Spiral Vegetable Tart 37/60

Happy New Year! Here is a beautiful Spiral Vegetable Tart I made for Christmas brunch. 

I wanted to make something unique and delicious that would work well with other food on the menu: scrambled eggs, ham, hash browns, fruit, and coffee cake. The recipe starts with a flaky pastry crust covered with a layer of garlic and herb cheese that is topped with thin, vibrant vegetable slices, arranged in a colorful swirl. This tart exceeded my expectations.

I looked at several recipes and put together my own version. The one at Preppy Kitchen, https://preppykitchen.com/spiral-vegetable-tart/#recipe, was the one I followed the most closely.

I started with my favorite pastry dough: Carla Lalli Music’s Extremely Flaky Pastry Dough If you have a pie crust you love, by all means use that. But this recipe and technique (recipe ingredients below, technique at the link) have upped my pie dough game.

Spiral Vegetable Tart Recipe

Special Equipment:

9 or 10 inch tart pan with removable bottom (you’ll need fewer veggies for the smaller size. Mine is 10 inches.)

bench scraper

rolling pin

Y-vegetable peeler (standard peeler should be fine as well)

mandoline

parchment paper

pie weights (rice or beans)

Ingredients:

Dough:

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. all purpose flour

1 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 stick (8 Tbsp.) really cold unsalted butter

3 Tbsp. ice water

Filling:

5.2 oz. Boursin garlic and herb cheese

zest from one lemon

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

Vegetables:

Ideally, your vegetables will be of similar diameter.

2 to 3 zucchini (2 if really good sized)

3 yellow squash (I could only find crookneck squash)

2 to 3 large orange carrots

2 to 3 large red carrots

1 leek

To assemble:

1 beaten egg

olive oil

flaky salt

sprig of rosemary, leaves stripped off and finely minced

Instructions:

Make the pastry dough. Form into a disc, cover in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 30 minutes. In my case it was overnight.

Prep the vegetables:

Cut zucchini and yellow squash (I used crookneck) in very thin slices with a mandoline, and layer on paper towel to absorb moisture.

Cut leek in quarters, choose tender inner layers and microwave on plate for 1 minute, cool, blot on paper towels.

Cut carrots into strips with Y peeler. I chose to trim wider squash strips to better match the size of the carrots and to keep my spiral more uniform. 

I ended up with some vegetable slices that were more narrow than I wanted to use in the tart and a few went into a quick omelet from the egg from the egg wash, but I confess some vegetables went into the compost bucket. I baked the leftover pastry into mini cinnamon rolls, and with the omelet and sliced persimmon it was a very nice breakfast.

Vegetables can be prepped the day before you assemble and bake the tart, and kept covered in the fridge.

Set oven to 400 degrees.

Roll dough out a few inches larger than your tart pan. Put dough in pan, gently draping the dough into the edge where the floor meets the wall, and press lightly into pan. Roll pin over top of tart pan to trim off excess dough. If your kitchen is warm or your dough seems soft from handling, you can put tart pan with dough in the freezer for a few minutes before baking.

Put a piece of parchment paper into pan and fill with pie weights, dry rice or beans. I used lentils.

Blind bake (or pre-bake) the crust for 18 minutes. Remove from oven and remove parchment paper and pie weights.

In a small bowl, beat up egg. Brush tart crust with beaten egg and bake for 5 more minutes. Set crust aside to cool.

In a small bowl, mash the Boursin cheese, lemon zest, lemon juice and thyme together with a fork. 

Dollop cheese mixture into the crust and spread to cover the bottom. An offset spatula is helpful here.

On your work surface, start creating a tight roll or spiral of vegetable strips. Dip your finger and thumb into oil, and pinching a thin slice of one of the veggies, pull it through your oily fingertips before rolling.

Continue adding different colors of vegetables to your spiral, using oil on each strip. When the spiral gets too unwieldy to hold, set it in the center of the filled crust. Continue to add oiled strips of vegetables directly to the spiral in the crust until crust is filled.

Sprinkle tart with flaky salt and minced rosemary. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes.

To serve, carefully remove tart from pan and cut into wedges with a serrated knife. 

This is the 37th project in my 60 New Things Project. At the rate I’m posting, I wonder if I’ll finish 60 things before I turn 70.

Thanks for stopping by!