Favorite Garden Tomato Recipes, Anyone???

[Loquitur]

Considering the season, how about we post some of our favorite garden tomato recipes??? I'll start, not that I'd argue with anyone who does not want to discuss anything more than a stroll in the garden with a jar of mayonnaise and a salt shaker, or other simple manifestation of summer goodness.

Don't get nervous, gentlemen, this is not a quiche. No cream or eggs to be found in this recipe.

Tomato Basil Tart

1 Pillsbury refrigerated Pie Crust (1/2 of 15 oz pkge)

5 med garden tomatoes, juiced, seeded, cut in chunks and drained

1 cup basil

4 cloves garlic

1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup Pecorino Romano grated cheese

10 inch glass pie plate

Directions

Bake the pie crust according to package directions for single crust pie. As soon as it comes out of the oven, sprinkle the crust with 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese to cover the bottom and allow it to melt. Combine basil and garlic in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Sprinkle the basil/garlic mixture over the melted cheese. Arrange the drained tomato pieces over the basil/garlic mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Make the topping by combining the mayonnaise with the remaining 1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese and the 1/4 cup Pecorino Romano grated cheese. Spread the topping over the top of the tart. Bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes or until top is golden.

Notes:

The tomatoes need to be dry for this recipe to keep the crust from getting soggy. Set a sieve in a bowl. Cut the tomatoes in half and squeeze out the seeds and juice into the sieve (this will remove the seeds yet save the juices in the bowl below for Gazpacho or another application). Discard the seeds from the sieve and replace the sieve on the bowl. Cut the tomato halves in chunks, salt them and place back in the sieve to further drain. Then gently press the tomato chunks in paper towels to get as much additional liquid out as you reasonably can.

The topping for this tart is difficult to work with since its very stiff - you can’t just spread it over the tomatoes like you would a cake icing. After you mix the topping in a bowl, section it into quarters so that you have 4 equal parts of topping. Then use a butter knife to scoop up a teaspoon or so of the topping at a time and drop it on the tart in dollops, working with 1/4 of the topping and 1/4 of the tart at a time. Then with your wrist pull the top of the dollops together. It may not seem like there is enough topping to cover the tart but it is the perfect amount. Once you get the hang of spreading the topping, it isn’t hard to make. And it is absolutely delicious and worth your efforts.

[Syzygies]

gooshy semi-precious tomatoes

We haven't opened a can of tomatoes in five years, and I now recoil at the taste, surprised that restaurants don't do what we do.

Tom Colicchio's "Think Like a Chef" is a seminal cookbook for being more a conceptual text than a recipe staple-job, a modern-day Richard Olney "Simple French Food". (As a pool player is thinking ahead several shots, Olney teaches how Friday's feast becomes ingredients for Sunday brunch when guests stay the weekend.)

Colicchio has a recipe for "precious tomatoes" that one roasts in the oven. One can also roast in a cazuela in a ceramic cooker. We used to do this. Lots of work. They're not actually called "precious tomatoes", but I then found that Thomas Keller has a similar recipe in "The French Laundry Cookbook", and "precious" is the only word I can remember from that book. (Or is it "importance"?) It seems that everyone has a recipe for "precious tomatoes". The concept is sound: Put up garden tomatoes as an ingredient year-round, and there are far better ways to do this than canning in jars.

Meanwhile, friends back east like to pass for Italian immigrants, and go get boxes of Jersey Roma tomatoes at Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, to make into sun-dried tomatoes. They were good, but I've seen the trays in the sun on islands off Sicily, and what we were doing was not that. I'm also into ingredients, not appetizers, what would I want with 20 jars of dried tomatoes in good olive oil?

So it came together for me, how to make "semi-precious tomatoes" at scale. As in, our neighbors are away this weekend and asked us to pick their patch that had gotten past them. 54 lbs. Last week at Monterey Market in Berkeley, a beautiful 20 lb box of organic San Marzano tomatoes. Earlier, 45 lbs from the best stand at our local farmers' market. And what we don't eat as salad each night from our own crop.

Find one of those Bedmo 20% off coupons, and take it in to buy a Nesco® American Harvest® Snackmaster® Encore™ Dehydrator and Jerky Maker model FD-61. Then go to Amazon and buy eight more trays, to max out the dehydrator at 12 trays. This handles 20 to 40 lbs of tomatoes at a time, depending on how you slice.

Set a giant pot of water to boil, and immerse batches of 6-8 tomatoes for 60 seconds each, letting the water return to a boil between batches. Then set tomatoes to cool, and skin them, removing blemishes. Tomatoes are a fruit, any bit that looks more like a vegetable has to go. Arrange thick slices on dehydrator trays. Sprinkle sea salt to taste; I find it easiest to use a salt grinder over each tray.

Dry at 135 F to 155 F for 8 to 16 hours, until the flavor is quite concentrated but the texture is still "gooshy". Rest overnight in the fridge, so moisture can redistribute, then package and freeze. (We now have a chest freezer.) We like packages of 225g to 250g each. Ziplock bags work fine, but a vacuum packer is better.

We use these anywhere one might use a canned tomato, sometimes adding water to plump them back up. The classic would be a putanesca sauce, combining a packet with garlic, 6 TB olive oil, herbs, chiles, olives, capers, perhaps anchovies, to go on fresh pasta.

This would be second-to-last to go, if we were forced to give up specialized food habits. I'd stop fermenting my own hot sauce, and making my own stock, long before we'd give up these tomatoes. We also grind our own flour for absolutely everything, and alas, we would give up these tomatoes before we'd use storebought flour.

