Buttery Tomato Tart

This intensely flavoured tomato filling contains a scandalous amount of butter, but it’s worth every calorie. You can use any creamy soft white cheese, but avoid pungent goat’s milk cheeses. Steer clear of rocket too, because its aggressive pepperiness will overwhelm the star ingredient.

Buttery Tomato Tart: an easy recipe, and no soggy bottom. Photograph
by Michael Le Grange, courtesy of Random House Struik.  

This easy recipe comes from my book Scrumptious: Food for Family & Friends, and it's one I make often when cherry tomatoes are in high season, as they are now in South Africa.

I have a few vines growing in my garden, but I have to say they are not a patch on the glorious sweet tomatoes spilling out of supermarket shelves.  I've tried growing many different varieties of miniature tomatoes over the years, under the most organic of circumstances, but every summer I'm disappointed by my crop because their skins are so leathery. Sure, they have a wonderful and mysterious grassy taste that is quite absent in supermarket tomatoes, but they're really not suitable for a dish like this because I'd have to peel every one of them. And who has time for peeling cherry tomatoes?

For this recipe, in order to prevent soggy-bottom syndrome, I pre-bake the pastry cases and pile in the filling  just before I serve them.  You can prepare both the filling and the pastry cases in advance - see my Cook's Notes at the end of this page.

Please don't skimp on the butter or cream in this recipe. They are the best friends of tomatoes.

Buttery Tomato Tart 

8 Tbsp (120 ml/120 g) butter
2 tsp (10 ml) olive oil
1 kg ripe, sweet cherry tomatoes
2 thumb-length sprigs fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 large clove garlic, peeled and finely chopped or grated
a pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
salt and milled black pepper
6 Tbsp (90 ml) fresh cream
2 rolls ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed
a beaten egg, for brushing

For the topping: 

150 g mild, creamy white cheese, such as feta, ricotta or proper mozzarella
a handful of fresh baby herb leaves: oregano, marjoram or basil

Heat the butter and oil in a large pan and add the whole tomatoes and herb sprigs. Cook, tossing often, over a high heat, for 5-7 minutes, or until the tomatoes have softened. Using a potato masher, lightly crush the tomatoes to release their juices.

Add the garlic and chilli flakes and season with salt and pepper. Turn up the heat and cook at a vigorous bubble for 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened and reduced slightly. Stir in the cream and bubble for another few minutes. Discard the herb sprigs and keep warm.

Set the oven to 180 °C and heat two baking sheets. Unroll each puff pastry cylinder and roll out lightly to increase its size by about 2 cm on all sides.  Using a sharp knife, trim a 1-cm-wide strip off each edge. Brush the pastry with beaten egg and prick all over with a fork. Place the strips of pastry around the edges of the rectangle to form a raised border. Mark a chevron pattern on the border, using a knife. Brush the borders with egg.

Cut out two rectangles of foil exactly the same size as the base (measure by placing the foil over the pastry and running your thumbnail around the inside edge of the border). Place the foil on top of the pastry. Lift the pastry sheets, on their paper, and place them on the hot baking sheets (you may need another pair of hands for this). Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the foil and bake for a further 10–15 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and crisp. Don’t worry if the middle of the pastry puffs up; it will soon subside.

Peel off the foil and place the pastry bases on wire racks so the bottoms remain crisp. Just before you serve the tarts, spread the warm tomato filling over the bases. Scatter with nuggets of cheese and a sprinkling of baby herb leaves. Slice into squares and serve immediately.

Serves 8 as a snack.

Cook’s Notes

• The pastry bases can be prepared, ready for cooking, up to 8 hours in advance and kept covered in the fridge. 
• Once baked and cooled, the pastry bases will remain crisp for at least two hours at room temperature, depending on the humidity in your kitchen.
• Bring the pastry up to room temperature before it goes into the oven. 
• You can prepare the tomato sauce up to 24 hours in advance and warm it gently before spreading it over the pastry.

