Yellow Zucchini Tarte Fine on a Yogurt-Based Crust

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Yellow Zucchini Tarte Fine on a Yogurt-Based Crust: "

The football* world cup has just ended (congratulations, Spain!), and although I haven't breathed a word about it until now -- there is such a media overload during the event, you don't need me adding to it -- we followed the competition with an enthusiasm that wasn't dampened by the magnitude of the French fiasco.

Some games we watched from bars, others from home, and it was our great pleasure then to invite friends over to join in on the fun. And naturally, because these evening games were played right around dinnertime -- continental Europe and South Africa conveniently share the same time zone in the summer -- they were perfect opportunities to share no-fuss food that could be eaten casually, between two cries of excitement or disappointment.

This tarte fine (i.e. a thin tart with little or no rim) is one I served during the Germany/Spain semi-final last week: it is a free-form room-temperature tart I assembled on a homemade crust with fresh cheese, mint, and thinly sliced raw zucchini, finished with a drizzle of olive oil and a little fresh thyme from my neighbor's parents' garden.

The overall format was inspired by Sonia Ezgulian's radish tart, as featured on Cécile Cau's blog: hers involves a pâte brisée made with fennel seeds and filled with a mix of fromage blanc (a sort of yogurt) and ground almonds, topped with thinly sliced raw pink radishes.

I thought I would transpose the idea to use the sprightly young zucchini we've been getting lately, and the crust I used in mine was an experiment, as I wanted to try and make a short crust pastry using yogurt.

I had long ago bookmarked several online mentions of a puff pastry-like dough made with petits suisses, for which you combine these little unsalted fresh cheeses with flour and butter in a 2:2:1 weight ratio (unless you use the 1:2:1 ratio others recommend), and thought it was finally time to give it a try.

There were no petits suisses in my fridge, but yogurt I did have, so I planned to use that. And the ratio didn't seem quite right to me -- I worried the dough would be too moist, and the fact that two different ratios were said to work equally well did nothing to reassure me -- so I improvised my own, combining flour, yogurt and butter in a 3:2:1 ratio instead (here, 180 grams flour, 120 grams yogurt, 60 grams butter, plus a little salt).

That crust was a complete success: it was quick to assemble, easy to roll out, and it baked into a deep golden, crisp and flaky crust that supported the tangy fresh cheese filling and the sweet zucchini slices beautifully.

We liked this refreshing summer tart so much I made another, identical one later that week, and used that same dough recipe for the Swiss chard quiche my mother, sister and I baked at my parents' mountain house over the weekend, before we all went into town to watch the Netherlands/Spain final.

I now intend to try and make a sweet version of that crust, probably very soon, and probably for a rhubarb tart using the gorgeous garden rhubarb I brought back with me.

* Maybe you call it soccer; we call it football or just foot, as in 'la coupe du monde de foot.'

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