Frugal Fishy Lunch

This amazing lunch came about through simple frugality, the urge to use up bits and pieces of several things I had on hand - a good-sized piece of puff pastry left over from making the fruit tarts, half a yellow heirloom tomato, most of a can of sardines and half a lemon after making Jamie's Chicken Caesar, a handful of dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes, half a jar of marinated artichoke hearts and a fennel bulb.

After rolling out the puff pastry and painting it with olive oil, I sliced the tomatoes thinly, settled a school of halved sardines on top of them, nestled slivers of artichoke heart in between, sprinkled fresh thyme from the garden and the lemon juice, scattered sliced fennel lightly, and drizzled some of the marinade from the artichoke bottle over the top. Baked it for about 20 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

Killer lunch! My Beloved and I enjoyed every savory bite.

The only thing I'd change would be to use my baking stone next time, as the center of the crust was soggy on my stainless baking sheet.

A final tip: dry farmed tomatoes - a new idea to me - are da bomb, so richly flavored and concentrated. Apparently, they don't water them at all once they get started so the fruit is smaller but ever so tasty! I'm going back to El Cerrito Natural Grocery, where I found them, today to snag some more.