Ingredients

Fat aubergine

Ripe tomatoes

Courgette

Sweet peppers

Clove of garlic

Thick slices of good rye bread

1 pack

Puff pastry

Fresh parsley

Salt & pepper or Steenbergs Mediterranean Salt

Olive oil

Aubergines and courgettes make great layers in a tart as they are firm, easy to slice and the colours look great together. they cook at a similar rate so you wont end up with a soggy veg and a underdone veg when you come to serve it. A trick I learnt at one of the restaurants: put a very fine layer of breadcrumbs at the bottom of your tart and they will soak up excess liquid making a crispy bottomed pastry

Method

Preheat the oven to 180oC.
I am useless at making puff pastry so I buy it pre-made from the shops. This is nice and easy, if lazy. Defrost the puff pastry, then lightly oil the bottom of a roasting pan and lay the puff pastry on top of this. If you want to be artful about this, do it in a circle.
Prepare the vegetables and keep separated: slice the aubergine into thin slices then halve, salt lightly and leave to drain in a colander for 10 minutes; finely chop the garlic; remove the stalks and seeds from the peppers and cut into strips and then cut these into 2cm lengths; thinly slice the courgettes, discarding the ends – I sliced them lengthways this time. To prepare the tomatoes, plunge them in water to remove the skins and peel and then thinly slice them and halve.
Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan and gently fry the courgettes and fry these until they are lightly browned on the light green pulp. Turn at least once. Transfer these to a plate.
Now gently fry the prepared sweet peppers in the pan until they caramelise and soften. Carefully remove from the oil using a slotted spoon, so preserving much of the oil. Transfer these to a plate.
Whilst the courgettes are frying wash the aubergines and then pat them dry. Salting the aubergines, removes some of the bitterness – it comes out as a green liquid that looks a bit like washing up liquid. Fry the aubergines, until lightly browned, turning them a couple of times. Transfer these to a plate.
Now prepare the tart. The way I do it is as follows: I do a row of tomatoes, then a row of aubergines with the aubergine slice slightly overlapping the tomato. I do this until you reach the middle, where I do a row of courgettes. I reckon you get 4 rows on either side of the middle courgette row. Then I randomly sprinkle over some of peppers; if you have some left over, don’t worry as they’re great in salads.
Next I put the bread slices, parsley and garlic into a food processor and whiz these up to fine breadcrumbs and then liberally sprinkle these all over the tart. Next gently pour olive oil over the breadcrumbs/vegetables. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until the pastry has risen and is light brown.
You can either eat this immediately with new potatoes and a summer salad, or I much prefer it cold and we eat it throughout the week.