10 Must-Try Fresh Tomato Recipes

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with fresh tomato soup with crispy cheese toast that's right we're doing a very fresh twist on the classic cream of tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwich and since we are using fresh tomatoes at the peak of their vine ripen goodness this simple soup is going to be not quite but almost 100 tomato and by using more tomato that means we're using less of other stuff and as you all know less is more especially when it's less because you're using more and now that i've confused everybody we can go ahead and get started by prepping our perfectly ripe straight off the vine tomatoes alright we got some early girl we got some celebrity we even have a few purple cherokee as well as some aroma and a few cherry tomatoes and for the bigger ones what we'll do is just cut out the core and then simply slice them in half and believe it or not that's it oh yeah now that is a beautiful tomato oh and if there happens to be some non-beautiful stuff at the blossom end feel free to trim that kind of stuff off although we are going to strain this so it probably doesn't matter either way and as far as those little aromas go that core is so small all we have to do is cut those in two and then for the cherry tomatoes what we'll do is nothing we will just toss those in as is and that's it once those are prepped we will head to the stove where i'm gonna melt a lot of butter in a little bit of olive oil and we'll do that over medium high heat and then as soon as that butter's just about melted we can go ahead and toss in some chopped garlic as well as our secret ingredient one anchovy fillet oh yeah a little italian msg as we call it around the office and by the way if you're one of these culinary cowards that's afraid to add the anchovy please do it anyway and you're just gonna have to trust me on that one and all we're gonna do here is sizzle that stuff in this hot oil and butter for about a minute or so or maybe even a little less okay we don't want that garlic to take out any color and then what we'll do once that sizzled for about 45 seconds two minutes is very quickly but very very carefully transfer in our tomatoes along with any and all accumulated juices and we'll go ahead and poke and settle those down the best we can with a spoon at which point we'll add a couple big pinches of salt as well as a fairly small pinch of red pepper flakes which are of course optional and then what we'll do over the course of the next few minutes is sort of give this the occasional poking and protein impossible stirring until those tomatoes begin to release their moisture and they start to simmer in their own juices or if this recipe can be summed up in one simple phrase it has tomatoes simmering in their own juices and what we'll do once those juices have reached a point where pretty much everything is submerged as it will back our heat down to about medium-low and then we'll simmer this for about 45 minutes or until those tomatoes have completely collapsed into a puree and other than straining out the skin and seeds and of course tasting for seasoning that is pretty much it for how we make this soup okay this could not be simpler so we'll let that simmer for a while and while that's getting good we can move on to make our crispy cheese toast which for me is going to start by generously olive oil in a silpat lime baking sheet upon which i will place and rub some slices of italian bread or whatever bread you feel like using right something that has some fairly big bubbles is recommended and then what we'll do once those are set is that we'll go ahead and top those with a chiffon out of basil which is nothing more than a fancy culinary term for very thinly sliced ribbons and yes of course you could put the basil in the tomato soup instead but this time i felt like trapping mine under melted cheese so that's what we're gonna do and because it pairs so well with our naturally sweet fresh tomato soup i'm gonna be using a nice sharp and tangy white cheddar which we will go ahead and pile up shamelessly and that's it once those have been generously chopped with cheese we will go ahead and transfer those into the center of a 450 degree oven for about 15 to 20 minutes or until our cheese is beautifully browned and everything is nice and crisp as tested with a fork because as you all know fork don't lie so yes that sounds about right and what we'll do is let those cool down to room temp before we serve them with our soup oh and a little piece of advice make sure you're finishing your soup just about the same time these are ready otherwise what's going to happen if you make these ahead is that you're going to eat them all and won't have any to serve with your soup and believe me i speak from experience so watch your timing on this and speaking of timing by now our soup should be just about perfect and by perfect i mean every piece of tomato both big and small has broken down completely with the only solids pretty much being skin and seeds which is pretty much what i had going on right here and yes i did sneak a little taste which was insanely good but anyway we'll get to that what we're going to do now is go ahead and pull that off the heat and we're going to go ahead and pass that through a mesh strainer and for that i think the best tool as you'll see here is the back of the ladle since that's going to do a really nice job of pushing all that juice and flesh through the strainer and if everything goes according to plan all you'll be left with is skins and seed and while you could just blend all this smooth and serve it like that i think the taste and texture are going to be significantly better if you do this one extra step but anyway suit yourself i mean you are after all the mr cain of weather to strain but this only takes you a couple minutes and like i said i think it comes out a lot nicer and then what we'll do once our soup is sand skins and seeds is transfer that back into our saucepan and then we'll place it back over medium heat so we can get it piping hot again and of course if you wanted to you could cook this for a while to reduce it to thicken it up a little but i am not trying to make tomato sauce and i do not want this too thick so all i did was wait for mine to come back to the simmer at which point it looked like this and i decided i was very happy with that so i turned off the heat but we're never officially really really happy with it until we taste for seasoning so i grabbed a spoon to check it out and decided it did in fact need one more pinch of salt and that's it as soon as it's looking feeling and tasting exactly how you want we'll go ahead and serve that up next to our crispy cheese toast and since i'm contractually obligated to take a few pictures i decided to do a little bit of olive oil on the top just to give it a little extra glisten or as we used to say back in the day a little bling and by