Courgette, feta & basil tart to serve in the kitchen garden with fizz, sunshine & a full heart

FREE TO READ: an extract from my new book, Rough Patch, a memoir with recipes.

Rough Patch is four months old

And to celebrate, I thought I’d share one of my favourite recipes with you to add to the little collection of recipes from the book here on Tales From the Veg Patch:

Crispy parmesan squash with salsa verde butter beans

A Meal for the Day you Pick the Cabbage

Publication Day Special

Today’s recipe is called Pit-stop Tart (for reasons that will become clear) and it’s from the (happy) end of the book when I’m back on my feet having abandoned the rat race and found a job at Daylesford Organic Farm, working at the cookery school. Little did I know that this would be the beginning of a whole new life for me…

In the cookery school, I am taking most of the tours around the market garden these days. I have hoarded this job for myself and guard it jealously, because I love to see the wonder in people’s eyes as the magnificence of the garden is revealed to them; to witness the dawning realisation that real life is right here; to see the welcoming tenderness of nature as she puts an arm around them and leads them towards the soil and away from the plugged-in, battery-farmed lives they knew before. I like to see it because it allows me to relive what happened to me and I wish it for everyone.

Life is unrecognisable.

(From ‘Rough Patch’ by Kathy Slack)

Pit-stop Tart

At the halfway point of the market-garden tours at Daylesford, we would pause for a surprise ‘picnic’. One of the team would have set off ahead of the group with supplies and prepared a picnic table with a snack and
a glass of frizzante for everyone. We’d choose somewhere particularly bucolic and hidden away for the picnic – under a tree, behind the dahlia bed, in the potting shed – so when guests rounded the corner they’d be presented with this unexpected and beautiful sight. It was a cheap trick really, no effort at all, but it always made everyone smile.

One of our favoured snacks for this picnic was courgette and feta tart, because it looks spectacular but can be made while doing five other things (which was always the way at the cookery school). It also goes brilliantly with fizz.

Take a 320g sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry. Score a 1cm wide border around the edge with a knife. Brush the middle with a roughly 1:1 mixture of grated Parmesan and crème fraîche (80g and 4 tablespoons respectively should do it), then arrange three courgettes, sliced thinly into rounds, in a single layer with some overlapping (like fish scales) over the top, taking care not to cross the border line. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes, then top with crumbled feta and basil leaves, slice and serve.