Caramelized Tomato Confit

This isn’t really, truly a confit.

It’s almost a confit. It has both sugar syrup and olive oil in it, both of which can be used to cover and preserve the item in question, which in this case is caramelized tomatoes.

Technically, since I am not meaning for the sugar and the oil to preserve the caramelized tomatoes , I guess we should call this a relish, but really, I don’t much care what it is called, because this sweet, tart, rich and smooth tomato confit is really delicious.

It’s also really easy to make, too.

First, start off by caramelizing about five pounds of roma tomatoes. When you prepare them for caramelizing, only seed about half of the tomatoes, because you want them to release more juice for the confit. It is the juice, in fact, that contains most of the flavor for this dish.

After the tomatoes are done, there should be plenty of juice on the baking sheets. Drain this into saucepan, and to that juice, you add 2 tablespoons sugar and about 1/2 cup dry red wine. Bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down and reduce the liquid by half.

While this is going on, chop up your caramelized tomatoes roughly.

Once this is done, you should be left with a thick, deep burgundy-colored syrup that easily coats the back of a spoon. Add a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and two tablespoons of olive oil, and you have the basis of your confit. Pour this over your tomatoes and stir well.

The rest is simple–add a couple of cloves of mashed roasted garlic and one cup of caramelized onions, (cook them in olive oil) and stir it all up well. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.

You can also add freshly ground pepper to taste or Aleppo pepper flakes, and just before serving, you can add finely chopped fresh herbs like basil, tarragon or oregano.

Now, what do you do with this tasty stuff?

I served mine alongside the Rabbit Braised in Marsala Wine with Wild Mushrooms and Garlic Mashed Potatoes. The tomatoes added a tangy-sweet note that cut through the richness of the braised rabbit.

But you could use it to top bruschetta, or as a basis for a dip or spread (mix it with some sour cream or cream cheese), or you could use it as is in place of ketchup on a really fancy bison burger with havarti cheese.

Or, you could use it warm as a sauce for grilled pork tenderloin.

Or, you could add some roasted chilies and use this as a barbecue sauce.

As you can see, this stuff is versatile. And if you keep it in a tightly sealed jar, it will keep in your fridge for a couple of weeks, which is less than a real confit, is still nothing to sneeze at.

Caramelized Tomatoes

Caramelized tomatoes are a way to take perfectly ripe, absolutely perfect tomatoes and make them even more amazingly delicious. Caramelizing them concentrates the natural flavors of the tomatoes, and the salt, olive oil, seasonings and the sugar you add at the very end just gently enhance their fragrance and taste. Texturally, caramelized tomatoes are soft and lightly chewy, with slightly wrinkled skins–sort of like sun-dried tomatoes but not so leathery and chewy.

And they are also amazingly versatile: you can use them to make a tangy-sweet pasta sauce, you can use them to top bruschetta, you can toss them in a salad, top a pizza with them, or you can just scarf them down as they are.

However, I must warn you that if you take the last approach and just gobble them down from the baking sheet–they are addictive. I have heard them described as being “like crack, only legal.”

Just be certain to make extra of these caramelized tomatoes if you are planning on using them for a certain dish, because once you taste one, you know, to make sure you got them right, you will find yourself dipping into them again and again. No really–they are that tasty.

They are also simplicity itself to make.

You can use any kind of tomato you want for these: lots of people use cherry or grape tomatoes for caramelization, but I prefer to use roma tomatoes. You could use any other kind you like, but if you use any large sized tomatoes like the beefsteak varieties, or even just average sized round ones, you will have to cut them into thick slices rather than just in longitudinal halves, as I do here.

In addition, you can leave out the crushed fennel seed I used as a seasoning, or you could add any other spice you liked. (I plan on making an Indian version of these with ground up panch phoron. I cannot help but think that would just kick this recipe up about ten notches and take the flavors over the moon.) You can also add fresh or dried herbs at the time you sprinkle the sugar on the tomatoes.

You don’t really need a recipe for this–you just need to learn the method.

So, here goes:

Caramelized Tomatoes

First, you need a quantity of tomatoes: I prefer roma, as I mentioned. (I don’t need to tell you to use ripe, homegrown, farmer’s market, local tomatoes, do I? You know that by now, don’t you? I thought so.)

Take your tomatoes, wash them and dry them thoroughly.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Core your tomatoes–I use a little gadget that is called a tomato shark to gouge the core and stem end out of the tomato quickly and cleanly. Then, slice them in half longitudinally. (Or, if you are using larger, round tomatoes, cut them into longitudinal slices, about 1/4-1/2 inch thick.)