the way i also did give it a shake of cayenne but you can barely see it but trust me it's there and that's it my fresh tomato soup with crispy cheese toast was ready to enjoy and that my friends is just a spoon of pure vine ripe and tomatoey goodness and don't get me wrong i do enjoy the traditional cream of tomato soup with or without a grilled cheese but when fresh tomatoes are at their peak perfection this is the only style for me and as good as that is right off the spoon used as a dip for our cheesy toast is just as good if not better which reminds me it's very easy to make tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for like one or two people but when you're trying to grill sandwiches for like six or eight people it can be a little bit of a challenge and you end up having to eat in shifts but since we can make these crispy cheese toasts ahead of time this pairing actually works out perfectly for larger groups just as long as i mentioned earlier you do not eat them all before your soup is done which can be a problem a very very understandable problem and while the flavor is completely different this sort of reminds me of a soup we did a few summers ago which i believe was called just corn soup where we made a soup with just basically 100 corn and the reasons that soup was so great are the same reasons this soup is so great and that's because we're enjoying a seasonal vegetable without a bunch of other stuff getting in the way of that natural goodness and no the cheese toast does not count alright that is just a garnish and you know what i'm trying to say but anyway that's it what we're calling fresh tomato soup i would have to say this might be my third favorite way to eat fresh tomatoes all right the best way is just plucking them off the vine and eating them like an apple and then the second will be a tomato sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise but this is right up there with those so i'm gonna go ahead and finish this bowl off with probably the rest of the entire pan of those cheese toasts and what i'm hoping you do is go find some perfectly vine ripened tomatoes and give this amazingly simple and delicious soup a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a principal written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy panzanella salad that's right there are hundreds of ways you can make this very simple very rustic tomato and bread salad but i don't want you to use any of those because while delicious the one thing they all have in common they're all also very soggy so we're gonna do things a little differently and by using some proprietary fried bread cube technology we're gonna get something that's not only tasty but far far superior texturally so let me show you how to do this and we'll get started with the second most important ingredient the bread and for this you're gonna need some stale bread two to three day old bread fresh bread is just not going to work as well for this so this is the perfect thing to do when you have half a loaf of bread left over which is exactly what i have and all we need to do is cube this up so i'm going to cut a couple half inch slices kind of cut those into strips and then we'll turn it and just cut across that way into some nice fairly evenly sized pieces and you know the standing rule nobody cares how big you make your cube but when you do pick a size stick with it so these cook evenly but anyway we're going to go ahead and cube up half a loaf of bread crust and all and once our bread is prepped what we're going to do is we're going to transfer that into a large skillet and we're going to place that over medium heat and we're going to toast this bread in the pan with lots of olive oil i mean a lot make sure there's some on every cube and then what we'll do is we'll go ahead and toast those bread cubes over medium heat until they just start to turn golden and that's going to take you a few minutes and i used the term toast earlier what i really should be saying is fry these okay we really want to fry the surface of the bread cube we don't just want to toast it all the way through or i want something crunchy on the outside but this still has a little bit of chewiness inside and at any point you think it needs a little more olive oil add some see right here i noticed a few pieces that looked a little dry so i gave it another little drizzle so i'm gonna keep those moving you can use a spatula to stir or you can use the old flipaflipa if you know how to do it and if you don't check out our video i showed you how to do that using cheese balls oh yeah that's not a joke so i'm gonna keep those moving until like i said they start to turn golden brown at that point we're going to stop and we're going to grate over some fresh parmigiano-reggiano and we're going to finally grate that all over the surface and what's going to happen here thanks to all that olive oil and this parmesan these bread cubes are going to get crunchy and crispy and even when they get soaked with that dressing later they're still going to retain some crunchiness which i think is the key to this technique okay so keep that going over medium heat stirring and or tossing until you have something that's beautifully golden brown or it should look something like this the outside should be hard and crispy but still a little bit of chewiness on the inside all right if you press these cubes with a spatula and they just shatter into crumbs that's too much and i don't have time to explain now but if you're thinking this would be way faster and easier in the oven it would be but it's not going to be as good and i'll explain that on the blog and when we're happy with those we're going to turn off the heat and let those cool completely alright you definitely don't want to mix a salad with these warm and if for any reason one of those bread cubes doesn't look quite right to you just eat it right in the business we call that destroying the evidence so our crispy olive oil soaked parmesan crisp bread cubes are ready and it's time to move on to the most important ingredient the tomatoes as you can see here i have a colorful colander full of what we call toy box tomatoes which just means a variety of different colors and shapes and of course these have been washed thoroughly and all we're going to do to prep these is cut them in half and one quick point here i want you to cut them all in half no matter how small they are whole cherry tomatoes in a panzernella salad do not work all right there's an old saying whole tomatoes don't bleed okay sounds much better in italian but what it means is if you don't cut these tomatoes open we're not going to get those amazing juices flowing out which is really the key to the dressing so we'll go ahead and we'll cut all those in half and yes i've seen the trick with the plate where you cut them all at once it doesn't work if you have different size tomatoes like i do but if you want you can cut a few at a time