[Loquitur]

Syzygies - wouldn't you know I already have a Nesco food dehydrator/jerky maker and a vacuum sealer. Just so that I can get a sense of scale - roughly how many gooshy slices of tomatoes is in one of those 250 g packets?

Susan

[Syzygies]

Our rule of thumb is two pounds of tomatoes per packet, which we scale as the batches go wetter or dryer. I.e. we expect 10 packets from a 20# box of Romas. We weigh what we end up with, and divide by 10. Other times, we use the 225g to 250g rule, and it's close enough for how we dry.

We had a first-ever disaster this morning. Our neighbors had left us a beautiful but seriously out of hand tomato patch to pick. I'd composted what was too far gone, but saved everything that "looked" right, sometimes using the good half of a tomato with a gouge on the other end, and using many tomatoes that were starting to split and riper than ideal. I tasted as I worked, and thought I was ok. Then I overloaded all 12 trays of our dehydrator. I couldn't get out of my head an unfamiliar smell, from picking the overly ripe patch. Then this morning, the entire batch lost to mold, drying at 155 F.

Lessons:

All the canning / preserving books say this: Use ideal, unbroken fruit. Any fruit that's less than perfect, eat it now or compost it. Like with wine, if you won't drink it don't cook with it!

Go with thinner slices (smaller Romas split in half are fine, but a 1 lb monster in three slices is not), and be generous with the salt. (At least 1/2 tsp per tray?)

The "12 tray" rule of thumb may not apply here, 8 trays may be all one unit can handle in this application, we'll buy a second unit next year to end up with two 8 tray units.

(That said, we've never had this problem before.)

[Loquitur]

What a bummer!!

I need to locate a source for tomatoes. My garden is tiny since I live in a village and we consume what my 6 plants produce, except for the one cherry tomato plant. That thing is taking over the world! My local Saturday farmer's market sells tomatoes for $3.00/lb - not real attractive. I'll get into a larger produce market during the week and see what I can find. I love the idea!!

Susan

[Loquitur]

Hi Syz:

I did 15 trays of "gooshy" tomatoes last week in three batches of 5 trays each. I think they came out really good, which was a pleasant surprise, since I couldn't find the quality of tomatoes you get from a home garden at our local farmer's markets. But I got the best I could find. I did them for 8 or 9 hours at 155 and though they were dry to the touch on the surface after that time, they plumped up after an overnight rest in the frig and now I think they have "gooshy" status. I can't wait to pull a packet out of my freezer in the midde of winter! Next year I will be much more interested in what tomatoes are available in September. Usually, I pay no attention since I'm busy with my own. Thanks for the idea and the tips - its a remarkably easy way to preserve them!!

Susan

[Syzygies]

That's great. We've found that this method markedly improves indifferent tomatoes, presumably by concentrating flavors. Starting with our garden tomatoes, anyone we hand a packet off to in mid-winter raves about them. With farmers market tomatoes, sometimes the result can be a bit acidic, but easy to correct for when you use them: Just don't use so much!

[joebyk]

2nd device required

New member maybe misreading your string but looks like you are talking about buying a "de-hydrader" to do dry t's. Can you do a really low temp slow cook on the TT for tomatoes and even chile and end up w/ a chipotle like result that can be dry stored? If so, what is recommended temp/time? Maybe at the end of an initial cook as the KK cools down? Any ideas?

[LarryR]

Salsa Negro

One of my favorites, in fact I just might have to make tonight since I'll have hot coals from our steaks going . Great smokey flavor in this salsa. Goes great on eggs too.

Salsa Negro

4 roma tomatoes

1 red pepper

1 med red onion

1 or 2 jalapeno (depending on desired heat)

Juice from one lime

2 cloves garlic minced

½ to 1 bunch of cilantro chopped

Salt to taste

On a grill or cast iron skillet char all vegetables

Place charred veggies, garlic and lime juice in food processor and blend to desired consistency.

Add cilantro and pulse cycle to blend in to salsa.

Flavors meld nicely after 24 hours in the fridge

Note for additional heat ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper can be added

[Syzygies]

Re: 2nd device required

you are talking about buying a "de-hydrader" to do dry t's. Can you do a really low temp slow cook on the TT for tomatoes...

The KK is more work for this, but a nice effect. The dehydrator has eight or more trays, that's lots of surface area = lots of tomatoes.

[bryan]

Is a fresh garden Zucchini recipe acceptable?

Zucchini Relish

8 sml zucchini diced

2 lg onions thinly sliced

1 sml r/bell pepper, minced

2 T coarse salt

5 c ice water w/ice cubes

4 c apple cider vinegar

4 c sugar

1 T whole mustard seed

1 t turmeric

8 * whole cloves in cheesecloth

1 * cinnamon stick

6 * half-pint jars

In a large bowl, combine zucchini, onions, and pepper; sprinkle w/salt.

Pour ice water w/ice cubes on top of zucchini mix; stir occasionally, adding more ice cubes as they melt. Let mix stand overnight at room temp.

To sterilize jars and lids, wash them in dishwasher or place them in a large saucepan. Cover w/water and boil for 15 min.

Drain zucchini mix in a colander; rinse under cold water to remove salt. Drain again. In a large nonreactive saucepan, combine zucchini mix, sugar, vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric, cloves, and cinnamon stick. Mix well.

Bring mix to a boil over high heat. Boil 1 min and remove from heat. Remove cloves and cinnamon stick.

Using slotted spoon, pack relish into jars. Pour hot liquid to tops of jars; stir to release air bubbles. Add remaining hot liquid to just before overflowing and seal jars. Let it sit 24 hours. Store in a cool dry place until ready to use.