WRINKLED TOMATOES

If a wrinkled tomato is healthy on the inside - bright red and firm – there’s not only great flavor there, but plenty of anti-oxidant Lypocen waiting in the pulp. Lypocen helps guard against macular degeneration, heart disease … and men, you’ll appreciate this, prostrate cancer. In fact, doctors say that cooking tomatoes in oil increases concentrations of Lycopen almost three-fold, along with nice percentages of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and potassium. Definitely too tasty a pill to squander.

 

Level 1
Tomato Pesto
from Generoso Bahena of Chilpancingo, Chicago

Generoso prefers mashing soft tomatoes into a pesto. After roasting the tomatoes in a 600 degree oven until almost charcoaled, the skins peel off the fruit easily. He discards the peels and keeping the roasted pulp, Generoso adds ground cloves, salt, marjoram, and thyme to taste. Next, he rolls the pulp mixture into little balls for freezing. When ready for condensed, ready-to-go tomato stock, all he needs to do is remove a few pesto balls from the freezer, re-mash them and add a few cups of chicken stock for an intensely flavored tomato bouillon. His tomato pesto also is a really slick way to jazz up canned beef consommé.

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Cooking Tip: The fastest way to chop up everything together and also gets the various
flavors blended is to place all the ingredients in the bowl of a mini-chopper and pulse for
a few seconds – something much harder to achieve by hand.
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Level 2
Chewy Tomato Roll Ups
from Michael Lachowitz of Le Francais, Chicago

Michael converts his wrinkly tomatoes into a veggie version of a fruit roll-up. Separating pulp from peels, he places the tomato into a marinade of thyme, garlic, olive oil, and sugar. He covers the container and refrigerating it overnight. The following day, he rubs any excess marinade off the peels and tosses them lightly with salt and olive oil. Arranging them on a cookie sheet, Michael puts them in a cold oven (that is, with the oven “off”) for a day or two. (If using an electric oven, a temperature setting on “warm” works just as well but probably will require less than 24 hours.)

The next day, those wrinkly tomatoes emerge from the oven dehydrated, and intensely flavored. Michael unrolls the peels, brushes them lightly with olive oil and rolls them up again for slicing. He cuts them width-wise to yield tight spirals. “They’re great for dropping into tomato-based sauces or stews,” says Michael. “They give a dish visual interest, but also when you bite into them – it’s wow, what’s this?”

Level 1
Traditional Fresh Tomato Sauce
from Massimo Solotino of Francesca’s, Chicago

Massimo quarters over-ripe tomatoes, blanches them in boiling water for 2-3 minutes and then plops them into ice water until cool enough to peel. Next, he scoops out the bulk of the seeds, coarsely chops up the tomatoes, adding pieces of hand-torn fresh basil and chopped onion to the mixture. Everything is puréed in the food processor until “what you’ve got,” says Massimo, “is beautiful, homemade tomato sauce.” For dramatic effect, Massimo likes to pour or spoon a little pool of tomato sauce right under freshly cooked fish with some capers or cured black olives for garnish.

Another Massimo suggestion: drizzle a little of the sauce over warm goat cheese on a baguette that’s been brushed with olive oil and toasted.

Makes you think twice about retiring past peak tomatoes to the gar-báge, doesn’t it?