After they are cored and cut in half, if you are not using cherry or grape tomatoes, seed them. Just reach your fingers in there and scrape the seeds and gel out.

Lay all of your tomato halves or slices cut side up on the rimmed baking sheets. I used non-stick sheets lightly rubbed in olive oil. You could also line your pans with silpats or parchment sheets that you have rubbed with some olive oil.

Sprinkle the tomatoes lightly with salt–as much salt as you would use to season your tomatoes if you were going to eat them out of hand. Season them with pepper, if you like, and if you like my idea of using a bit of ground fennel seed, sprinkle a little bit of that, too. Then, drizzle with olive oil–about a tablespoon or so. Don’t drown them in oil, but you don’t want them to dry out, either.

Put them in the oven.

Leave them in the oven for thirty minutes–check them. If they are a bit shrunken and drying a bit with some toasty dark bits on the edges, they are ready for you to sprinkle on the sugar. If they still seem a bit too juicy and there is no darkening, give them another ten minutes in the oven.

But, if they are ready, then take them out of the oven. Take a couple of teaspoons of sugar–up to a tablespoon or so–and sprinkle it evenly over the tomatoes. At this time, if you want to add herbs, either fresh or dried, this is the time.

Put the tomatoes back into the oven and let them cook for another five to ten minutes or so.

Remove from the oven, and allow to cool until you can handle them–they should still be warm, but not blisteringly hot–and remove them from the baking sheets and set them on a tray or in a bowl, depending on how you want to use them.

Any syrupy juice that you have on the baking sheets, scrape out and drizzle over the tomatoes. (That is the good stuff–if it gets on your fingers, lick it off, for the love of God!)

There you are. Caramelized tomatoes. Easier than pie. Tastier than crack–and legal, to boot.

Athens Farmer’s Market Toyota Farm to Table Tour–It Sure Was Fun

It was a near-perfect day for a big event at the Athens Farmer’s Market: the late summer sun was bright, the morning air was crisp and the sky was a brilliant cerulean.

And when I drove up with my crew, which consisted of Morganna and Brittney, both well-trained (by me) line cooks who now have held jobs in various restaurants around Athens, we were all shocked at how BIG the crowd was. The parking lot was filled–I had to fight to find a place to park after I let the girls out with our huge stockpots filled with garlic mashed potatoes and the marsala-braised rabbit and wild mushrooms.

I finally had to park at the farthest end of the lot, and jog back to the tent where our tasting was to be held, while dressed in my all-black chef’s gear. (Chef’s jackets are not great workout gear. Just sayin’)

Once there, we waited while Chef Jana of Jana’s Soul Food Cafe wrapped up her tasting of potato leek soup with corn cakes, then with great alacrity and much help, we set up our gear, and within a handful of minutes, started passing out tastes of our food. The generous first tastes I nabbed and ran around to deliver to the farmers whose produce we used: rabbit from Rich at Harmony Hollow, mushrooms from Becky at Green Edge Gardens and garlic from Rich at Rich Organic Gardens. Once again, I must say, chef jackets and bistro aprons are crap workout gear, but I managed to deliver my plates without drowning in sweat, tripping over my clogs or running over anyone in the at times, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

When I got back, the girls were deep in plating and serving, so I slipped into the line and started garnishing and passing out plates. While I worked, I chatted up everyone, answered questions about the rabbit, told people that while I didn’t currently have a restaurant, I was planning on opening one in a couple of years after Kat goes to school, and made periodic announcements about the various farmers whose produce was used in my offerings.

Feedback was pretty instantaneous: folks asked for my card, demanded that I open a restaurant, and one self-proclaimed hillbilly scraped his plate clean and reached out and clapped a beefy hand on my shoulder declaring, “Darlin’ you did that rabbit proud.”

One could ask for no higher praise.

We ran out of food within forty-five minutes, and later, I found out that Rich’s rabbits and Becky’s mushrooms that I had used in my recipe were all sold out, and that they had both seen plenty of customers they had never seen before.

I consider that to be a very big success.

All of the chefs I spoke with, as well as the farmers, had a great time–it was fun, the farmers did very well that day and the crowd was filled with excitement to be tasting the creative offerings from the area’s restaurants. And, as one farmer said to me, “It is so fun and exciting to see all the chefs striding around the market in their uniforms, looking all official and wonderful!”

