Simple Tomato Tart With Pesto

A very simple meal to serve during the week, when time to spare in the kitchen is limited. It is light and delectable serve with simple spinach or green salad. It can be serve as an appetizer as well. 

The ingredients I have below is for a rectangular  tart pan (4½ inches by 14 inches), use any size of pan available to you and adjust the amount of ingredients accordingly. 

Ingredients:

1 sheet store bought puff pastry (if you can. buy the one that has "butter only" as the main ingredient), thawed in the refrigerator overnight, or according to package direction

2 - 3 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1 cup ricotta cheese (I used low fat)

1 large egg

¼ cup (or more) parmesan cheese 

1 tbs finely chopped Italian parsley

Salt and ground black pepper, to taste

½ cup pesto*

• Preheat the oven to 375⁰F. Grease the tart pan lightly with butter. Roll out the puff pastry thinly, transfer onto the prepared tart pan. Trim off the excess.
• Mix ricotta, egg, parmesan cheese, Italian parsley, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Pour this mixture on top of puff pastry. Arrange the cherry tomatoes neatly on top of the ricotta mixture. Dot with with pesto.
• Bake in the middle rack for 45 to 50 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Pesto for the tart:

1 bunch (about 2 cups) fresh basil

1 small clove garlic

¼ cup pine nuts

½ cup olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

• Process all ingredients in a food processor until you have the consistency of a paste. With the machine still running, slowly add olive oil, mix until the oil is well incorporated. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Of course you can make this pesto in a mortal and pestle too. To do that, you need to pound the ingredients all together except the olive oil. Then slowly drizzle the oil with one hand, while the other hand keep pounding (you get the idea, I am not that good in explaining this, sorry)