Cheap and Easy Tart

Ok, so it’s not exactly cooking from scratch, but it is really tasty. 

I got all the ingredients from Iceland, for less than £3, and they are all either from the freezer or canned, so it makes an excellent “last days before payday” meal.  Preparation time is about ten minutes, cooking about twenty, and there is plenty for a reasonably sensible small child to help with, and is easy enough for a student/rubbish chef.  These amounts made enough for a family of four plus cold snacks for the adults later, although our children are quite small.

Ingredients:

• Two thirds of a block of frozen puff pastry (you can use the whole block if you like, but then you wouldn’t be able to make lazy cheese twists with the leftovers)
• About 500g of frozen Mediterranean veg (either roast in batches and freeze, or buy ready frozen)
• A tin of chopped tomatoes
• A small block of cheese (I used strong cheddar, which I buy big blocks of, chop up and freeze the smaller blocks, and is excellent to have in for things like this)

Leave the pastry out to defrost for half a day, or overnight in the fridge.

Put the oven on to preheat to about 200 degrees C

Empty the tin of tomatoes into a small saucepan and simmer – add some oregano and/or basil if you have it.

Sprinkle a clean surface with flour and roll out the pastry, then put it on a baking tray and fold up the edges.

Cover the pastry with the tomatoes, then add a layer of the frozen veg.

Grate some cheese over the top, and stick it in the oven until the pastry at the sides is puffed up and nicely brown, and the cheese is all melty.

Chop up and eat.  You could serve this with chips and salad, or maybe garlic bread, and it is excellent cold.  Or just eat slices like a lovely pastry pizza.