Grilled Vegetable Tarts
I always want the food I'm serving to my guests to be the best it can be, which usually means trying to serve it all as close to when it's done as possible. This often leads to my guests arriving and me having little to no food out yet, so I've been trying to think of more recipes that I can have done prior to anyone's arrival that don't need to be fresh off the grill to be at their peak deliciousness. That has led to a lot more make-ahead salads and such, but something I often do for holidays, but have never done for the Meatwave, is put together some sort of pastry concoction. So I decided to give that idea a go and came out on the other side with these grilled vegetable tarts.
I made these towards the end of spring and used a medley of seasonal vegetables that included zucchini, yellow squash, asparagus, and red onion. One great thing about this concept is that it can be adapted for any time of the year. In summer I probably would work in tomatoes and corn, in fall I'd likely go with things like sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, and the like.
I was making these tarts on a pretty hot and humid day, so I actually did all the grilling in the early morning, while my guests wouldn't be arriving until 5:00pm. All the items I chose were pretty quick grilling over high heat, starting with the skewered onion slices which took about ten minutes total to get well charred on the outside and be crisp-tender on the inside.
The asparagus were even faster, clocking in at five minutes to get tender and pick up some good browning in spots. Asparagus may not be a thing you immediately think of for the grill, but as long as you lay the spears perpendicular to the grates, it's actually a really great quick and easy way to cook this vegetable.
Finally, I used the entire surface area of the grill to cook off all of the squash slices in one go. I had cut these on a bias to increase the surface area so they would be less likely to fall through the grates. Thinly sliced squash like this cooks up really fast, only taking a couple minutes per side to get good color and tenderness. Once everything was done, I cut the asparagus into approximately three-inch segments and roughly chopped the onions.
Next I prepped the thawed puff pastry by first cutting each sheet into three segments along the seams, and then each of those long sheets into three squares. I rolled each piece out to be about four-inches squared, then scored the centers because I didn't want them to puff up as much as the edges. The pastry then got brushed with an egg wash before being sprinkled with some sharp white cheddar and baked in a 425°F oven until browned and puffed.
The pastry ended up puffing more than expected in the center, but once I started to layer on the vegetables, it deflated and looked how I was hoping. I ended up putting four slices of squash on each square, followed by red onion, asparagus, and a sprinkling of both thyme and parmesan. I decided to pop them back in the oven to try to melt the parmesan a bit, but the pastry started to brown more before the cheese had melted all the way, so I settled for the partial melt.
I tried one of these when they were first done, then another when I served them hours later, at they were pretty much the same in both instances. The flavor of the grill was noticeable thanks to the char on the vegetables, which all had a pretty light touch to them. That let the cheddar and parmesan come through a bit more than I originally was expecting, and that ended up being a good thing because it lent more flavor overall. All of this enjoyed with the airiness and butteriness of the puff pastry made for a relatively light and pleasant snack. I felt like the tart might have been a bit better with a little added creamy moisture, so if I were to make these again I might try adding some goat cheese or ricotta, but these definitely served the purpose I was hoping for as I had a large tray of them out for guests to munch on while I finished up the grilling of everything else I was serving that day.
