Inspired by a combination of courgette being one of the seasonal vegetables of the month and an Eric Lanlard tarte tatin recipe we once tried reasonably successfully (original recipe here), we’ve come up with our own savoury recipe: Courgette and tomato tarte tatin. This one is made with courgette, plum tomatoes and flavoured with thyme, mustard and parmesan.

The courgette is currently just coming into season in the UK (in early June), so you should be able to get hold of these cheaply from the supermarket, markets and the greengrocer. It’s typically used in Moussaka or in a lasagna, hidden by many other flavours, so not shown off to its full potential. In this recipe, we’ve tried to bring it back to the centre of the stage, so it’s colours are immediately seen and not masked by too many other flavours.

For this recipe you’ll need a tarte tatin dish, or pie dish or oven-proof skillet of similar size. We chose to use the skillet as the handle made it slightly easier to manoeuvre the dish around, but the choice is entirely yours. This tarte tatin can be served warm straight from the oven with salad, or chilled and taken as part of a picnic (as we did in this particular instance).

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

• pre-made puff pastry (either a sheet or block)
• 1 courgette
• 6 plum tomatoes
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• handful of grated parmesan
• Maldon sea salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• Fresh basil – to garnish
• Olive oil

Recipe:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC.
2. Roll out the puff pastry on a floured surface to just under half a cm in thickness (about 4mm). Lay the chosen tarte dish over the top and cut out a circle that’s 2cm wider, then set aside.
3. Cut the tomatoes in half lengthways (i.e. into tops and bottoms). Wash, dry and slice the courgette into 1cm slices, cutting half of the slices into half-moons.
4. Drizzle a good couple of glugs of olive oil into the tarte tatin dish and rub all over the base, then sprinkle over the dried thyme. Please the tomatoes halves cut-side up in the dish, and the fill the gaps with the courgette pieces. You want to over-stuff this as much as possible at this stage (include doubling up some of the courgette slices) as everything will shrink significantly in the oven.
5. Season well with the sea salt and black pepper, then cook in the oven for 25 minutes.
   Remove the dish from the oven and drain as much of any juice as possible that has collected in the dish, moving any vegetables back into place again.
6. Sprinkle over the grated parmesan.
7. Prepare the next step for the pastry by thinly spreading the mustard over one side of your pastry circle (leaving a 2cm gap at the edges). Place the pastry, mustard-side down, over the part-cooked vegetables and tuck the pastry down the sides of the dish and prick a few times with a fork to ensure any air can escape. 
8. Cook in the oven for a further 25 minutes, at which point the pastry should be golden brown.
9. Now for the tricky part. Place a large plate over the top of the tarte tatin dish and quickly flip over, given a couple of firm taps on the bottom of the dish. Lift away gently and you should find that the your colour vegetables are now revealed. If any strays have stayed in the dish, carefully remove them and place them back in the tarte – nobody will know!
10. Season with the fresh basil and enjoy with a salad and glass of your favourite white wine.