Every year, I plant vegetables in the backyard to varying degrees of success. With each year of gardening, I’ve learned a little more about how to best tend to my garden for optimum yield. I’ve learned that it’s important to weed early and often, and that crowding too many vegetables into one bed never ends well. I’ve learned that some things are easier to grow than others (cucumbers grow a little TOO well in our garden, while watermelons never seem to grow well at all). I’ve learned that starting some plants from seeds (I’m looking at you tomatoes and peppers) is best left to professionals.

This year, our garden is looking amazing. I like to think it’s mostly to do with all the knowledge I’ve acquired from gardening over the past few years. In fact, I think a lot of it has to do with using beautiful, healthy transplants from Raleigh’s Hillside Farm, adding plenty of compost into the soil, lots of hot weather, and plenty of rain. Whatever the case may be, our garden this year looks absolutely lovely.

The tomato plants are practically weighed down with tomatoes, and I’m waiting eagerly for them to hurry up and ripen already. The fennel bulbs are enormous, there are plenty of peppers, both hot and sweet, and huge stalks of green leafy kale. Since most of these things ripen in late summer, we’ve not had much to harvest yet, until this week when our sungold tomatoes started exploding with ripe fruit.

Sungolds are my favorite kind of cherry tomatoes - they’re super sweet and beautifully orangey gold in color. They’re super prolific, meaning we’re picking handfuls of them every day, and those that aren’t eaten immediately are placed in a bowl on the counter and usually cooked within hours. With a full pint on my hands this week, I decided to make a summery tomato tart. Arranged atop flaky pastry with fresh thyme from the garden, sweet caramelized onions from our CSA, and plenty of fresh goat cheese, it tasted perfectly of sunshine and summer. Here’s to the start of a beautiful backyard garden harvest.

Sungold Tomato Tart

You can use any kind of cherry tomato here, but if you can get your hands on sungolds (I find they are readily available at farmers markets this time of year), you won’t regret it.

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fresh thyme ( + more for topping)
½ tsp salt
1 8oz sheet puff pastry
4 oz goat cheese
1 pint sungold (or other cherry sized) tomatoes, halved
Flaky sea salt for topping

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Heat olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Once hot, add the onions, garlic, and thyme and cook, stirring often, until brown and caramelized (about 15-20 minutes). Once caramelized, stir in the salt and remove from heat.

3. Roll the puff pastry sheet out to an approximately 20” by 10” rectangle. Transfer pastry sheet to prepared baking sheet and use a fork to prick holes in the dough, leaving about a 1” border around the edges (this will keep the dough in the center from rising).

4. Crumble the goat cheese evenly over the pricked portion of the dough, followed by an even layer of the caramelized onions. Arrange the tomatoes, cut side up, on top of the onions. Fold the edges of the dough in to meet the filling (so you’ll end up with about ½” border of double thickness dough around the edges of the tart).

5. Bake tart until edges are puffed and golden, about 20-25 minutes. Cool tart slightly, then sprinkle the top with fresh thyme leaves and flaky sea salt. Serve warm or at room temperature.