TWD: Summer Vegetable Tart

This is definitely not the prettiest dish I have ever made. But boy was it tasty!

If you can get past the fact the unappetizing, brownish appearance and just trust me when I say that this tart was a fantastic addition to our Sunday brunch menu. Paul gobbled up a huge portion of it and once again declared it a "keeper." We have been saying that about a lot of the recipes from Baking with Julia, I know...but the hits just keep on coming! I loved how easy this was to prepare - I had this on the table within 20 minutes of pulling the phyllo dough out of the fridge (although I was very sloppy when arranging the phyllo in the pie pan because I was trying to get the thing on the table quickly).

As there were no red bell peppers at our Farmer's Market, I chose to use yellow instead. I also went with my favorite creamy feta cheese instead of goat cheese simply because Paul has a major problem with goat cheese. He first tried it on our honeymoon when we stopped at this little cafe for lunch. One of the sandwiches on the menu caught his eye simply because it had arugula listed as one of the components. Being a huge fan of arugula, Paul promptly folded his menu back up and ordered the sandwich. There are so many things are wrong with this scenario.

1) Who orders a sandwich based just on the type of lettuce included?

2) When his order arrived, Paul balked at the fact that it was in fact a vegetarian entree, something that would not have been such a surprise had he read the menu description a little more closely.

3) The sandwich was piled high with chevre, which was meant to be the true highlight of the sandwich, and Paul had always voiced a distaste for goat milk. He took one bite of that sandwich and no amount of peppery arugula could cover up the gamy taste of the goat cheese. The cheese the chef had chosen was particularly pungent - taking a bite of it made you feel as if the goat was sitting at the table enjoying lunch with us. Very, very strong. We actually had to ask the server to remove the offending sandwich so we could continue to breathing without inhaling the smell from the cheese. Paul still shudders when thinking about it.

So, in order to avoid bringing up memories of that disastrous lunch, feta was used in my tart.

There is not much more to say about this tart except that it was absolutely delicious! I did not think the phyllo added a lot to the actual tart, but I appreciated it being there in lieu of a heavier pie or tart crust. We will definitely be making this again with a different variety of vegetables - I could see some sauteed zucchini and summer squash working marvelously! Head on over to the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see how the other members fared!