Rustic Puff Pastry Tomato Tart with Pesto and Kale

This lemony rustic tomato tart with pesto and kale is bursting with flavour and oozing with fresh mozzarella cheese. Made with a puff pastry base, it’s easy to put together for a weekday meal, all you need is a salad!

A SUMMERY PUFF PASTRY TOMATO TART

This is my first year growing tomatoes and getting a crop that doesn’t disappear overnight thanks to a pesky neighbourhood squirrel. This is also my first year having kale in my backyard. Slipping into the backyard to snip off kale leaves has been a joy, but I planted a lot, and I know my tomatoes are only getting started. Soon there’s going to be a canning party in my kitchen, but for now, I can keep up with the bounty. I can go outside and my full tomato harvest is enough for a small salad or for a rustic tomato tart. I went with the latter.

TOMATO TART RECIPE VIDEO

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DINNER WILL BE READY IN NO TIME

The beautiful thing about this tart is that it’s a breeze to make, assuming you’re not labouring over homemade puff pastry. Nine times out of ten, I buy mine from the store because it keeps things simple.

Other than that, there’s some tomato slicing; kale washing and tearing; and then massaging the kale with lemon, zest, oil and salt. It’s all assembly after that, followed by twenty minutes of baking heat. Easy, right?

HOW DO I MAKE A TOMATO TART?

The first thing you’ll want to do is preheat the oven. When you’re dealing with puff pastry, you want to make sure the oven is good and hot, say 450ºF, because this is what it needs to puff up. In the time that the oven is preheating, you should be able to roll out the puff pastry and assemble the tart.

Related: Pickled Fried Green Tomatoes

Related: Cherry Tomato and Asparagus Salad

THE PUFF PASTRY

While the oven is heating up, remove the puff pastry from its packaging and cut it in half. Reserve the other half for a future project. Perhaps another kind of tart, like this summery Medditerraenean tart. Or maybe apple turnovers for breakfast? Millefeuilles? Empanadas? There are options, just don’t let it go to waste!

Anyhow, dust your work surface with flour and then roll it out into a rectangle shape. The goal is for it to comfortably fit on a lined baking sheet with a bit of room to spare.

Once this is done, prick the base with a fork, avoiding the crust. If you’re doing it right, the tart should be covered in tine marks! This keeps the centre from puffing up.

THE PESTO

Where there are tomatoes growing in a garden, there’s often basil, and where there’s basil, there’s pesto. Of course, you don’t need to use a traditional pesto with basil. My husband makes a mean one with garlic flowers, and I foraged this spring for young garlic mustard (an invasive species) and turned it into a pesto. I love making pesto, and since pine nuts are so darn expensive, I often sub them out with walnuts. The pesto adds a lot of flavour to this tart, so try not to swap this out with something else.

THE KALE

In its natural state, kale can be a bit too chewy and tough to swallow due to the nature of its texture. The trick to making it more palatable and digestible is to massage it in a bit of olive oil, lemon and salt. This simple step converts people to this powerful leafy green. In this recipe, I take it a step further with a little bit of lemon zest to make the rustic tomato tart extra zippy.

I’m all about being frugal in the kitchen, so no matter what I’m making, there’s usually an opportunity to make something go further. In this case, it’s the lemon.

We only need a quarter wedge of lemon for the kale, but even if it was half, you can be sure I’m going to zest the lemon. I keep a container in the freezer for lemon zest, which I can toss in recipes as needed. It’s wonderful. Once the kale is massaged, it gets layered over the pesto.

THE TOMATOES

Normally tomatoes are the crown jewel of a rustic tomato tart, and yours most certainly can be. I ended up covering mine in fresh mozzarella, but I was quite liberal with my tomatoes, as is to be expected. Whenever there are tomatoes involved in a recipe, I almost always grind pepper on top. I encourage you to do the same!

THE CHEESE

I used fresh mozzarella for this recipe because of its mild flavour. It gives a chance for the other ingredients to shine through, like the tomatoes and pesto.

PLEATING THE TART

Once the toppings are on, gently tug the dough and fold the edge over. Going around the tart, pleat the dough by folding each new pleat towards the last. If that’s clear as mud, you can see the technique in the video below.

BAKING THE RUSTIC TOMATO TART

Once the rustic tomato tart is loaded and ready to go, it’s time to pop it in the oven. Twenty minutes is usually my rule of thumb, but keep an eye on the tart as the timer starts running out. It helps if you can verify your oven temperature, which is why I keep an oven thermometer in my oven. If I didn’t have that helping me out, my oven would be 25º cooler than it’s supposed to be.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE WAY TO USE UP TOMATOES?

I know I’m not alone in having a tomato garden. What’s your favourite way to use up tomatoes in the early days of the harvest? Have you ever tried making a tomato tart before? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear from you!

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My favourite kind of rolling pin

Oven thermometer

RUSTIC TOMATO TART INGREDIENTS:

1/2 brick puff pastry

1/2 cup pesto

1/4 lemon

1 tsp lemon zest

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

1 bunch kale, washed and torn into small pieces

3-4 medium tomatoes, sliced

pepper for the tomatoes

fresh mozzarella

RUSTIC TOMATO TART INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 450ºF.
2. Roll out the puff pastry into a rectangle until it comfortably fits on a cookie sheet.
3. Using a fork, prick the puff pastry everywhere, except the crust.
4. Spread the pesto onto the puff pastry.
5. In a mixing bowl, massage the oil, lemon, zest, salt and pepper into the kale.
6. Add the kale onto the tart.
7. Arrange the tomatoes over the kale.
8. Tear off pieces of fresh mozzarella and arrange on the tart.
9. Gently tug and fold the edges over a pleat them together.
10. Bake for 20 minutes.

PRINT IT: RUSTIC TOMATO TART RECIPE CARD

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Love and gratitude,