Pastry By Mistake

 Tart before it went in the oven.....roasted aubergines and sliced elephant garlic  beneath farmers' market tomatoes and peppers.

 Baked and finished off with grated Parmesan and basil and a drizzle of oil from a jar of chargrilled peppers....

We had it for lunch with my husband's first tomatoes and some rather tired asparagus......pastry to die for even though I say it myself...unusual for me.

For me the whole point of a tart is the pastry - it has to be thin and buttery and crisp and light.....and my pastry is never like that. Except it was today....which is a miracle as I very nearly threw the whole thing away. I made it a few weeks ago when I was making an asparagus tart for my nephew's birthday. I used too much butter in the mixture ( I think) and it wouldn't stick together or roll properly so I just pressed it into a tart case as best I could and left it in the fridge.

When I found it this morning ( wading through boxes of blueberries and black-currants) it was full of cracks and holes and would never hold a cream custard mixture.  Then I remembered a tip in Tamsin Day- Lewis's wonderful book,  'The Art of the Tart'. After baking it blind, brush the base of a tart with a beaten egg which seals up all the holes perfectly, and cook it a bit more before adding the filling - in this case baked aubergines, sliced tomatoes and left over roasted vegetables and their garlicky juices.

Trouble is I'm not sure I'll be able to replicate this tart as I can't remember how I made the pastry - except it was a disaster to handle. So maybe I'll just savour this one in my memory as the best pastry I've ever made - by mistake.