and once those are cut we'll go ahead and toss those in a bowl and season them up so we're going to need some salt a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of sugar all right don't use it if it's contrary to your culinary belief system but it really is important here the sugar along with the salt is really what draws the liquid out of those tomatoes which as i just mentioned is key we're also going to need some kind of acid and for me there's only one choice red wine vinegar in my opinion that's what works the best in this by far alright i think balsamic is way too sweet but suit yourself and then we're also going to drizzle in some extra virgin olive oil the best stuff you got and i'm going to give that a little mix and then the only other thing i'm going to put in here is a little bit of finely minced garlic and you'll see in lots of other recipes they're calling for cucumbers and peppers and onions and lots of other stuff i don't think any of that should go in here and really the only way i can explain my reasons for not doing that is if you taste this because i think you'll agree there's no way it could have gotten any better but anyway we're going to stir in some garlic and you can see already here we got lots of those juices forming ooh that's looking good and then all we're going to do is cover that and let that sit for about 20 minutes and in just a short amount of time you're going to be amazed at how much juice comes out and while we are waiting for that magic to happen let's go ahead and prep the last ingredient some fresh basil just grab four or five big leaves kind of roll them up like that and then take your sharpest knife and just slice it across like this into thin ribbons our french friends would call that chiffonade all right so our basil set let's go ahead and check our tomatoes it's been about 20 minutes and as you can see very very juicy and we are ready for final assembly so let's go ahead and toss in our basil i'm also going to give it another little additional splash of oil and vinegar and you may have to adjust that as you go so let's go ahead and give that a quick mix and then last but not least we're going to put in roughly equal amounts of our fried bread cubes and i certainly don't want you to measure those just dump a couple handfuls in in fact that reminds me i don't think i'm going to give any ingredient amounts here it's really not that kind of a recipe seriously one of the only ways to screw up a recipe like this is overthink it so we'll toss our bread in and then we're going to mix that up for a good two or three minutes until you're fairly certain all those bread cubes are fully saturated and then what i like to do is kind of pat it down a little bit and just let it sit there for three or four minutes because here's how you're gonna tell if you have enough dressing after you toss that if you come back three or four minutes later and it's all been absorbed you need more put in a little more vinegar a little more olive oil give it another toss so you'll have to check that you'll have to adjust you are the confucius of your panzanella juices and above and beyond that you're also obviously checking for salt and once we're happy with how it looks and tastes we'll go ahead and plate that up i'm going to garnish with a little more freshly chiffonaded basil and i'll also do one more last drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to kind of shine up the top and that gorgeous but fairly untraditional panzanella salad is done and while we have the same amazing flavors that you get in the more authentic versions we don't have that same soupy soggy bread which reminds me panzanella actually means little swamp and while it may make me a bad italian i just don't like my penzanella cell as too swampy so the beauty of this technique is even though these cubes are completely saturated completely soaked with that incredible dressing they still have some crunch to them i know it sounds impossible but it's not in fact here's me eating some out of a different bowl and this was like 10 minutes later and you can actually hear even though they're totally soaked they're still crispy just an unbelievable and truly unique sensation and above and beyond the texture which is amazing the flavors here are just indescribable so whether you've never had this salad before or you've only had it in his traditional swampy form i really hope you give this technique a try if you do i think you're going to be a huge fanzanella of the panzanella alright so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] tomato tart that's right i've always wanted to visit the south of france but not because of the famous film festival or those gorgeous clothing optional beaches no the real reason i want to visit provence is so i can enjoy this amazing tart in its natural habitat preferably accompanied by their equally famous rose but anyway i'm very excited to show you my take on this deceptively simple recipe and we'll begin that by thawing out some puff pastry with which we're going to build our free form rectangular tart shell and man this would be way easier if this thing came in a big sheet like in the restaurants but it doesn't so i'm just going to go ahead and press together a couple of these squares to make a rectangle and i'll just sort of smoosh and press together the seam in the middle and generally thawed out puff pastry should be sticky enough to adhere but if need be don't be afraid to brush on just a little touch of water and then what we'll do once our rectangular base is done is cut some strips from the extra pieces and we'll lay those along the edge to make a border oh and stop me if you've heard this one before but it doesn't matter how bad it looks at this point as you'll see once this is baked it's going to look magnificent even if you do a fairly mediocre job forming the shell like i'm doing here so please don't be too stressed doing this because your tart will actually sense that and not taste as good and then what we're going to do once our base is formed is we're going to go ahead and pop this in the freezer for 10 minutes to firm it back up because for the next step we're going to perform the old slash and prick and that is not going to work out unless our dough is firm so like i said we'll pop that in the freezer for about 10 minutes at which point we're going to take a knife and go around the outside making semi even slashes about i don't know a quarter inch apart all the way around including both ends which is kind of hard to see and by doing that once this is baked we're going to kind of camouflage where our seams were and as you'll see it kind of works and then what we'll do once that set is take a fork and besides give that center seam a little bit of an extra press we will go ahead and use that fork to prick the bottom all over which in the world of bacon and pastry is not called pricking it's called docking and you can go ahead and call