the mouth, it will be gobbled up before you know it.  

Get the cold pastry in the tin from the fridge and layer generous layer of chilled tapenade and then a layer of chilled onions and then finally the chilled tomatoes in nice lines across the top make sure you shake off the excess oil.  make sure you save the oil as this is great for salad dressings, cooking etc.  Finally glaze the pastry in egg wash and cook for 20 mins then serve warm with a big dollop of the basil mascarpone.

Once again this is linking up with the Great blogger bake off Helen and Jenny