Taste Buds: Tomato Dinner

Fall may have started, but this past summer, the cooking club gathered again for our quarterly meet-up. To shake things up from the way we did things before, which was to pick a specific cuisine, this time, we picked a secret ingredient. And what’s the most summery ingredient out there?! Tomatoes!!

We welcomed a new addition to our cooking club, my neighbors, and also coworkers, Alfredo and Terry. Well, they bring a different level of culinary skills, these two. The way we did our cooking club meeting this time, each couple volunteered for a course they would want to prepare a meal for. So, 4 courses. For each of our assigned course, we were responsible to prep it from start to finish, from shopping for ingredients up to the plating. For all the other times we’ve met, it was a true democracy wherein we agreed on what we wanted to make, and we all made them together. This time, there was such an element of surprise of what our whole meal was going to be because we only saw bits and pieces of each other’s dishes. Another development to our cooking club was the introduction of wine pairing. Chef and I are the least versed about wine in the group but we started getting into it when we went to The Kitchen with Alfredo and Terry wherein we ordered the premium flight to the 6-course meal. So, we said everyone will bring a bottle as well. Basically, somewhere down the line, you may be seeing some sommelier posts here, though, as a disclaimer, we’re not there yet.

Having said all the changes and developments to the club, I only have my own recipe to share because I never got everyone else’s. That, Alfredo and Terry’s dish because it was so easy to remember. Nonetheless, I will try my best to describe them based on the pictures. Alfredo and Terry got the appetizers, and like I said, these guys brought a different level to the cooking club and elevated it so much more than what Cindy and I originally had when it was just the two of us. There was such finesse in their method that definitely translated to the food they presented. The way they worked was amazing, they were so well coordinated and their timing was perfect. The dish they prepared had 3 components: a bruschetta, the one that I would call a tomato popper, and shrimps sitting on tomatillo sauce.

For the bruschetta:

So like I mentioned, I’m basing this on the picture and things I remember laying around the kitchen at that time. It seems that the toasted bread was spread with balsamic vinaigrette, topped with a slice of mozzarella cheese. The tomato salad was tossed in olive oil, with basil, and I’m assuming salt and pepper. Layered like this, it’s beautiful, simple, and oh so fresh.

For the tomato popper:

This was by far my favorite of the evening! The cherry tomato was cored to make room for the filling. The filling was made by mixing dill and chopped chives to sour cream. This was then spooned into the tomatoes and piped with a fancy topping.

For the shrimp on tomatillo sauce:

The tomatillo sauce was a mystery to me. I know it was blended but I do not know what it was blended with. I’m sure there was salt and pepper but I’m not positive if that’s it. The shrimps were deveined and sliced to open into a beautiful butterfly like form when fried. This also was tossed with salt and pepper.

 I didn’t know much of the things going on for Cindy and Josh’s dishes because I was quite busy with my own dish so I only got to see the finished products. Cindy got the 2nd course, and for that she made a salad. She used massive heirloom tomatoes, mini mozzarella balls and basil. I am very certain there were other components to the dish but I can’t quite identify them. Similar to Josh’s, who got the main course, the ingredients were a mystery to me other than the salmon topped with a tomato salsa that I’m very certain included onions because I asked about it. This he baked for a bit, I believe only for 15 minutes at 450°F. I must remember to get the recipes from them because these sure are things that seem easy enough to prepare and must be repeated.

I wanted to challenge myself with making a dessert out of tomatoes because frankly, I’ve never had one ever. So, on to my handy dandy Epicurious app, and I found this Tomato Tarte Tatin recipe.

Here’s what you need for the Tomato Tarte Tatin:

1 3/4 pounds plum tomatoes (8 large)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 sheet thawed frozen puff pastry with the corners cut off to make very rough 9- to 10-inch round

Confectioners sugar to dust

How to make it:

Get your oven heating at  425°F. Bring large saucepan of water to boil. On the side, get a bowl of ice water ready. Cut shallow X in bottom of each tomato and add 4 tomatoes to boiling water at a time. Blanch tomatoes just until skins at X begin to peel back, 15 to 30 seconds. Using slotted spoon, transfer blanched tomatoes to bowl of ice water to cool quickly. Peel the tomatoes and cut out cores. Cut them in half lengthwise, and remove seeds.

Spread butter over bottom of 9 1/2-inch diameter, 2- to 3-inch-deep cast iron pan. Sprinkle 3/4 cup sugar over butter. To me, the 3/4 cup of sugar seemed a lot, actually, but I still used them all from my instinct to follow instructions. Roll the pan around to distribute the sugar evenly. Arrange tomato halves, rounded side down and close together, in concentric circles in skillet to fill completely.

Over medium heat, cook until sugar and butter are reduced to thickly bubbling, deep amber syrup (about 1/4 inch deep in bottom of skillet), moving tomatoes occasionally to prevent burning, about 25 minutes. This is when the even distribution of sugar will pay off, actually. I know that there was a part of my pan that had less sugar than the rest and that ended up burning. Remove the skillet from the heat and immediately drizzle vanilla over tomatoes. Top with pastry round. You may need a buddy to hold the other side of your pastry round as I did, just to place it perfectly on top and covering all the tomatoes. Using knife, tuck in edges of pastry. Cut 2 or 3 small slits in pastry. Place skillet in oven and bake tart until pastry is deep golden brown, about 24 minutes.

Cool tart in skillet 10 minutes. Cut around sides of skillet to loosen pastry. Place large platter over skillet. Using oven mitts as said, hold skillet and platter firmly together and invert, allowing tart to settle onto platter. Carefully lift off skillet. Rearrange any tomato halves that may have become dislodged. The recipe called for whipped cream on top but I decided to dust it off with confectioners sugar when we were plating.

So, gone may be the season of tomatoes but it’s still very much like summer right now. It was another successful dinner with good friends over good food, such simple things that are highly valued.