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My Hot Caprese Tart, and the agony of revisiting older blog posts

This beautiful picture is the work of Michael Le Grange, who is responsible for the images in my cookbook.  I'm in awe of his skills as a specialist food photographer, especially as I've recently spent many hours sifting through the older posts on my blog in a frenzied outburst of housekeepery.

Hot Caprese Tart on Phyllo Pastry. Image by Michael Le Grange,
© Random House Struik 

This hasn't been a pleasant exercise: I've cringed seeing the amateurish quality of the fuzzy photographs I posted when I started this blog six years ago. At the time, I could afford only the cheapest little point-and-click, and I really didn't appreciate the importance of a good image when it comes to food bloggery.  In fact, I was so wet behind the ears in 2007, when I started this blog, that I posted many recipes without any photographs at all. A good example is the recipe for my mum's legendary Asparagus Tart.

My first impulse, as I started my clean-up, was to delete all my earlier blogposts on the grounds that they are severely embarrassing. (This humiliation is amplified when someone finds a recipe and eagerly staples a dreadful photograph of mine to their 'Favourite Recipes' board on Pinterest.)

However, as I worked through the posts, I discovered many favourite recipes I'd entirely forgotten about: my late mother-in-law's lovely Almond Tart, for instance, and my mum's gorgeous Ginger-Glazed Shortbread.  Then there are those older recipes written in great detail that I'd never attempt these days because I don't have the time: Old-Fashioned Quince Paste is one example.

After some hand-wringing, I decided to let the older blogposts stand. Not only have I rediscovered recipes that gave me enormous pleasure at the time I wrote about them, but I've also revisited happy times in my life.

I've never kept a written diary (mostly because my handwriting as a left-hander is so appalling that I can't decipher a word) but I'm an ardent fan of diaries, coming as I do from a long line of South African women diarists.

My great-great grandmother, Charlotte
Moor (née Moodie), was a prolific diarist

My ancestor Sophia Pigot, for example, wrote a famous diary when she arrived in South Africa as a wide-eyed girl in a family party of 1820 settlers.  Charlotte Mary St. Clair Moodie, my great-great grandmother (left), was a poet and novelist whose extensive journals about the Boer War and her travails as a mother and farmer were privately published by my family a few years ago  Her daughter, my great-aunt Shirley Moor, kept a wonderfully fierce and endearing diary (now in the Campbell Collections), which I spent many months transcribing and annotating in the mid-Nineties.

My mum, novelist Jenny Hobbs, also has a stash of hand-written diaries from her teen years, written in exercise books stuffed with tickets, postcards, ribbons and similar 1950s ephemera.

As the daughter of these indefatigable women, I'm a bit ashamed that I've never kept a pen-and-paper diary to pass on.  All I can offer is this food blog, warts and all.


Perhaps some time in the future - in 30 years' time, for example, when I'm sitting drooling in a wheelchair and sucking cauliflower cheese through a tube  - I'll read fondly through my blogposts, marvelling at a time when my children still wanted to live at home, and I had the time and inclination to make Half-Candied Kumquats Dipped in Dark Chocolate.

If you've read this far down, you surely must want the recipe.

This is an effortless and delicious dish for brunch or lunch, and one of my favourite recipes for feeding a crowd. You can read more about this dish here, if you can bear the embarrassing photographs.

Hot Caprese Tart

A classic Italian salad transformed into a ‘pizza’, albeit one with a base of crisp phyllo pastry. Children who might turn up their noses at a Caprese salad, that sublime combination of ripe tomatoes, milky mozzarella and peppery fresh basil, are surprisingly enthusiastic when they see it presented in a form they know and love. Double this recipe if there are children at the table.

6 sheets phyllo pastry
8 Tbsp (120 ml/120 g) butter
5 Tbsp (75 ml) finely grated Parmesan cheese
8 ripe tomatoes
600 g mozzarella
flaky sea salt and milled black pepper
a small bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked
3 Tbsp (45 ml) olive oil

Heat the oven to 170°C. Unroll the phyllo pastry on a board and keep covered with a damp cloth. Melt the butter in a saucepan or the microwave. Start by brushing the bottom and sides of a non-stick baking sheet, then line it with a sheet of phyllo pastry, allowing the edges to drape over the rim. Brush the phyllo layer generously with butter and sprinkle with a tablespoon of Parmesan. Add another sheet of phyllo and continue layering, brushing and sprinkling until you have used up all 6 sheets. Trim any ragged edges and round off the corners with a pair of scissors.