it whatever you want i mean you are after all the dick tracy of whether culinary pricking is too racy and by docking the bottom it's not going to rise up as much and once this is cooked and pressed down it's going to help produce a beautifully crispy bottom which is definitely the kind of bottom we're going to want and then what we're going to do once that bottom has been properly poked is go ahead and transfer that into the center of a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes or until it looks a little something like this okay it should be lightly golden and partially puffed and then what we'll want to do as soon as this comes out while it's still hot is take the back of a fork and press down the bottom of the tart all right firmly butt gently and please stay away from our beautiful border okay we're only pressing down the parts we poked and once this surprisingly fun step is done you can see we've produced a pretty decent looking tar shell except of course for that giant gap in the middle which yes was really bothering me so what i did is rolled up a little ball of dough and then secretly cut off a little crispy corner from the bottom and used that to kind of make a patch and that really wasn't probably going to cause much of a problem but it was bothering me so i couldn't help myself and then whether we're making any repairs or not what we want to do is let this cool for another 10 or 15 minutes before finishing it off which will give us enough time to pull the rest of our ingredients together like for example the star of the show some beautiful perfectly sweet summer vine ripened tomatoes all right except no substitutes all right it sounds obvious but i'm going to say it anyway this tart is only going to be as good as your tomatoes so make sure you get some nice ones and then to make this semi-legit you're going to want to find some herb de provence which is basically a dried mix of every single herb you've ever heard of plus a little touch of lavender which doesn't really sound like it would work but it really really does and then assuming our tar shell has cooled down for about 10 minutes or so we can show you the last major ingredient and that would be some dijon mustard and what we'll do is take three or four generous spoons of that and we will spread that evenly into the bottom of our shell and we really do want to be generous with this okay that stuff's going to be our sharp tangy sort of spicy liaison between our crisp buttery crust and our soft sweet tomatoes and usually at this point i would tell you to use any mustard you want but not this time i need you to use the best strongest french dijon you can find and then what we'll do once we've mustered our crust is go ahead and lay in our sliced tomatoes which i try to slice just over a quarter inch thick and in a perfect world this would have been wide enough to do two rows of tomatoes or we could have made our shell smaller and narrower and just fit one row but this is what i had to deal with so after putting four whole slices in offset like that i'll simply go ahead and use some half slices to fill in the gaps which actually if i do say so myself made for a pretty nice presentation but bottom line one way or another we want to cover the surface completely without overlapping the tomatoes and some people like to overlap but not me because i don't think the tomatoes cook enough that way so as you can see i'm going single layer and then what we'll do once our tomatoes are down is go ahead and season those generously with some french sea salt or the salt of your choice and we will also do a little touch of freshly ground black pepper as well as a generous sprinkling of our de provence which as i'm applying i'm kind of rubbing between my fingertips to sort of activate it and while we do want to be careful applying dried herbs to something like this because it can potentially overwhelm the other ingredients we really do want to make sure we apply enough since it is one of the signature flavors and then what we'll do after we've applied our herb to provence is we'll grate over a very light dusting of parmesan cheese the real stuff of course some parmigiano-reggiano and i know you have a french friend that does this and uses gruyere that's fine and also delicious but personally i do prefer the parmesan and then after the cheese we'll finish this up a little drizzle of olive oil and that's it once that's been applied our tomato tart is ready to bake so let's go ahead and transfer that back into the center of our 400 degree oven for about 25 or 30 minutes or until our pastry is beautifully browned and crispy and our tomatoes look caramelized and amazing and then all we're going to need to do at this point is somehow someway let this cool down to room temp which we can if we want let it happen right on this pan but if you're brave and more importantly have two spatulas if we're able to somehow transfer this hot tower down to a cooling rack that bottom will actually stay a lot crispier once this is finally cooled so i took a chance and it worked out and i let it cool on that rack for another 20 minutes or so at which point we'll get this ready for service with a couple final touches which will include a little extra drizzle of olive oil as well as some chopped fresh herbs ideally some of the same ones that are in herb de provence like parsley and oregano and thyme and some chive like i used here and that's it once cooled and decorated our tomato tart is finally ready to enjoy and one thing i love so much about this tart besides everything is that visually this kind of under promises but when you bite in taste and texture wise it totally over delivers like way over i mean the combinations in texture and taste between that crispy buttery pastry and that tangy sharp acidic mustard in that sweet caramelized but still juicy tomato is just absolutely stunning and really must be experienced to be believed i mean it really doesn't seem possible that something this simple is this delicious but it is i mean it's kind of funny if someone asks me what my all-time favorite tart was and my answer was like the only one that doesn't use fruit i know i know tomatoes technically a fruit and peanuts aren't and not they're a bean and birds are just newer little flying dinosaurs alright i know all that but you know what i'm saying of all the tarts in the world sweet and savory this is by far my favorite and i'm enjoying this without a glass of rose oh by the way does anyone know if they have a video recipe category in the khan's film festival maybe that's my ticket to finally get over there but anyway no matter where you enjoy this or whether you're sipping on a glass of rose or not i really do hope you give this amazing tomato tart a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy fresh garden tomato sauce that's right i'm going to show you how to make a tomato sauce using fresh tomatoes and while you'll often hear me say in