For those of you who were not there, my dear friends Dan Trout, Heather Irwin and I put together a video report of the event so that my readers could “get a taste” of the Farm to Table tour. The interviews you see here are unrehearsed and unplanned–Dan had been taping stuff while I was at work in the tent giving out food, and when I was done, he caught up with me and suggested that I do interviews for our video report. So, I doffed my hat (a black cowboy hat a la Lee Van Cleef because my black skullcap looked ratty and ugly), pulled my hair out of its ponytail and had at it. I used to be a journalist, so I am good at asking questions, although this was my first foray into video–I have always worked in print media before.

Expect to see more video reports in the future–Dan and I have big plans on the horizon for not only video blogging but also for another, more ambitious project.

And, look for a recipe for the Marsala Braised Rabbit with Wild Mushrooms later this week.

Anglo-Indian Curried Lamb Stew

Don’t worry–there isn’t any curry powder to be found in this stew.

Or curry.

Or whatever it is. You could call it either a stew or a curry, or heck, you could call it Marge if you want to, but the fact is, it is both a stew and a curry. It is a hybrid between the two, because I wanted something that had lots of vegetables in it like a stew, but I wanted it to have the delicious flavor and rich sauce of a curry. So, I figured I would make something that was probably cooked for some British folks during their occupation and colonization of India by an Indian household cook who was directed to make lamb stew by his or her employers.

But of course, lamb stew is, to the Indian palate, somewhat bland and sad and flavorless, so I imagine that the cook in question might have felt the need to give it a little lift by using their own spices and curry-making techniques. Some turmeric for color, and some deeply caramelized onions for flavor, spices for fragrance and yogurt for a creamy, rich finish, and voila! A formerly rather plain stew of lamb cubes, tiny potatoes, carrots and peas becomes something delightful.

This isn’t a hard recipe, mind you–but it does take quite a few spices that I would prefer you grind yourself. I leaned heavily on some of the sweeter spices in this mixture: cardamom, fennel seed, cloves, cinnamon, and coriander seed, though there are smaller amounts of the musky, darker savors of cumin and fenugreek seeds. And to give it a tiny bit of tingle, there is black peppercorn and some chili pepper, though not nearly as much as I usually put in my curries.

The point of this mild curry is to be soothing, comforting and lip-smackingly delectable. It isn’t supposed to prove how butch you are because you can eat mouth-searingly hot chilies and sauces. This is a curry for kids, for in-laws and for those unfamiliar with Indian food who perhaps are intimidated by it to be eaten in the company of people who love Indian food, but who also understand that it can be just as delicate and subtle as it can be bodacious and bold. It is a happy curry, made to please as many people as possible.

Now, because this is based on the British/European idea of lamb stew, you can add or subtract the vegetables that go into this curry. Pearl onions would go splendidly in here as would baby turnips or mushrooms. Any vegetable that you like in your lamb stew can go in this curry, in fact, and you can add more or less of them as you like. (In point of fact, you could leave out the lamb altogether and just make this a delicious vegetable stew with fingerling potatoes, baby carrots, pearl onions, wild mushrooms, peas and baby turnips. I cannot imagine that it would taste anything less than uncommonly good. You’d also just have to leave out the beef and chicken broth or stock and replace them with vegetable stock or broth.)

Anglo-Indian Curried Lamb Stew
Ingredients:

3 tablespoons ghee, butter or canola oil
2 1/2 cups thinly sliced yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
3 large cloves garlic, sliced
1 tablespoon cardamom pods
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
5 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons turmeric
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 fresh thai chili pepper
1 pound lamb leg meat, trimmed of fat and cut into 1″ cubes
1 pound lamb shoulder meat, trimmed of fat and cut into 1″ cubes
1 cup beef stock or broth
1 cup chicken stock or broth
1 bay leaf
1 cup thickly sliced carrots
1 pound whole, scrubbed fingerling potatoes
1 pound frozen peas
1 1/2 cups whole or 2% Greek yogurt
salt to taste
cilantro leaves for garnish
Aleppo pepper flakes for garnish

Method:

Heat ghee, butter or oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and when hot, add onions, and stir them into a nearly single layer. Sprinkle with salt and cook, stirring, until they turn a deep golden color.

While you are cooking the onions, grind the garlic, the spices and the chili pepper into a fine paste with a food grinder or use a food processor for the garlic and chili and a coffee grinder for the spices.