Thinly slice the tomatoes and the mozzarella and arrange the slices, alternately, in overlapping rows on the pastry. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 170° C for 10-15 minutes, or until the pastry is crisp and golden, and the cheese melted. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with basil leaves and drizzle with the olive oil. Cut into eight squares and serve immediately.

Serves 8 as a starter or side dish.

Cook’s Notes: Make the phyllo pastry base up to 6 hours in advance, but cover it tightly with several sheets of clingfilm so it doesn’t dry out. Slice the cheese and keep covered. The tomatoes should be sliced at the last minute.

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Behind-the-scenes snaps from my cookbook's shoot

Like an over-excited five year old, I'm hopping from foot to foot and tugging my plaits about my cookbook Scrumptious: Food for Family and Friends, which will be published on 6 July 2012 by Random House Struik. Over the next week or so, I'll be sharing some insights on this blog about the interesting and exasperating process of creating a cookbook:  how I settled on a theme and title, how I chose, devised and tested the recipes, and how I wrestled with the business of writing an accurate, original and (I hope!) inspiring manuscript.

Postscript, 2 July: Here's a charming blog post from photographer Michael Le Grange describing his experience of the photo shoot.

Michael Le Grange's photograph of my Peri Peri Calamari with Chouriço Sausage. Click on the image
 to see a full-size version. Image © Random House Struik 2012. Plate by my uncle David Walters, who made all the fine porcelain dishes for the book.

In the meantime, here are some behind-the-scenes snaps from the cookbook shoot, which took place over three weeks at my home in Hout Bay in late 2011 (with another burst in January, when we shot the cover).

My recipes were photographed by specialist food photographer Michael Le Grange of Cape Town's Flat Art Studios, a quiet-spoken, quirky man whose thoughtful eye for light and detail truly knocked my socks off.  We became firm friends over the course of the shoot, and every time we styled, shot and discussed one of his beautiful images I felt a blast of relief that I'd opted to use a professional. (I'd been offered the option of using my own pictures for the book, but I declined, figuring that the success of a cookbook rests largely on the quality of its images, and that my food snaps just wouldn't cut the mustard.)

 I took charge of  styling the food and settings (more about the styling of the book in a future post), and the dishes were prepared by energetic chef and stylist Sarah Dall. All this took place beneath the gimlet eye of Beverley Dodd, the talented designer and artistic director of my book.  Completing the team were Michael's assistants Kirk and Willem, intern chef Kaylah Greenberg and stand-in chef Juliet Douglas.

Here are some of my snaps of the shoot.

Herb and Rice Salad with Feta, Walnuts and Broccoli Crumbs, ready for shooting

Left to right: Photographer Michael, designer Bev, stand-in chef Juliet, intern chef Kaylah and
 photographer's assistant Willem.

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The cover of my Scrumptious new cook book!

I'm fizzing with excitement about my cook book, which will be published by Random House Struik at the beginning of July 2012. At last I can show you the cover.

Shooting the cover. On the left is Kirk, Michael's assistant. Plus an

 interested  (interested in the steak, that is)  onlooker, my basset

hound Madame Velvet.

What do you think of the cover? I couldn't be happier with it because it sums up the mood, style, tone and content of my book. What I really love is its simplicity and elegance, and for that I have to thank the book's designer and creative director Beverley Dodd, and Cape Town food photographer Michael Le Grange, both of whom worked closely with me to come up with this image.

(For the back blurb of the book, scroll down to the end of this blogpost.)

We considered many shots from the inside of the book for a cover, but none quite fitted the bill. We wanted the cover to look simple, sophisticated, modern and inviting, but it also needed to reflect the book's theme:  good, accomplished home cooking and polished entertaining. For weeks we mulled over a location, but it was Michael who spotted this natural stone wall outside the front entrance to my home, and I slapped myself on the forehead several times for not having thought of it earlier.

