Whether you’ve heard of them or not, New Jersey is famous for its tomatoes. So what’s not to love about tomato season? This year however, tomato crops all over the Northeast are being threatened by the dreaded late blight fungus. Already Pedro (our CSA provider) has had to pull 80 otherwise healthy tomato plants from his crop of 240. Not good! I opted to buy my tomatoes from the farm stand where I buy them every year. However they grow them they did not seem to have a problem since their table was full of big, juicy specimens.

Here are the ingredients of our dinner last night. Fresh Jersey tomatoes, a few grape tomatoes that I picked from my own plants yesterday afternoon, fresh local sweet corn from the farm stand, and a handful of basil leaves also picked from my own basil plant.

The sweet corn just got boiled and buttered, eaten just like it is. The tomatoes went into a tart easy enough for even you no-cooks out there.

First I salted and peppered the tomatoes so they would release some of their juices before going into the tart so they wouldn’t get the crust too watery.

Then I took a sheet of thawed puff pastry and rolled it out to an appropriate size. Next, Dijon mustard got slathered on the pastry but not too thickly. The mustard was then covered up with a layer of sliced Swiss (I like to use Emmenthaler) cheese. The basil leaves (left whole) came next because if you put them on top they would just get crispy. Just sprinkle a good handful around. Finally, the last layer are the tomatoes. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the crust is browning and the cheese is melted. Here is the result:

Easy and delicious! I can’t promise yours will be as good as ours was since you’ll be lacking the secret ingredient (Jersey grown tomatoes), but I bet you can find some equally delicious in-season tomatoes near you. Don’t use tomatoes when they are out of season or you’ll really be disappointed with the results.

I love tomato tart!

(P.S. For those of you wondering, I’ve kind of given up on my CSA blog entries for now. We are not getting very much right now and it’s not the kinds of things that make for good recipes. Poor Pedro, this year has been a challenge so far.)