These cute zucchini tartlets with tomatoes and ricotta filling can be enjoyed as a fancy appetizer your friends and family will absolutely love or as a vegetarian lunch and even light dinner!
This recipe was originally published on December 14, 2015, and was republished in September 2021 to add better quality photos, re-test the recipe, and add more helpful tips.
One of the beautiful things about eating seasonal is how much better the food tastes without lots of preparation or extra seasoning. A truly ripe tomato, grown in the heat of summer rather than a green house, can be acidic, sweet, and so juicy. I could just eat them like an apple.
Or a fresh zucchini, tasting of fresh greenery, almost grassy – in all the best possibly ways. Even better if you shop at the farmer’s markets – you might get some that were harvested just that morning!
To highlight these beautiful summer vegetables – and because I just love cheese – I made some zucchini tartlets with cherry tomatoes and ricotta filling. With a rich, flaky, homemade pastry and lots of ricotta and Parmesan, these perfect little tarts are great for fancy appetizers or a light, vegetarian summer meal. They would also be a great addition to a brunch spread or served cold for lunch.
Keep your pastry cold!
You have probably often seen pastry recipes calling for cold butter and ice water, then telling you chill the dough in the fridge before rolling it. Well, why does pastry need to be cold? All those chilling steps are tedious!
Cold butter (or whichever fat you use) is what makes your pastry flaky and delicate! If your butter melts while you are working with it, it will absorb into the flour and you will no longer have the flake and are more likely to have a tough pastry case.
If your butter melts and absorbs into the flour, it will throw everything else off. You probably won’t add the right amount of water, because your pastry will be too wet, and then you will work it too much, trying to get it to hold together. And if you work your pastry too much, it will get tough and hard. Let’s avoid all that and keep our butter nice and cold.
Besides cold butter (one step short of frozen is good) and ice water, some of the best ways to keep your pastry cold and flaky are:
- Use just the tips of your fingers. Your hands give off a lot of heat and can easily melt butter. We don’t have to worry about that in this recipe since we are making it in a food processor, but in general, use only the tips of you fingers or a pastry cutter to work butter into the flour.
- Work fast. Especially if it’s a hot summer day, do the steps in short bursts and put the pastry in the fridge in between. While you are waiting, make another part of the recipe. Or just take a break and drink a glass of wine.
- Keep your butter lumpy. No, that’s not the technical term, but it’s what you are looking for when working your dough. Little lumps of butter are what creates air pockets in the pastry for that flaky effect. You don’t want to work your butter so small that those disappear.
- Don’t be impatient. That rest and chill time in the fridge after you have formed the dough is important. Even if the outside of the dough ball feels cool, the center will take more time to get nice and cold. You can speed up the process a little by flattening the dough into a disc (just keep it wrapped tightly), but it still needs to cool all the way back down.
So keep everything cold to keep your tarts flaky and delicate.
Blind baking
This recipe calls for you to blind bake your pastry before adding the filling. Blind baking is a prebake you do without any filling to keep the crust from being soggy, especially if you have a fully liquid filling like custard. You might also blind bake your pastry case if the filling you are going to add is something you don’t bake, like a pastry cream.
When you are going to be adding a baked filling, you don’t want to bake your pastry all the way during the blind baking process or it will over cook when you bake the filling. What you are trying to do is bake it just enough that the liquid from the filling doesn’t seep in and make it soggy.
But we just went through a lot of effort to keep that pastry cold so that it would puff up a bit and be flaky in the oven. Without the weight of the filling it will puff too much and lose its shape – then you won’t have room for the filling! This is why you need to add weights during the blind baking process.
To prevent the weights from sticking to the pastry, you need to put some sort of liner in your pastry case. I like aluminum foil because it is easy to mold into shape. Many recipes call for baking parchment. That can be difficult to work with, but if you crumple it up into a ball a couple of times and then flatten it out, it will be much easier to fit into your pastry case.
If you don’t want to purchase fancy baking weights, some easy alternatives that you probably already have in the house are dry rice or beans. Just scatter a ½” layer over your lining to weigh everything down. Once you’ve baked the rice or beans, you won’t be able to cook them probably, but you can save them in an airtight container and reuse them the next time you need to blind bake something.
While making these tarts is by no means quick, the wait is definitely worth it. Whether you want to impress guests at a summer dinner party, or just because you love fresh zucchini and tomatoes, you should absolutely make these at least once this summer.
Zucchini and Tomato Tartlets with Ricotta
Ingredients
For the tart shells:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter , cut into 1/2-inch pieces
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
For the filling:
- 1 cup fresh ricotta
- 2 tablespoons heavy cream
- 2 eggs , lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 small zucchini , thinly sliced
- 1 garlic clove , minced
- a handful of cherry tomatoes , sliced
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- parsley , finely chopped, for garnish
Instructions
- To make the dough, place the flours, salt, and butter in a food processor and pulse until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add heavy cream, and process until moist clumps form. If the dough doesn’t clump, add a little ice water by teaspoonfuls and pulse to incorporate. Gather the dough into a ball and knead it several times on a lightly floured surface. Divide into 6 parts and roll each into a ball. Place the balls on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.
- Flour the working surface. Working with one ball at a time, roll dough into a disk larger in a diameter than a well of your tart pan (I used 4-inch tart shells), then place the round into a greased well. Put a tart shell in the refrigerator and repeat the process with remaining dough balls.
- Preheat the oven to 400 F. Remove the tart shells from the refrigerator. Line each with a piece of aluminum foil and fill with pie weights or uncooked rice. Bake until the pastry begins to turn light brown, about 10-12 minutes. Remove the weights and foil from the shells and bake another 5 minutes, until the pastry is lightly browned. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely.
- Meanwhile, make the filling. Combine ricotta, heavy cream, eggs, Parmesan, nutmeg, zest, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over a high heat. Add zucchini and cook for 1-2 minutes on each side or until golden. Drain on paper towels, then transfer to a bowl and toss with garlic.
- Divide ricotta mixture equally between tartlet shells, then arrange zucchini and tomato slices on top. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes or until ricotta is set, then set aside to cool slightly. Sprinkle with the fresh parsley before serving.
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