Red pepper and feta tart

Cheat making red pepper feta tart with bought puff pastry

This puff pastry tart topped with red peppers, cherry tomatoes and Feta cheese, is a quick recipe using inexpensive ingredients. When taking Ted out for a picnic in the summer holidays, a piece of tart is easy to hold and travels better than sandwiches. Equally, the puff pastry sheet covered in bright vegetables works well as a buffet table dish at a party. Plus everyone will think you’re a domestic goddess having baked something. Making puff pastry yourself isn’t that difficult but few people get around to it.

Vegetarian pastry for picnics, parties or packed lunches

Making puff pastry tarts using pre-made rolls from the chiller cabinet is a great cook’s cheat. Without spending much money or time in the kitchen, “easier than pie”. Simply remove the chilled pastry roll from the fridge around 20-30 mins before using. Meanwhile, pre-heat the oven. Here I used red peppers and tomatoes but you can fridge-raid appropriate veggies needing to be used up. I often have lots of peppers; red ones look nice with tomatoe but green and yellow peppers would work too. Greek feta cheese or budget salad cheese keeps for ages in the fridge so I normally have some to hand.

After a quick bake in the oven, you’ll have an impressive home-baked savoury tart with very little effort. Perfect for picnics, buffets, parties or enough left over for my husband’s packed lunch at work. So even if he misses the picnic, I’m in his good books for saving him the task of making sandwiches.

Print Recipe

Red Pepper Feta Tart

A quick puff pastry tart using shop bought roll of pastry and topped with fresh red peppers, cherry tomatoes and cubes of feta cheese. For picnics, packed lunches or party food.

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Total Time30 minutes mins

Course: Party

Cuisine: Mediterranean

Keyword: feta cheese, packed lunches, picnics, Puff pastry, red peppers, tomatoes

Servings: 6

Author: Sarah Trivuncic

Equipment

• 2 Flat baking sheets lined with non-stick baking parchment paper
• 1 pastry brush
• 1 kitchen scissors
• foil optional
• baking parchment paper

Ingredients

• 1 whole red pepper fresh, large (or 2 smaller ones), cut into 2cm wide strips
• 10 cherry tomatoes sliced, or whole (see notes)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 roll puff pastry shop bought, ready rolled
• 3 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste shop bought, jar (see notes)
• 2 tbsp milk to glaze
• 75 g Feta cheese in small cubes

Instructions

• Remove the puff pastry from the fridge 30 minutes beforehand.
  1 roll puff pastry
• Preheat the oven to 200c / gas mark 6.
• In a small bowl, toss the red pepper strips and baby tomatoes in olive oil. Pre-bake these slightly by spreading them over a baking sheet lined with foil or baking parchment paper and roasting in the oven for 10 minutes whilst the cold puff pastry roll is waiting.
  1 whole red pepper, 1 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste, 10 cherry tomatoes
  
• Meanwhile, on the second baking sheet, unroll the pastry onto a piece of baking parchment paper (do not use the brown paper that comes with the pastry roll). Trim the edges to roughly fit the baking sheet with 3-4cm excess.
  1 roll puff pastry
• Spread the sun-dried tomato paste over the pastry base leaving a 3cm border on the bare pastry. Brush the bare pastry border with some milk.
  2 tbsp milk, 3 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
  
• Remove the red pepper strips and tomatoes from the oven. They should have wilted slightly.
  10 cherry tomatoes, 75 g Feta cheese, 1 whole red pepper
  
• Arrange the red pepper strips and tomatoes over the pasted central area of the pastry base avoiding the border. Finally scatter over the feta cheese cubes.
  
• Bake the tart in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes until the pastry around the edge has puffed up and gone golden brown. Can be served immediately or eaten cold.
  

Notes

If you don't have jarred sun-dried tomato paste, you can blitz several sun-dried tomatoes in oil using a small blender or food processor. But these need to be the ones soaked in oil rather than dehydrated sun-dried tomatoes. 

Greek Feta cheese can be subbed with the cheaper salad cheese blocks that are similar hard white cheese in brine. Chopping it yourself or using pre-cubed kind is fine.

As I've made this tart more than once, the tomatoes are different in the step photos and finished tart - I used baby plum tomatoes in half for one and whole cherry tomatoes for the other. Either is fine. 

Recipes to make with extra roast red peppers

Whilst you only need one large pepper here, you might as well roast more than you need. Slightly blackened wilted peppers are great to keep in a tupperware box for a few days. You can pop them in salads or use them in my tasty roast tomato and red pepper soup. Or even my Serbian roasted red pepper sauce, known as ajvar. If you find yourself with pre-made shortcrust pastry instead, then I can suggest this baby red pepper quiche but just chop the big pieces of pepper up if you don’t have the miniature baby peppers. (Tesco and Aldi each often have this variety available although I stick to wonky veg bags).

Elsewhere, if this red pepper picnic tart recipe has whetted your appetite, you might like:
Red pepper and chickpea frittata by Fuss Free Flavours
Roast pepper and sundried tomato pasta salad with feta by Tinned Tomatoes
Filo pastry mini quiches by A Mummy Too
Mini picnic bakes by Utterly Scrummy

This easy puff pastry picnic tart is linking up with this month’s other picnic food ideas at Speedy Suppers – you can enter any low-effort packed lunch or picnic recipe.