When the onions are deeply gold take your spice paste, and add it to the pan, and cook, stirring, until the onions turn a more reddish brown color and the spices are fragrant. Add the meat and brown.

Deglaze the pan with the broths or stock and add the bay leaf. Bring to a simmer, and either put the whole lot into a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, clap on the lid, lock it down and cook it at full pressure for twenty minutes, then let the pressure subside naturally, or put a lid on it and cook until the meat is halfway tender. At that point, add the potatoes and carrots. (If you used a pressure cooker, however, cook the potatoes and carrots in a separate pot until they are tender, then drain and hold them until the pressure is reduced and you open the pot. At that point, add in the vegetables and continue the recipe as written.

Once the meat, potatoes and carrots are cooked, uncover the pot and on fairly high heat, reduce the liquid by about 1/3. Add the yogurt and the frozen peas and cook, stirring as needed, until the sauce thickens enough to lightly coat the back of a spoon. Add salt to taste and serve with naan or roti and garnish with the cilantro and Aleppo pepper flakes.

Fusion Fun: Thai Pesto Noodles

I am not always one for fusion dishes. Quite a few of them come across as less fusion and more like confusion, with muddled flavors and odd combinations of unrelated ingredients.
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But, as I was planting my Thai basil this spring, right next to a planter full of Italian and Greek basil, I thought, “I wonder what it would taste like if I took the idea of pesto and made it Thai? I couldn’t imagine it would be bad, and besides, pesto is similar in some respects to Thai curry pastes (and it is very similar to green cilantro chutney in Indian cuisine, but that is beside the point), so there is enough similarity going on that I thought it must be doable.

So, I got to thinking of the ingredients that are in traditional Genovese pesto: basil, garlic, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

And I thought, what are the cognates in Thai cuisine? Well, basil is simple–I’d just use Thai sweet basil instead of the Italian type. Garlic is garlic, all around the world, and it is always good. Instead of pine nuts, I could use peanuts. And I could replace olive oil, with fragrant cold pressed peanut oil. But what about the Parmesan cheese?

I was stuck there for a few minutes until I came at the problem from a different direction. Instead of worrying that there is no traditional cheese in Thailand, I thought about what function the Parmesan cheese serves in pesto. I pondered on the issue for a time and realized that while it adds some salt that isn’t the main function of the Parmesan. It isn’t in there to taste “cheesy” either–good pesto doesn’t ever have an overwhelming cheese flavor.

It is there to give the sauce that fifth taste–the jolt of umami–that savory “je-ne-sais-quoi” that you may not be able to identify in a dish, but if it is missing, you notice its lack.

Aha! I had it–what in Thai food is used to give the umami burst? Fish sauce is the most obvious answer, but I didn’t want to use it because I didn’t want to add more liquid to the sauce. Shrimp paste, which is used in many Thai curries is the obvious answer, and were I not possibly allergic to shrimp, that is what I would have used. (And that is what I suggest those who experiment with this recipe use, if they can get it and if they can eat shellfish with impunity, unlike myself. Lucky devils!)

What I ended up using was anchovy paste. Which, while it is an Italian ingredient, makes sense in a Thai context because fish sauce is made from anchovies. Voila!

My basic ingredients were set, but I decided to add some fresh Thai chilies, because I thought the sauce would taste better with them, and because I have been known to add chile flakes to my regular old Italian pesto. And, I decided to add a squeeze of lime juice at the end, after the noodles were tossed, to give a little sparkling finish to the flavors, as is done in many Thai recipes.

And, as I was grinding up the pesto itself in the food processor, I tasted it when it was about halfway there, and realized something about the physical properties of Thai basil vs. Italian basil. Firstly, the leaves are a bit drier in texture, so they don’t emulsify and puree quite so readily and secondly, they are a little bit stringier in texture as well.

I decided that the sauce would need something to help smooth it out and make it creamier. I could have added some water to the mix, in order to make up for the lack of water in the basil’s leaves, but I was afraid it would water down the flavor too much. Instead, I added about three good heaping tablespoons of nice, well-stirred coconut milk.

That was the ticket–when I finished pureeing the sauce and tasted it–it was perfect in texture, color and flavor. It was pesto, but it was Thai, and it was delicious.

Then, I had to figure out what I was going to stir my fragrant, verdant, silky-smooth sauce into.

I decided to make a dish of stir-fried rice rice noodles with thin slivers of chicken, julienne-cut carrots, diagonally sliced haricot vert, halved cherry tomatoes and julienned yellow bell pepper. The seasonings for this stir fry were simple: thinly sliced shallots, fish sauce, and a bit of sugar.

