Pomodoro Sauce & Roasted Yellow Tomato Vinaigrette
With all the wonderful produce available during the summer months, I thought it would be fun to write about yellow tomatoes and provide you with a couple of recipes illustrating their simple but complex characteristics. So I went to a new chef friend, Chris Beane, and asked him for recipes that will bring out the incredible flavors of these pommes d’amour (love apples).
Chef Chris is a native of Utah but has traveled some during his 22 years of professional cooking. He didn’t go to culinary school, but learned his trade on the job starting at the Utah Seafood Company and then moving on to other popular SLC sites like Ruth’s Diner, Santa Fe, and Red Butte Cafe. He currently is working at Campagne Specialty Foods preparing their daily take out.
When I approached Chef Chris for this article, I told him I was looking for recipes that didn’t include a lot of ingredients and were not difficult to make. He gave me his simple Pomadoro (tomato) sauce for pasta and his Wood Grilled Yellow Tomato Vinaigrette that he makes for Campagne. I looked at him and said, "Oh yeah, we all have access to a wood burning grill", but he assured me there were ways around it and these recipes will display the light freshness of the tomatoes. Chris gave me the recipes in "chef talk" so I asked him a bunch of questions to help translate.
Pomodoro Sauce
Serves 4
Ingredients:
3 pounds yellow tomatoes
1/4 cup garlic, chopped
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
Salt and white pepper to taste
Procedure:
Add all the ingredients to a pot big enough to fit them, cover, and sweat them approximately 2 hours.
Strain using a china cap, reserving strained liquid. Puree the remaining ingredients and strain again, this time using the back of a ladle to push through the pulp and juices. Reserve the puree of strained pulp and juices, throwing out the skin and seeds. Reduce the 1st strained liquid by 1/2 and add to the puree. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Questions and Answers:
RG: Why yellow tomatoes?
Chef Chris: Because of the color, I really like the brightness that yellow tomatoes bring to the sauce.
RG: Can you use red tomatoes?
Chef Chris: Of course, the flavor may be just subtly different, but essentially the same.
RG: What about canned tomatoes?
Chef Chris: No! You will lose the fresh tomato flavor. We are trying to manipulate the tomatoes as little as possible to preserve the fresh flavors. That’s what this sauce is all about.
RG: What does "sweat" mean?
Chef Chris: Sweating is a cooking technique where you slowly cook over low heat with the cover on to bring out the juices that will break the tomatoes down. Be sure to use a heavy-bottomed pot so the tomatoes won’t burn.
RG: What is a China cap and what if I don't have one?
Chef Chris: A China Cap is a coned shaped strainer that has medium sized holes that are larger than those on a chinois which are extremely fine but smaller than your everyday colander. You can use a medium meshed strainer instead.
RG: When you puree the tomatoes, what happens to the seeds and skin?
Chef Chris: If you are using a food processor to puree the tomatoes, the seeds and skin will get chopped up but will be removed when you strain the sauce. You don’t want to puree the tomatoes so fine that everything liquefies. Just enough so you can push the pulp and juices through.
RG: Why white pepper?
Chef Chris: I use white pepper so it’s color blends into the sauce and you don’t have a bunch of black specs in the sauce.
Roasted Yellow Tomato Vinaigrette
makes 8 2-ounce servings
Ingredients:
3/4 pound yellow tomato, wood grilled
3/4 teaspoon shallot, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh marjoram, chopped
1 ounce Gorgonzola cheese
1 ounce of Stilton cheese
1 cup Chef’s Blend olive oil
Procedure:
Puree the tomatoes in a food processor, food mill, or blender. Add pureed tomatoes and remaining ingredients, except oil, to a bowl and mix together. Slowly add oil while whisking to incorporate the oil into the dressing.
Questions and Answers
RG: What if I don't have a wood grill?
Chef Chris: You can roast the tomatoes in the oven or in a Weber grill. In the oven you would roast them at approximately 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes until brown, put them in a covered container, and let them cool down in the refrigerator. When I make this vinaigrette, I usually make a couple of quarts of it so I grill a bunch of tomatoes. So I recommend you roast a bunch of tomatoes and use the remaining ones as a side dish or for making other sauces.
RG: What is Chef's Blend oil and what can I use instead?
Chef Chris: Chef’s Blend is a mix we use at Campagne and sell to the restaurants. At home you can use a blend of 60% canola oil and 40% olive oil. The reason we don’t use 100% olive oil is it would overpower the flavor of the other ingredients.
RG: Why do you wait to add the oil last and slowly pour it in?
Chef Chris: Oil and vinegar don’t naturally mix well with each other and will break (separate) if you don’t add the oil slowly at the end. This is called emulsifying and is how you get your dressings thick and satiny in texture. Also the mustard helps emulsify the oil and vinegar.
I hope you try these recipes from Chef Chris and are enjoying this feature of having the chefs answer the questions. Please check out my Novice to Pro page for more recipes and interviews.
