Courgette and Ricotta Tart

With a  long hot sunny spell followed by a lot of warm rain, the vegetable garden has run amok. It's not all good news - the tomatoes are very leggy, trying to catch up on missed growth when it was so cold, and the beans don't seem to be getting the usual second flush of flowers, but at the moment we are getting regular supplies of beans and peas, and more courgettes than we know what to do with.

This courgette and ricotta tart was ideal for both using up some of the excess and for providing a light meal on one of the recent hot days. We ate it with coleslaw and a tomato and green bean salad.

I followed the recipe more or less exactly (!!!).  The first change was that I used a pack of Tesco ready-rolled puff pastry which was flavoured with dill and lemon - I thought these flavours would complement the courgettes and cheese well. I used four small courgettes for the topping, and my tart looks as if it has more courgettes on top than the one in the recipe. I also added some seasoning to the ricotta and egg mix, as I didn't have much basil to add. (I recently trimmed the basil plant for a batch of pesto and could only glean a couple of tablespoons of very small leaves from it.)

The results were delicious. All the flavours worked well together, and the tart was very light and refreshing - just right for appetites blunted by the heat. The only thing lacking was seasoning - next time I'll add more salt to the ricotta and also season the courgettes while frying them.

I was really impressed with the flavour of the pastry - I could taste both the lemon and dill, but neither were overwhelming. The pastry didn't rise as much as I expected, but that might just be the recipe, not a problem with the pastry.

Hubs thought he would prefer a quiche, with it's deeper filling, but I really liked that the courgettes were the dominant flavour  here - I think they would have been lost buried in a deep custard.