This set a fairly neutral stage for the Thai pesto which was tossed in along with a generous squeeze of lime juice after everything else was cooked and I had taken the wok off the heat. After that, I garnished each portion with a few lightly crushed bits of peanut and some shaggy, deep purple Thai basil flowers.

How did it turn out?

It was bright and sparkly–the lime juice finish really perks the dish up and makes it sing. The peanut oil, which really needs to be a good fragrant, barely refined cold-pressed oil like Loriva or Spectrum, gave the nutty base notes to the sauce, while the anise-like Thai sweet basil sang and danced out front, taking up all of the attention on the tongue until the garlic and chilies kicked in and made tingles shiver through the palate. The anchovy paste added that umami punch that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but was there, and really tied the ensemble together.

Oh, wow. That is what everyone said as they took their first bites. Morganna’s first words after “Oh, wow,” were, “Mom, when you open your restaurant, I assume this is going on the menu?”

“Yeah,” was the one-word reply.

Brittney’s exclamation said it all: “Amen.”

Thai Pesto Noodles
Ingredients For The Pesto:

2-3 cups fresh Thai sweet basil leaves, all stemmy bits removed
2-5 cloves garlic–this depends on how garlicky your garlic is, and how garlicky you want your pesto to be
1/3 cup toasted unsalted peanuts–use the best peanuts you can find for this.
1-3 fresh Thai bird chilies–depending on how spicy you want your sauce to be
1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste or about 1/3 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste (if you are a vegetarian, use either red or white miso here instead)
1/3-1/2 cup really good cold pressed hardly refined, fragrant peanut oil–Loriva or Spectrum are my favored brands
2-3 good heaping tablespoons of thick coconut milk–i used Chaokoh brand here.
salt to taste

Method For Pesto:

Put the basil, garlic, peanuts, chilies and anchovy paste into the food processor and start grinding. While it is going, pour in the peanut oil. Stop grinding and scrape down workbowl. Add coconut milk, then finish processing the sauce into a thick, brilliant green paste. Do this -right before- you are going to cook the noodles–if you do it before you do all of your prep, the pesto will oxidize and turn from green to brown. As it is, the pesto turns quickly once you toss it with the rice noodles, but there is no sense in starting out with it already a dull greenish brown, is there?

Ingredients For The Noodles:

1 14 ounce package 1/4″ wide rice sticks or rice noodles
1 chicken breast, cut into 1″X!/4″X1/8″ strips
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon raw or palm sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
canola or peanut oil for stir frying (about 3 tablespoons should be sufficient)
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 cup julienne-cut carrots
1 cup topped and tailed then diagonally sliced haricot verts or very young stringless green beans
1/3 cup julienne-cut yellow bell pepper
1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes (I used Sungold–yum!)
1/3-1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock or broth
juice of 1/2 lime or to taste
cilantro leaves, Thai basil flowers or leaves and lightly crushed unsalted peanuts for garnish

Method:

Soak the noodles in warm water until they are pliable and turn from translucent to opaque white. Drain well and allow to dry in the air slightly while you do the rest of your prep.

Toss the chicken with the fish sauce, sugar and cornstarch and set aside for at least twenty minutes.

When the noodles are drained and lightly dried, and the chicken is done marinating, the vegetables are cut and the peso is ground up, heat your wok over high heat until a thin ribbon of smoke rises from it. Add the peanut oil to the wok and allow it to heat briefly until it shimmers.

Add the shallots, and cook, stirring, until they take on a bit of golden brown color–about two to three minutes. Add the chicken and stir it into a single layer on the bottom fo the wok. Allow it to rest, undisturbed for about a minute or so to brown on the bottom, then start stirring.

Cook until most of the pink has turned to brown or white. Add the fish sauce and continue cooking, scraping any browned bits of marinade off the sides of the wok until most of the fish sauce has bubbled away.

Add the carrots and haricots verts and continue cooking until they brighten in color and are nearly properly crisp-tender. Add the pepper strips and cherry tomatoes, then the noodles, Cook, stirring, until the noodles soften slightly. Add the broth and continue cooking and stirring until the vegetables are done and the noodles are soft, yet still a bit chewy. Remove from heat and scrape the pesto into the wok and toss the noodles and pasta until they are thoroughly combined. Squeeze in the lime juice and toss to combine, then dish into warmed individual serving bowls.

Top each serving with the garnishes and serve immediately.