Spring onion and courgette tart

I should probably lay off cribbing from the River Cottage Veg Every Day book, but it's full of tasty, tasty things. Many of them, like the spring onion galette on p220, are very simple tasty things. As such they merit cooking as-is, but they also make a great starting point for a spot of extemporization.In this case, that involves some courgettes and pesto; nothing too flash: 

Ingredients

• A couple of bunches of spring onions
• A courgette
• A pack of puff pastry
• Parmesan
• Pesto
• Cheddar (optional)
• Olive oil, salt, and pepper

Instructions

Top and tail the onions, and halve them lengthwise if they're particularly big. Halve the courgette and slice it into ribbons. Put these and the onions into a bowl, season, and grate over some Parmesan. I think I used a shade under a tablespoon.Let out a couple of spoonfulls of pesto with some oil, and toss the vegetables and Parmesan together in it.Roll the pastry out into a base around half a centimetre thick, or at any rate mostly covering a standard baking sheet. Scatter everything over the base in a single layer; it helps to leave a little room at the edges. Put the tart into the oven at around 200 for 20-25 minutes.If you like it with extra cheese - and I do - take it out of the oven five or so minutes from the end and scatter over a handful of grated strong cheddar.[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="2" exclude="500"]It's good. Does it need the pesto? No, not really, but this doesn't disrupt the freshness of the spring onions. Honestly, the courgette is a touch bland, and would have been better if it had browned or crisped up a little. But the flavours do work together, and something more robust would have made for a very different dish. The big plus is the simplicity. For something that presents so well it's bugger-all effort.

Elaborations

I also considered smearing the pesto over the base, but the pastry doesn't really benefit from a base sauce in the same way a pizza does. If you wanted some meat in the mix, you could probably get away with some kind of bacon lardons, or maybe even a salami or chorizo. In fact, thinking about it, slices of an Italian cooking sausage (one with lots of fennel, especially) would work rather well here.