My garden has not been a roaring success this year with the exception of one tomato plant which must be from the genus triffidius. I grew it in a pot but it has nevertheless cleared the fence, encroached across the lawn and invaded next door.
I have had sweet red tomatoes from it all summer, then harvested two kilos of green tomatoes to make chutney and still it keeps on giving. But now the cold weather has arrived, I see little prospect of much ripening and so I’ve been looking around to see what else I can do with green tomatoes. There are lots of American recipes for tarts and flans out there but they all seem to involve mayonnaise which, whichever way I look at it, it feels wrong to cook with (sorry, Stateside folk).
So I decided to use my good old lazy bread tart recipe. I was worried that the tomatoes would still be tart but roasting them with a little brown sugar gave them a lovely fruity flavour, almost like an apricot. Paired with a kick-ass Cheddar (I used some Montgomery’s which smelt like freshly-turned earth, yumyum), these tarts are also perfectly mouth-sized.
Ingredients
12 slices of bread (I used white but you could use wholemeal or granary too)
30g of melted butter
1 beaten egg mixed with 1 tbsp milk
40g mature Cheddar cheese, grated
About half a dozen small green tomatoes or equivalent
2 tsp Demerara sugar
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 200˚c / 180˚C fan assisted / Gas Mark 6. Cut the tomatoes into slices, horizontally so that the pips don’t fall out. Put the slices on a sheet of greaseproof paper on a baking tray and sprinkle with the sugar. Bake for 20-25 minutes until soft and sweet.
Cut the crusts off the bread and roll it out flat with a rolling pin. Cut into rounds with a glass or pastry cutter and brush the circles of bread on both sides with the melted butter. Press into a baking tin. Bake for 10 minutes. The bread should be turning golden and hard.
Place a couple of tomato pieces in each tart case, sprinkle with cheese and cover with the seasoned egg and milk mixture, taking care not to overfill. Bake for a further 15 minutes or until the filling has set. Serve warm or cold.
Fromage Homage 
Oh yum, could eat half a dozen of those right now!
I think I did eat about half a dozen…whoops…
This sounds and looks so wonderful! I am going to save this for next summer!
I think you could do lots of different things with the roasted green tomatoes – they end up surprisingly sweet.
I love to fry them, but have never experimented with them any other way. Thanks for the enlightenment! 🙂
Got green tomatoes that don’t look like riprning, going to try that today with a difference, great lunch idea.
Tried them, delicious with a little sesame seeds srpinkled on top and chopped parsley in the egg mixture.
AV
Glad you liked them! If you have anymore green tomatoes, I reckon the roasted ones would go well with meat in a tagine or casserole.
Oh wow! They look so good!!!
They were very moreish (note I say ‘were’ not ‘are’!)
Ha ha!
They’d have to go in the lock-able mince pie tin…! Look lovely 😁 well done on your monster tomato plant, we got about 7 blueberries this year
How do you lock a mince pie tin?! I would just unlock it anyway and scoff the lot 🙂
Those look wonderful! Bread, roasted tomatoes, and a good cheddar… what more do you need? 🙂
Exactly! 🙂
They look so cute! Can you fit a whole one in your mouth at once???
Indeed, I can confirm that you can 😉
Maybe a ‘good old standby’ to you, but totally new to me. Shall have to try making some–though at the moment I’m still being inundated with ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse. Salads, soups and pasta sauce galore!
Ah, I used to make them with my sister when I was little – not with green tomatoes though, mainly cheese and ham! They go really crispy so it’s hard to tell they’re not pastry-based.
I have some green tomatoes that came in my veg box (did you ever check them out at all – Sutton Farm?) and have been listlessly wondering what to do with them – not enough to make a chutney but certainly enough to give this a try!
No, I must check them out, keep meaning to. I think if you roasted the green tomatoes you could also use them in a tagine or similar, they reminded of apricots somehow.
These are really too cute! I’m going to try these out so I can see what you mean about the apricot flavour, sounds intriguing. Love the fact that your tomato plant took over the yard!
Let me know what you think! Have you got green tomatoes at the moment?