these videos that what we're making is way better than what you can buy at the store with this it's not just a matter of being better than what you get at the store and it's more about that you literally can't get this at the store okay there's no sauce in a jar or in a can that will come even close to what you're going to experience with this and if you've never done this before i think you're going to be shocked just how simple and easy it is in fact the hardest thing is finding some of these which would be perfectly vine ripened tomatoes and i'll be using some gorgeous golden plum tomatoes as well as some very small but very sweet early girls and some mortgage lifters and a few san marzano and yes we'll also want a few sprigs of basil and what we'll do first here is pull off that green part from the top which is called the sepal or is it calyx or is it both and then we'll also go ahead and cut out the core with the tip of a knife like this and i guess since we're going to cut the core out anyway you don't have to pull off this apple because it's going to come with it and i think i just pulled that off so i could say sepal but anyway what we'll do with the larger tomatoes is cut them in half and then in quarters and before i move on let's just take a look at what makes a great sauce tomato and that would be ones that have a lot of flesh and not much juice and seeds okay can you see how meaty these are that's why plum tomatoes are your classic sauce tomato as opposed to this mortgage lifter which while great in sandwiches and salads definitely has a lot more juice and a lot more seeds in comparison to the amount of meat or flesh having said that if they're fresh from the garden and ripe and sweet they are going to work in this sauce and that's it after we quarter the big tomatoes and have the small ones we will transfer those all into a bowl and we'll reserve those until needed at which point we can head to the stove and start our sauce before that we will add a generous amount of olive oil to a pot set over medium heat to which we will add some sliced garlic cloves and all we're going to do here is sizzle these in the oil for maybe 30 seconds or so before we toss in some fresh pick basil leaves and sure if you wanted to crush or chop the garlic go ahead but according to my relatives and also the movie goodfellows slicing is the way to go but anyway like i said we'll give those a sizzle for about 30 seconds to give those a little head start before tossing in our basil and we will continue to cook this for another 30 seconds or so okay depends on how thin you sliced your garlic but we'll continue cooking until it just starts to think about turning color and as soon as we see the thinnest slices the smallest pieces starting to turn golden we will immediately but carefully so as not to splash ourselves transferring our tomatoes and what's going to happen as soon as we dump that in is those juices are going to go to the bottom and they will immediately stop that sauteing process and we won't have to worry about our garlic over cooking and by overcooking i mean getting dark and bitter and then to this we will also want to add a nice big pinch of salt as well as an optional pinch of chili flakes which i'm going to add because i do enjoy a little bit of heat but if you don't don't i mean you are always have been and always will be the boss of your sauce and then what we'll do here is raise our heat to medium high and then we will poke stir mix and toss these tomatoes although not necessarily in that order until they completely collapse and liquefy oh and regarding the mixing and poking and tossing and stirring that is probably unnecessary and a complete waste of effort since if we just let this cook without doing anything it will still collapse and liquefy whether you touch it or not but that is not why i'm stirring i'm stirring because it's fun and it's a proven scientific fact that stirring is one of the things that makes cooking so relaxing all right scientists can't really explain it but it's true but regardless of how much you stir eventually those tomatoes will break down and the mixture will start simmering and why it's so important to cook everything until it collapses and gets really soft like this is because in the next step we're going to pass this through a strainer so that we can remove all the seeds and skins oh and we should probably turn off the heat while we do this and in a perfect world the holes in the strainer are just slightly smaller than the size of the seeds all right i have some very very fine mesh strainers which would also work here but they would take a lot longer so for me this is my official tomato sauce strainer and once we've transferred everything in and pushed everything through the only thing left in the strainer should be seeds and skin and as you can see all that amazing tomatoey goodness is now in our pot and we are now ready to move into final production and all that means is turning our heat back onto medium or medium-high for in a hurry and reducing this down to the thickness we want which for me is only going to be a couple minutes okay i want this fresh garden tomato sauce to be fairly thin so i'm only going to reduce mine for a few minutes until it just thickens up ever so slightly at which point it will be ready to use in all kinds of amazing recipes and of course you could reduce this down much more like by half and end up with a much thicker sauce similar to some that comes out of the jar but you got to trust me here and one of the keys as you will see is finishing the cooking of the pasta in the sauce which is why we don't want it too thick and basically the plan is find some of these and then make some of this so that we can eventually eat this and oh my god you really do want to eat this which is why i really do hope you give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] naked cherry tomato salad that's right if i ran a culinary school and it was this time of year this is what we would make day one and that's because i can't think of a better example we're learning a classic old-school culinary technique transform something that's totally mundane and relatively uninteresting into literally one of the most delicious things you've ever tasted and that technique involves removing the skin which is why these are called naked which i'll admit take a little bit of extra time but that's fine because we're going to present these a moose boosh style and only give three per person but we'll get into all that later for now let's go ahead and start by prepping our tomatoes and to do that we're going to cut a very small very shallow x on the bottom of each tomato and be very careful we don't want to cut in too far we just want to break the skin and for me the easiest way to do this is with a very small serrated knife all right straight edge knives are a little challenging with tomatoes because the skin is so incredibly tough which is exactly