A tomato tart in December? Heck yeah. With concurrent cold snaps in LA and NY and a miraculous hot house heirloom tomato skidding across the freakishly long LA tomato season finish line onto my kitchen counter, I took it all as a dare to see if I could make something truly tomato-ish and delish with what I had on hand: a tired roll of filo dough, some fresh thyme, and a half remembered admonition from Tom Colicchio’s pre-TV cookbook Think Life Chef to slow roast your tomatoes. But life was in fast-motion, so I did this instead:
sliced the tomato and put it on a cookie sheet, drizzled it with olive oil, sprinkled it with thyme and chopped garlic, salted and peppered it, and put it in a 500 degree oven for 20 minutes until it looked like this…
put a couple of cups of cottage cheese into a fine mesh strainer and pushed out the water with the back of a spoon, mashing it, dreaming of ricotta. it came darned close.
draped about 6 or so layers of the filo dough onto an olive oiled baking sheet
spooned the ricottage cheese here and there
fanned the roasted tomatoes on it
drizzled olive oil on it
sprinkled fresh thyme on it
salted and peppered it until it looked like this…
baked it at 425 f until it looked like this…
I’m guessing it’ll work with thinly sliced hot house plum tomatoes too.
