Skip to main content

Vegetable Tart—Yum

While working our way through a series of airports this past weekend, I found myself wanting some mindless reading to occupy me during a two-hour layover. Actually, with a flight delay due to rain all over the blasted country, it might have been longer than two hours. So, I bought a magazine and settled in at the gate. I chose Real Simple knowing full well it would be full of ads but maybe not as many as an issue of Vogue or Glamour which are nothing but ads.

In the September issue of Real Simple, there is a section on meatless meals, and I have dogeared some pages to see if the recipes are worthy of my kitchen. That phrase may sound vain, but what I really mean is, do I want to bother cooking the stuff, or is it crap?

The first recipe I followed was for a wilted red cabbage slaw to be served with prepared pierogies. It was fine. The next recipe was for a vegetable tart which I think is more than fine, so I'll share it here. Suggestion: make your own pie crust because using a store-bought one just cheapens the meal. I have this idea that this simple and rustic meal can be made using other fillings—fennel and sausage; carrots, potatoes and roasted chicken; peas, onion, and ham.

The pie crust recipe I followed made two, but since I had so much filling, it worked out well, and I made two whole tarts.

Potato, Leek, and Feta Tart

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 leeks (white parts cut into half moons)
2 small zucchini, cut into half moons
Kosher salt and black pepper
1/2 cup crumbled Feta
2 tablespoons chopped dill (not a favorite in my house, so I used thyme instead)
2 medium red potatoes sliced thin, peel on
1 store-bought 9-inch pie crust (don't be so lazy—make your own)

Heat oven to 375˚. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the leeks, zucchini and salt and pepper. SautĂ©, stirring occasionally, until just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in the Feta and dill and add the potatoes. Toss to combine.

On a piece of parchment paper, roll out the dough into a 12-inch circle. Slide the parchment and dough onto a baking sheet. Spoon the filling onto the pie crust, leaving two inches all around. Fold the edge of the crust over the edge of the mixture. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 50 to 60 minutes. Cover crust with foil during baking if it turns too brown.

Tip: The recipe suggests merely tossing the potatoes in the mix before filling the pastry, but some of them come out a little undone. It's probably a good idea to sauté them for a couple of minutes before filling the pastry.

Comments

dive said…
Mmmmm … Yum!
That looks lovely, Robyn, but you mentioned piroghi (we spell it differently over here) which I love so I'm off to the Polish Store to prep a piroghi-fest. Yay!
Shan said…
DELISH!!!! I want this on my dinner plate! You find (and make) the yummiest food.

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...