Tomato Tarte Tatin

This time of the year we are gifted with the abundance of tomatoes in the garden.

I usually make tomato sauce but this year I wanted to try something different and found an interesting recipe: Cherry Tomato Tarte Tatin !

The recipe is from the book The Art of The Tart by Tamasin Day-Lewis.
It’s a real tarte tatin, not just the name. 

The filling is simply cherry tomatoes with caramelized balsamic vinegar and baked under the puff pastry.

It’s very simple recipe - after making the pastry dough there was nothing really left to do - therefore I didn’t have too much expectation but it was really tasty!

The picture in the book shows bright red color of tomatoes but my tomatoes were baked much longer (I used a bigger pan) and lost the beautiful color.
It’s less appealing but for the taste, well-baked tomatoes were sweeter and suited for this dish, I guess.

The wine we had with was Kirkland Rioja Reserva 2015

Very good wine with lots of fruits and soft tannin, especially for its price ($7.99!).
Its concentrated red fruits went very good with sweet and sour baked cherry tomatoes.

Oven Efficient Dinner

The Shelter in place order is still in effect but stores have been gradually opening with restrictions.

The other day I was walking neighborhood and saw an antique shop with the display outside the store. There I found a cute orange Pyrex with a lid which I fell in love with instantly and brought back home.

This is a perfect size for the Basque cheesecake I wanted to make.

Basque cheesecake is baked at very high temperature to create its distinct burned surface. It is the same temperature as baking bread so I planned to bake baguette at the same time. Then JC decided to cook the lamb for dinner in the oven too.

He seared the lamb then finished cooking in the oven.

We had two wines for this dinner:

Clos Cibonne Côtes de Provence Tibouren 2018

Castelli Green Valley of Russian River Valley Nebbiolo 2014

Refreshing rose wine with a hint of citrus peel-like bitterness cut grease of the dish, and the Nebbiolo with high, soft tannin was a good companion to the flavorful lamb.

Dessert was the cheesecake ... well, it had to be rested overnight so we had the dessert next day.

For this Basque cheesecake, we had Primator Double Bock. 

This is a dark colored beer from Czech Republic; It’s rich with fruit, even tastes sweet, but light in body.

Pairing was great. It tasted like bitter sweet coffee.