This lunchtime recipe is great for when you want a little more than a salad, but with no more effort. Using ripe tomatoes from the garden, layered on top of a bed of freshly made homemade sage pesto, you can throw together this tasty tart in 45 minutes. The only other ingredients needed for this simple cheese & tomato tart, are a pack of ready-made puff pastry, some shallots, and a big handful of grated cheese. Served alongside a simple green salad and a punchy vinaigrette, this is a quick but impressive dish.
Tasty tomato tart
Some days you crave something more substantial than a simple salad, yet the thought of elaborate lunchtime cooking doesn’t grab you. This is where the beauty of a good tomato tart reveals itself—a dish that bridges the gap between light and satisfying, effortless and impressive, all while celebrating the peak-season of beautiful ripe, sun-warmed tomatoes.
This recipe transforms the humblest ingredients into something that looks like it belongs in a French patisserie window. Starting with ready-made puff pastry (because sometimes convenience is key), we create a golden, buttery base that’s topped with a vibrant homemade sage pesto. The earthy, aromatic sage provides the perfect herbal backdrop for layers of juicy tomatoes that roast gently in the oven, their natural sweetness intensifying as they caramelize around the edges.
What makes this tart particularly brilliant is its flexibility—use whatever ripe tomatoes you have, whether they’re prize specimens from your garden or the best you can find at the market. A scattering of cheese adds richness, while the sage pesto brings a sophisticated twist that elevates this from simple to spectacular. Ready in just 45 minutes and requiring minimal prep, it’s the kind of dish that makes weekday lunches feel special. Served alongside crisp greens dressed in a bright vinaigrette, this tart proves that impressive cooking doesn’t always require impressive effort.
Other tomato and pesto recipes
If you are looking for other recipes on my blog that use tomatoes, you can find some dishes below, together with a couple of variations of the pesto recipe:
- Panzanella salad
- Sage pesto
- Creamy roasted cherry tomato risotto
- Squid, chorizo and tomatoes on toast
- Rocket & basil pesto
- Kale pesto
- Tomato ketchup
Growing tomatoes
One thing that brings a glimmer of sunshine into the cold, dark month of January in UK, is the beginning of the tomato’s new year. Planted indoors in the warm at the end of January, it’s a long but rewarding journey. From their tiny seeds to the first seedlings, and then nurturing them outdoors in the greenhouse (or continuing indoors) until the temperatures in May are warm enough. Now the real labour of love begins! With frequent watering, pruning, and feeding with nutrients such as coffee grinds and crush eggshells, until you reach harvest time in late July through to September when you are rewarded with the long-awaited taste of freshly picked tomatoes. None of that watery, supermarket, nonsense that looks like a tomato but tastes very far from it with flesh as hard as bullets.
Is all that effort worth it? Abso-bloody-lutely
Varieties of tomatoes to grow
There are so many different varieties of tomatoes. But some of my favourites that provide a good yield and I use in the kitchen for either salads or for cooking are:
- Cherry Tomato – Sungold, Gardener’s Delight, Tumbling Tom
- Other Tomato Varieties:
- Plum Tomato – Nagina, Roma
- General Tomato – Crimson Crush, Moneymaker, Alicante
- Large Tomato – Marmande and Supersteak
Totally. You could substitute the sage pesto for another herb flavour such as rocket and basil pesto or kale pesto. Or to make life even simpler you can opt for a jar of ready bought pesto.
The type of cheese is up to you. Ideally though you want something that will melt. Grated hard mozzarella, or a mild blue cheese like a gorgonzola would also work well in place of cheddar.
Simple Cheese & Tomato Tart
Equipment
- Baking tray 40x30cm/16×12"
Ingredients
- 320 g pack of ready-made puff pastry I used 'Jus-Rol, ready rolled sheet
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 150 g shallots
- 1/2 quantity of sage pesto Or all of it if you choose to dot it on the top of the tart per the photo
- 500 g tomatoes
- 50 g cheddar cheese
- Black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C
- Place the un-rolled sheet of puff pastry on a baking sheet (approximately 40x30cm) keeping it on the greaseproof paper already in the packet. Score a 2cm/1” wide border all around the pastry edge. Place in the pre-heating oven for 20 minutes.
- Heat the oil in a small pan and add in the finely sliced rounds of shallots. Cook on a medium-high heat for roughly 5 minutes until softened, but being careful not to brown.
- In the meantime, slice your tomatoes and grate the cheddar cheese.
- When the pastry has had 20 minutes, remove from the oven. Spread the homemade sage pesto within the border – leaving the border edge clean.
- Onto the pesto, scatter over the pre-cooked shallots. Then, you want to layer your sliced tomatoes in rows. Sprinkle on the cheese evenly.
- Return the tart to the oven for another 20 minutes.
- When the time is up, remove the tart from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before sliding on a serving board.
- Serve alongside a crisp green salad of your choice with a French vinaigrette dressing.
Notes
- I used a packet of ‘Jus-Rol, ready rolled puff pastry sheet (320g)
- You could substitute the sage pesto for another herb flavour such as rocket and basil pesto or kale pesto. Or to make life even simpler you can opt for a jar of ready bought pesto.
- You can choose to dot the remainder of the other half of the sage pesto on top of the tart to really ‘up’ the sage flavours.
- The type of cheese is up to you. Grated hard mozzarella, or a mild blue cheese like a gorgonzola would also work.
- A final sprinkling of pine nuts on the top of the tart before baking for the last 20 minutes is also a great addition.
This is delicious 😋 especially with the cheese board left over cheese varieties added.