French Tomato Tart

The ripe tomatoes at the farmer’s market are beautiful right now, so we decided to make a fresh tomato tart with goat cheese and herbs last weekend.  The best time to find ripe tomatoes is usually at the end of summer into early fall, and these were perfect!

We used our pastry crust recipe with and added a generous pinch of salt. Clayton usually hand mixes the pastry crust by working in the butter and then adding ice-cold water until the pastry just comes together  (we don’t have a mixer in our kitchen). He then rests it in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes before rolling it out.

We used three medium tomatoes, cut them into quarter-inch rounds, and then seeded them (for moisture control). We set them on paper towels to drain and lightly salted them while we worked on the other steps. It’s amazing how much liquid comes out of tomatoes. For curiosity’s sake we measured and ended up with about 4 oz of liquid, and the tart at the end was still slightly watery than we expected. We’d suggest letting them drain for an hour prior to assembling the tart.

You can use any combination of herbs. We’ve used chives, chervil, thyme, and tarragon. Be sure to use a tart pan with a removable bottom. It makes slicing the tart so much easier!

The combination of tomatoes, goat cheese, and herbs was so good and it looked beautiful on these rustic plates! We paired this with Robert Sinskey Vineyards Three Amigos Vineyard Pinot Noir. This gave us the idea to try a sandwich made with tomato, dijon mustard, and goat cheese.