When I planned the styling of this image, I chose a round table because these are so convivial, and 'ghost' chairs because they're unobtrusive. The plain white linen and worn silver cutlery echo the simplicity of the food-styling inside the book. I also wanted an indigenous flower on the table to give the cover an African stamp, and we tried several blooms before settling on a single hot-pink protea.

It took a little longer to decide what to put on the plates, and in the end I was guided by one of my children: 'It's easy, Mom,' he said. 'Just put your favourite special-occasion dish on the cover.'  So I did just that, because fillet, mash and rocket is just what I'd make if you came round for lunch at my house.

Only one individual in my family didn't enjoy this shoot. Scroll down to find out who.

 Here's our little basset Akamaru, sorely aggrieved about the steak situation. (Photograph by Michael Le Grange.)

Back blurb of my cookbook:

Creating memorable feasts for family and friends is one of life's great pleasures: how better to celebrate life and love than to gather at a happy table laden with scrumptious home-cooked food? You do not need to be an expert cook to produce heart-warming dishes that sing with flavour - all that's required is passion, patience and smart preparation well in advance. 

Jane-Anne Hobbs has created over 90 original, triple-tested recipes designed to take the fuss out of home entertaining and bring smiles to the faces of the people you love. Whether you’re planning a relaxed get-together over a homely dish of soup, stew or salad, or a lavish spread with all the bells and whistles, you’ll find plenty of inspiring new ideas here, plus top tips for planning and preparing a meal to remember.

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Announcing my Scrumptious new cook book!

I'm excited and proud to announce that Cape Town publishers Random House Struik will be publishing my first cook book at the beginning of July 2012.

I styled the photographs myself because I wanted
complete creative control over the look of the book.

Although I can't yet tell you what the title of the book is, it has (of course!) the word 'Scrumptious' in it. What I can reveal is that it's a beautiful, full-colour dustjacketed hardback, filled with superlative photographs, and that it contains 90 of my original, triple-tested recipes, most of them entirely new.

I spent the better part of last year toiling night and day to produce a selection of interesting new recipes, and the photographs for the book were shot here, at my home in Hout Bay, over a period of three weeks in November and December 2011.

Although I was given the option by my publishers to shoot the photographs myself, I decided that my food snaps were not of the standard I would like to see in my own cook book, and so Random House Struik commissioned talented Cape Town photographer Michael Le Grange of Flat Art Studios to photograph my food.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the images are breathtaking - and I can't wait to share some of them with you closer to the publication date. I'll also be writing a series of blog posts about the process of writing the book, of developing new recipes, and of shooting and styling the photographs (I did all the food styling myself, because I wanted it to look like my food).  What's more, all the plates, bowls and platters in the photographs were hand-made by my uncle David Walters, master potter of Franschhoek, so this is truly a family affair.

Book designer Bev Dodd and photographer Michael Le Grange
 (endlessly) debating a food shot

A commission from South Africa's leading publisher of top-quality cook books is a dream come true for me. Although this isn't my first published book,  it's the one that I've most wanted to write for almost 40 years, ever since I picked up a knife as a little girl and tearily peeled my first onions.

The tears I shed over those onions were nothing compared to the tears of delight I cried when I signed my book deal last year. Although I've loved writing this blog over the past five years, and learned so much, it has also at times been a frustrating, lonely experience, and one that has consumed many hours of my time.

There were days during the early years when I felt like giving up, not only because my blog wasn't earning me a cent, but also because food blogging has become so unnecessarily competitive and controversial.

Over the past while, however, as my blog has opened a new career for me as a food writer, recipe developer and social media consultant, my enthusiasm has returned, and I've poured all my energy and creativity into writing the very best cook book I can, and one that I hope will be truly useful and inspiring to home cooks.  With Michael le Grange's atmospheric photographs and book designer Bev Dodd's fabulous art direction, I hope I've produced a winner.

Click here to find out where to buy my book > http://whatsforsupper-juno.blogspot.com/p/my-new-cookbook.html

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