I mean, I call this a tart because that is what it is but let’s be honest… it’s a fancy, flaky pizza, isn’t it?
This tart is so permissive I can’t even stand it. You can make this WHATEVER you want. Yes I cheat with packet puff pastry (because who has the time for real puff pastry…) but once that is rolled out, damn it, it’s the basis of some wonderful.
I wrote a recipe for a Thyme Tomato, Spinach & Blue Cheese Tart for my free ebook Life Through Food because it is the perfect choice when you’re cooking for a few people. You can layer everything up ready and when your guests arrive you can slip it in the oven and be done with the damn thing.
With this particular version, the courgettes get thinly sliced and laid on a bed of harissa paste before being dotted with chewy, salty morsels of stringy mozzarella that really balance out the warming heat of the harissa.
And the prosciutto? Yes. All the salinity your soul needs. The cooking time allows the salt in the prosciutto to intensify while the fat renders down and infuses the ingredients on the tart, but it doesn’t crisp up and shatter like when you usually baked cured meats (although I’m not above it, as you’ll see here).
Don’t feel compelled to stick to these ingredients, swap out and rearrange as you see fit. All I promise is that once you realise how easy this is to assemble and furthermore, how incredibly delicious, buttery and flakily morseish it is, you will ABSOLUTELY make this again.
Preheat the oven to 180c and take your premade puff pastry out of the box.
Unravel it – it should come with it’s own baking parchment. Lay it down on your biggest baking tray and flatten it out gently.
Now grab a small sharp knife and gently score a 1cm border around the pastry, not hard enough to pierce the pastry but hard enough to see the line.
Into this border squirt a few glops (or spoon a generous dollop) or harissa paste onto the pastry and with the back of a spoon, gently coax the paste across the pastry so that it thinly fills the frame (don’t go into the border).
Now take a handful of spinach and dot it across the harissa pasta. Remember spinach decrease quite a lot so you can be generous.
Take one courgette and slice it as thinly as you have patience for and dot all over the spinach.
Now take a few slices of prosciutto from a packet (about 4/5 slices will do) and rip into loose shreds (don’t be too precious) and draped across the courgette.
Drain a ball of mozzarella from it’s packet, chop into small nuggets and dot around the courgette and prosciutto.
Scatter over a little salt and pepper and then drizzle with a little garlic oil and slip into the oven for 30 minutes.
By this time the mozzarella will char and blister, the prosciutto fat will render down and the courgette will soften into the spinach and harissa.
You can serve warm but don’t be in too much of a haste – just like pizza, this makes a BANGING breakfast if you have leftovers.
MIKEY AND THE KITCHEN. 