I met Alison at an “ugly sweater party” in Baltimore this past Christmas, and we bonded over the fact that we’re both writers and we both have craft, food, lifestyle blogs. We exchanged URLs and whaddya know, a month or so later, I’m trying out one of the recipes featured on her site MarmaladeMagazine.com. And it was AWESOME. So naturally I have to re-share it here.
The recipe was for an Heirloom Tomato Tart with Carmelized Onions and Thyme. I guess it’s hard to go wrong when the recipe involves PUFF PASTRY SHEETS. mmM what an awesome thing, whoever invented it is a serious genius. All that to say this dish was delicious, rich and delectable. And it’s highly, highly recommended!

To make the bed of carmelized onion that the tomato sits on top of, you need some chopped red onion.
And 1/2 a cup of olives, pitted and halved. The look of olives always scared me as a kid so I never tried it. But one day, my uncle had us try a spread he made using olive oil and minced olives. And I realized olives are just salty, sour beans of joy that add a lot of flavor to whatever you’re eating.
The olives get their own glamour shot with the Retrocam app.
To carmelize the onions, throw them in the pan with olive oil and thyme… This part smells heavenly.
And cook for 10min until they start to look slick and soft (or like raw squid tentacles). Then you add the buttah!
Tomatos and puff pastry are awaiting their turn to shine.
I used a rolling pin to spread the sheets out a bit more and get a wider surface of puff pastry. Then spooned out a nice bed of the onions onto each puff pastry.
Last but not least, the slices of tomatoes go on, along with sprinkled olives. In retrospect I would have sliced the tomatoes a bit thicker because they dry out in the baking process. Thicker slices might have preserved the juice a bit more.
Here they are hot and flaky out of the oven!

The obligatory view of the underlying goods – more easily seen with a bite taken out of it. This dish totally hit the spot at the time we were eating these. We kept murmuring between bites how amazing it was and how shocked we were that we were enjoying it so much. It is a bit rich, probably because of the puff pastry and the tablespoon of butter that went into the onions. So one other thing I would change in retrospect is either to make one big pastry and slice them into smaller squares, like pizza. Or make a bunch of smaller pieces so the servings are more manageable for my Asian-girl-sized belly.
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