why we're performing this somewhat tedious step and by peeling these tomatoes not only are we profoundly improving the texture we're going to be able to marinade them without cutting them in half all right being able to keep this whole is really the magic behind this dish oh and this will be the perfect point to mention i just got a new camera and have absolutely no idea how to use it so please forgive and ignore any minor focusing issues i'll figure it out as soon as i read the manual and by read the manual i mean watch a few videos on youtube but anyway like i said we'll go ahead and make a very shallow axe with our knife opposite the side that attached to the plant and yes we'll go ahead and pull off those green things as well i call them stems but i don't think they're stems i think they're attached to the stem but i am sure someone will let us know probably the same people that told us what that white thing on a raw egg was and then what we'll do once our tomatoes are prepped is set up a bowl of ice water because we're going to go ahead and dunk these briefly into boiling water to peel them and once that's been accomplished we're going to want to transfer those quickly into this bowl of cold water to stop the cooking so once that's set and we have some kind of strainer to transfer them with we can head to the stove where we will bring some water up to a boil on high heat in case you're wondering this is one of the times we don't have to salt the water so we'll bring some plain water up to a boil and we will carefully transfer our cherry tomatoes in and what we'll do is we'll give them a little stir and kind of move them around a little bit and then we're going to wait for just a few seconds until that skin starts to peel back and i'm not gonna edit this at all you can just watch in real time because it really does happen quick okay we're not cooking these tomatoes we're just peeling them so after a few seconds as soon as you see that skin start to peel back okay you see that as soon as that happens we will quickly transfer those from boiling water to ice water and that is pretty much it we will simply let those tomatoes cool down completely at which point we can peel them which is going to be super easy because the peels pretty much fall off themselves all right so we'll let those tomatoes sit in that ice water until they're nice and cold at which point like i said we're going to remove those skins which is really not a hard thing to do but you do want to be very careful we don't crush these especially like in my case if you're using tomatoes that were almost too ripe to use and these things were just absolutely perfect and sweet and just about to burst which while incredibly delicious does make them a little more difficult to work with but as you've heard me say before the food gods hate a coward so do not use firm under ripe tomatoes just because they're easier and mostly we're just going to use our fingers here kind of peeling that skin back and then gently pinching it off the bottom where it attaches to the stem and some if not most you'll be able to do with just your fingers but we can also use a knife to help us out on ones where the skin is a little more attached and what we'll do as we peel these is transfer them into a bowl so we can dress them and by the way there are a few things in the world of cooking that looks sexier and more enticing than a bowl of peeled cherry tomatoes i mean come on check that out you can actually see the veins and what is sexier than sea and veins and again the whole key to this operation is keeping the cherry tomatoes whole because i think everyone agrees that's the ultimate way to eat a cherry tomato because that way they burst in your mouth and you get that explosion of sweet tangy tomato flavor and the only possible way to improve on that experience is exactly what we're doing here removing the skins so anyway we're going to go ahead and peel those tomatoes and transfer them into some kind of bowl at which point we can move on to the dressing which in keeping with the naked tomato theme is going to be extremely extremely simple so for what's basically going to be a marinade we're going to start with a little bit of sweet herb i highly suggest mint with basil being a close second and we're not even gonna cut it up i just pinched off a couple small leaves and tossed them in and then to that we will add a touch of vinegar i'm gonna go with sherry vinegar this time because my tomatoes were so incredibly sweet but i will give you other options on the blog we are also going to add some extra virgin olive oil as well as a little bit of pepper i'm going to go with just some cayenne this time i didn't want those dark flecks of black pepper messing with the appearance and then we'll also add a tiny pinch of salt not too much because we're going to finish these with some coarse sea salt and that's it we'll take our freakishly small wooden spoon and give this a mix and by just slightly bruising those little mint leaves just enough of that flavor is going to get into this dressing and if you're wondering why mint instead of basil here they both would do pretty much exactly the same thing except mint is just a slightly sweeter herb than basil so it really pairs incredibly well here especially since this is going to be served chilled but anyway we're going to give that a little bit of dressing a mix at which point i'm going to go ahead and spoon that over my now completely naked tomatoes and sure if you want i guess you could just dump all this in and sort of mix it up a little more aggressively but as i mentioned mine were so incredibly ripe and soft i did not want to manipulate them any more than necessary so what i did is spoon that as evenly as i could over the top and then i gave it the old shake a shaker and then what we'll want to do is wrap this up and pop in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to an hour or until thoroughly and completely chilled but what i like to do about halfway through is pull them out and give them a little toss which i'm going to do very very gently with this frequently small silicone spatula and man those are looking good and it would be very tempting to need a couple or seven or eight or nine but don't otherwise your guests are going to have no boosh to be amused by so please have some self-control just give it a quick toss re-wrap it pop it back in the fridge until like i say your tomatoes are completely and thoroughly chilled at which point we can pull it out and move on to final production and all that means is we're going to pull it out and give it a stir and basically evaluate whether we're going to add some more oil and vinegar or not which i almost always do so i drizzled in a little more sherry vinegar and a touch more olive oil and gave that a final mix and once that's been accomplished we are ready to serve but not before i taste one of these smaller kind of smooshed ones and even though