It’s tomato time!
It’s August and it’s tomato time. In Philadelphia, where I live, “Jersey” tomatoes are everywhere. By everywhere, I mean in the grocery stores, farmer’s markets, Reading Terminal market, the Italian market, and if I had a car, they’d be at dozens of impromptu road side stands anywhere you choose to go. By Jersey, I mean from the farms of southern New Jersey. Philadelphians use the phrase “Jersey tomatoes” to signify that the tomatoes are fresh and local and not like the tomatoes you get in the other eleven months of the year at the grocery store. It is a little strange. There are perfectly wonderful tomatoes grown in Pennsylvania and the grocery stores will, on occasion feature Pennsylvania tomatoes and the farmer’s markets will have a Pennsylvania farmer, but for people in the street, servers in restaurants, neighbors, and everyone else a good, fresh, local tomato is a Jersey tomato.
Let me digress for a moment about something that has nothing to do with food – New Jersey. There are a lot of things about New Jersey I find confusing. When I used to travel to New York more frequently, my exposure to New Jersey was from I-95 and the background to the Sopranos. From where I live now, New Jersey appears mostly as a series of endless strip malls interrupted occasionally by an enclosed mall or a big box mall. Those images don’t quite reconcile with New Jersey’s nickname as The Garden State. At the same time, though, New Jersey has the highest population density of any of the 50 United States, which also doesn’t quite reconcile with The Garden State. I’m just confused, I guess.
Last weekend I wound up buying 8 huge Jersey tomatoes at various places, before I had any clue as to what I’d do with them. Normally, with a really good fresh tomato I’d make a caprese salad (tomato, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, olive oil, maybe some balsamic vinegar) but with eight tomatoes, that’s an awful lot of caprese salad (and the tomatoes wouldn’t be all that fresh about the time I got to the third one). So I had to work on a plan to use my tomatoes and that’s what I’m writing about today.
When I got the tomatoes unpacked from their various bags, two things jumped out at me right away. First, these guys were huge. Softball size. Second, the colors weren’t uniform, probably because I bought them from different places. One group had a definite orange tinge and another couple were deep, almost ruby red. OK, so that’s something to deal with.
The menu planning was fun. I decided on a gazpacho, a quick tomato sauce that would work with multiple proteins and vegetables, seared tomatoes, a tomato and cucumber salad, and the remainder being used in the green salad I usually have for dessert. I talked about the tomato sauce yesterday so I’ll skip that one today. Here’s the rest of them.
Gazpacho
I wrote about gazpacho a while back (here), partly from a historical perspective. In that post, I raved about James Peterson’s version but the recipe I have from Peterson uses canned tomatoes, which are usually better for gazpacho than fresh tomatoes from the supermarket. They are decidedly not better, though, when tomatoes are fresh in season, so I had to adapt. The basic recipe is still good – tomatoes, cucumber, onions, peppers (at least two colors), garlic, all chopped more or less uniformly with seasoning and herbs added. Except for the tomatoes, not much changed.
The tomatoes, though, needed some work. First they had to be peeled. Tomato skin just doesn’t work in a soup. You could, I suppose, use a vegetable peeler but I’ve yet to do that successfully without butchering the tomato itself. A better, cleaner way, it to blanch them. Put a large saucepan 3/4 filled with water on high. While you wait for it to boil, empty two or three trays of ice cubes into a large bowl and fill the bowl about 2/3 full with cold water. With a paring knife, cut the tough stem out of the top of the tomato and then put a shallow “X” on the bottom.
When the water boils, dip a tomato in the boiling water for 10-15 seconds – not more! Then immediately drop it into the ice water. Repeat until all your tomatoes are done. Then take a tomato out of the ice water and start peeling from that “X” you put on the bottom. The skin will come right off with no hassle.
Now, though, you have to transform these naked tomatoes into the base for the soup. If you run them through the blender or food processor, they’ll turn an unpleasant shade of pink and the texture won’t be right to set off the other ingredients. You could chop everything with a knife, but then you’re dealing with a salad, not a soup. The answer is the food mill. This machine isn’t as popular as it could be, but I use it often for mashed potatoes (or sweet potatoes, yams, etc.) and soups. It comes with a number of discs of varying sizes (like the different size graters on a box grater) and the basic idea is that you turn the handle forcing the food through the grater into a waiting bowl below. For this, I used the coarsest grater. I also decided to reserve 1/2 of one of these big tomatoes for a little texture. The other other 2 1/2, I roughly chopped them and a handful at a time, processed them through the food mill. The result was a “puree” that had a discernible texture of pieces of tomatoes – about what you’d expect from the largest setting on a box grater, but a lot less work. With the reserved 1/2 tomato, I chopped that into a 1/4″ dice to add a little more texture. I also substituted basil for coriander, because I had basil and I didn’t have coriander, and I added 2 tsp of smoked paprika.
The fresh Jersey tomatoes made a world of difference. A tomato gazpacho with fresh, in season tomatoes, is one of nature’s wonders. Seriously.
Seared tomatoes
I’ve done stuffed tomatoes fairly frequently but I wanted something a little more intense. This is the result. I used thyme because I wanted an alternative to the usual tomato/basil combination and I was glad I did.
Ingredients
1 tomato, sliced into 1/4″ rounds
grated parmesan reggiano cheese
fresh thyme to taste, but at least 1/2 tsp per slice – leaves separated from stems
extra virgin olive oil
Directions
My stove has a griddle but you could do this in a skillet almost as easily. Preheat the griddle/skillet to at least medium high. Put as many tomato slices as will fit and let them alone for two minutes. Flip one over and if it is showing sear marks, flip the others over as well. If not, try again in 30 seconds. Immediately sprinkle with the cheese while the other side is cooking. Remove after another minute and set aside. Sprinkle with thyme and drizzle with olive oil. Serve.
Tomato and cucumber salad
This recipe comes from Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Everyday. Bishop is now affiliated with America’s Test Kitchen but this early work of his has proven to be an invaluable tool for me in figuring out how to prepare vegetables in fresh and creative ways. It’s definitely one of my go-to cookbooks. For this salad, I’ve improvised a little on Bishop’s original. What really makes this dish special is the mint. With this dish, you’d expect basil or parsley but the mint adds an unexpected flavor that works perfectly.
Ingredients
1 tomato, chopped into bite-size wedges
an equivalent amount of cucumber, chopped into 1/4″ slices and halved
an equivalent about of red onion, sliced thinly
1 tbl chopped mint
extra virgin olive oil
Directions
Mix the tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. Sprinkle the mint. Drizzle some olive oil. Serve.