I sometimes go to a nearby café with friends for drinks and supper. This chain Italian café/deli serves decent food at a reasonable price. You can go in the morning for breakfast or just a cup of coffee, for lunch, and for drinks and supper in the evening. It's quite a nice café, but the problem (for me) is there's a group or two of mums at any time of the day with an army of toddlers and pushchairs.
This is Notting Hill, and you can imagine, can't you? These upmarket young mums with their Land Rover pushchairs parked all around their tables and their toddlers running around everywhere in the café as if it's a playground. I have a child (a grumpy teenager, rather) and I'm generally good with children just as I like dogs and I'm good with them. The problems are with the 'owners'.
I also cycle through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Same problems here. Dogs (and kids) are unleashed and owners are nowhere near them. Not all (to be fair) but a lot of the owners are not paying attention to them. Please note that I am still an upmarket and slightly older Notting Hill mum ;) And again, I like kids and dogs but I just don't like immature human adults. What I want to tell them is, "Don't treat your dogs and children like adult human beings or they would treat you like dogs and children in the end". Does that make sense to you?
Delicious tart for you today!
Ingredients (for 3-4 people):
a block of ready-made puff pastry (about 400g and all-butter one)
400-500g cherry tomatoes, squashed by hand
100g crumbly goat's cheese
a handful of fresh thyme stalks
3 tablespoon tomato purée (or half a jar of red pesto)
1 garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of chilli flakes
Preheat the oven to about 190C.
Roll out the pastry into 15cmx40cm rectangle or into four 15cmx10cm squarish shapes. Score (don't cut through the pastry) about 1cm away from the edges. Spread the tomato purée (or red pesto), sprinkle chopped garlic and chilli flakes. If you are using tomato purée, you might want to salt and pepper the surface. Then sprinkle half of the thyme leaves.
Crumble the goat's cheese all over and top with squashed tomatoes. Arrange the thyme stalks here and there and drizzle some olive oil on top. Put the tart(s) into an oven and bake for about 20 minutes until the tart is all puffed up.