i've enjoyed this countless times i'm never not shocked at how amazing that is and then once we're happy with how it looks and tastes we'll go ahead and serve that up and no i wasn't kidding we're just giving three per person because we're doing what's called an amuse-bouche which is simply some kind of very small appetizer to start a meal so i'm going to serve up exactly three naked cherry tomatoes along with of course a little bit of that dressing and natural juices and maybe a few drips of olive oil to shine things up and sure if you want you could garnish this with a little extra fresh herb but in keeping with the naked theme i didn't of course that kind of stuff's up to you you are the nuclear rouge of your naked cherry tomato and mousse bouge and that is no bowl so you add what you want and then last but not least we will go with a little sprinkling of coarse sea salt which always looks like a lot but it's not because there's a giant grains and that's it our naked cherry tomato salad presented as an amuse bouche is done and of course your friends and family are going to tease you and mock you that you serve three cherry tomatoes but you know what else they're going to do talk about this for the rest of their lives because for someone that's never experienced this before you are pretty much stunned with what you're tasting it really is like you're tasting some new and exotic fruit for the first time and the reason three's the perfect portion is because the first bite is basically shock and awe i mean watch people's faces as they eat that first one they almost can't believe they're eating a cherry tomato so they go in for the second one and it's while they're enjoying naked cherry tomato number two where they realize the incredible flavor and texture is real so real which brings them to cherry tomato number three which is of course the best tomato because now you know what to expect but also in the back of your mind you realize this is the last one make it count but anyway that's it what i'm calling a naked cherry tomato salad no matter what else you served no matter how amazing it came out the thing people are going to be talking about tomorrow in next week and next year were those three naked cherry tomatoes you did is the amuse bouche so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] a cherry tomato and cheese galette that's right do not let that fancy french word at the end scare you a galette is nothing more than a free-form pie or tart made without a pan and while it's a perfect delivery system for all the same fruits you put in pies and tarts today we're actually going to use it to feature sweet cherry tomatoes which of course are also a fruit so i think what i just said is that this technique is good for fruit as well as fruit and now that everyone's clear with that we can go ahead and get started with this very simple crust which i'm going to do in a food processor but you don't have to and i'll explain how in the blog post and what we'll do is toss in some all-purpose flour along with a couple tablespoons of cornmeal which i'm not exactly sure why i added but i'm glad i did and then we'll also need to toss in some salt as well as one stick of unsalted butter that i cut into cubes and stuck in the freezer for about 20 minutes all right one of the keys to this crust success is using very very cold butter and then once all that's in there what we're going to want to do before we put any wet ingredients in this is pulse this on and off until we have something that resembles coarse crumbs in other words until we have something that looks like this and because we froze our butter first what you're seeing here is thousands and thousands of little pieces of butter coated in flour instead of like a paste made from butter and flour which is what's going to happen if the butter is too warm and then once that's out we can finish this with our wet ingredients which is a little touch of cider vinegar plus a nice big splash of ice water or just very very cold water and that's it we will simply pulse this on and off again until it all comes together and if we're using my dump all the liquid in at once technique we're going to want to stop after like five or six pulses and scrape down the sides all right the other method for this is you turn the machine on and then you slowly drizzle in the liquid from the top by using that method i think there's more of a danger to overwork the butter so i prefer this method and once we have those sides scraped down we'll continue to pulse it on and off until we achieve what we call in the business clumpification which is basically going to look something like this all right a lot of recipes say do until a dough ball forms but that's too much okay we want to stop before it becomes a ball of dough and it's still sort of in loose clumps like this but if we give it a little press it sticks together very easily and then what we'll do once that's been accomplished is carefully transfer that onto some plastic wrap and we'll sort of press it and push it together with our hands to form a lump at which point we can go ahead and wrap this up and then flip it over and then we will use the plastic to help us finish forming this into basically a disk of dough we should not be confused with disco dough and that's it we can now simply transfer that into the fridge for about an hour or until thoroughly chilled and while we're waiting we can move on to make our cheese filling which for me is going to involve about a half a pound of fresh goat cheese two which i'm going to add one egg yolk and of course i'm going to save the white for an egg white omelet and yes of course i'm kidding there's nothing worse and then we'll also go ahead and season this up with some kosher salt some freshly ground black pepper as well as a few shakes of cayenne and then last but not least a whole bunch of freshly sliced basil also known as sweet summer tomatoes best friend and then we will take a spatula and give this a mix and by the way if you're not into goat cheese anything with a similar texture will work so use what you want i mean you are after all the jesus of your cheeses give it a second but anyway the point is that things like farmer's cheese or ricotta or cream cheese will also work here just not as extraordinarily well as goat cheese which for me just has the perfect tanginess to pair with those sweet tomatoes and then what we'll do once that's been spatulated into a very smooth soft mixture is set that aside and we'll move on to rolling our dough and assuming our dough has been chilled thoroughly we'll go ahead and transfer that onto a floured surface as well as we will generously flour the top and then what we'll do here is attempt to roll this out into a circle that's approximately an eighth of an inch thick and if you're using one of these 12-inch pizza pans like i am that means rolling it out about an inch or so bigger than that and then once we feel like we've rolled that out big enough what we'll do is roll it up on our pin like this which makes it a lot easier to transfer onto our pan without tearing or otherwise mangling it and by the time this dough has been rolled out and transferred onto the pan it's probably warmed up to almost room temp which is a little warmer than we want to work with it so what we'll do at this stage because we want to work with it cold is transfer that into the fridge while we prep our tomatoes and by prep i simply mean cut in half and this will work with any cherry tomato but if you can find this mix of what they call toy box tomatoes i think that's going to make this glut look extra beautiful and the amounts are going to be a little tricky for something like this but i'll say we need about three cups to begin with and then what we'll do once those have been sliced and transferred into a bowl is toss them with two things some extra virgin olive oil which is not surprising plus one teaspoon of dijon which i guess could be sort of surprising but it's a proven scientific fact that mustard makes baked tomatoes taste better so we will go ahead and mix all that together and no we didn't forget the salt okay i think if we salt these now we'll pull out too much water so what we'll do if it needs more salt is sprinkle some on after it's baked and that's it once we have that mixed we can set it aside and pull out our chilled dough and we'll go ahead and spread on our cheese mixture and it's probably unnecessary because this filling is so soft but because we don't want to tear the dough what else high-end pastry chefs will normally do is go ahead and sort of distribute the filling by spoonful and then spread it out with a spatula and basically that just gives us a little head start but regardless we'll go ahead and spread that out as evenly as possible leave an approximately an inch and a half unspread around the outside around the outside around the outside and that's it once our dough has been cheesed we can go ahead and transfer on our tomatoes and please note i'm using a slotted spoon to do this so as not to transfer on too much liquid which there shouldn't be too much because we just cut these but better safe than soggy oh and if there are any liquids left in the bowl make sure you drink them or dip a crust of bread in it because those are going to be insanely delicious and then what we're going to do once our tomatoes have been transferred on and any spots needing a tomato have been filled we'll go ahead and form our galette by folding up and over the excess dough creating a pleat every three inches or so okay so just go around as shown sort of folding and gently pressing and then turning the pan two or three inches and doing it again until we get to that last fold oh and if you were tempted earlier to trim the edge of the dough to make it all perfectly neat because you're one of those people don't do it it's not necessary okay not only are these slight irregularities not going to matter they're actually going to make it look better once this is baked and that's it once our glut is formed we only have a couple things to do before it goes in the oven the first of which would be to paint the dough all over with an egg wash which is simply an egg bean with a couple teaspoons of water and then we will finish this up with a very light dusting of parmesan cheese of course the real stuff parmigiano-reggiano accept no substitutes and that's it once that's been graded over this is ready to transfer into the center of a 425 degree oven for about 30 minutes or so or until very well browned and hopefully looking a little something like this which i think looks absolutely gorgeous and by the way when i said browned i didn't just mean the top and the sides the bottom needs to be golden brown as well so don't be afraid to peek and that's it we are now faced with the hardest part of this recipe waiting for this to cool down completely all right this is not good hot it is not good warm but room temperature or chilled there is nothing better so for the sake of this video let's just say that's what i did at which point i garnished with a little bit of basil so i could take some pictures but truth be told here the sun was going down so i was kind of forced to cut into this while was still a little bit warm i mean it was close but it wasn't quite room temp which is why things are going to seem a little bit soft because they are okay once this cools the cheese is gonna firm up and our tomatoes are gonna get nice and jammy but having said all that this still really was outstanding okay the combination of that buttery flaky crust with that little bit of gritty crunch from the cornmeal plus that savory herbaceous tangy cheese which is just a marriage made in heaven for those incredibly sweet tomatoes and by the way these tomatoes were super sweet before they went in the oven but once roasted especially with a little bit of dijon on there they basically turn into candy except without the guilt and since this was a tad warm i did go with the fork but if you let this cool down all the way you should be able to eat it like a slice of pizza especially if as directed you make sure that bottom crust gets browned okay so please be sure to bake this long enough oh and i did forget one thing to show you because i was so taken by this thing's beauty and deliciousness but once this cools down before you serve it it's not a bad idea to drizzle the top with some olive oil as well as a nice sprinkling of sea salt okay our crust is seasoned and our cheese filling season but i do find a little bit of extra salt on top does help bring out all the flavors even further but anyway that's it what we're calling cherry tomato and cheese colette this is dedicated to everyone out there that plant that one extra cherry tomato plant and are now trying to figure out how to use all those up but whether you grow your own or have to buy some i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] tomato mozzarella salad that's right grab a pen and paper because i'm about to give you the ultimate tip for creating the perfect tomato and mozzarella salad and that would be to not use mozzarella i know it seems a little counterintuitive but if you want to enjoy what i consider the ultimate tomato mozzarella salad you're going to want to use this burrata one of my all-time favorite cheeses but we'll get to that in a second we're also going to need a beautifully sweet perfectly vine ripened tomato you know something heirloomish we're also going to use some sweet basil of course and other than some nice flaky sea salt freshly ground black pepper and extra virgin olive oil that's pretty much going to be it so step one here let's go ahead and prep our tomato so we'll go ahead and cut around the top take the core out and then i like to slice that little piece of skin off at the bottom we will not be including that in this stack salad so just go ahead and eat that piece and then we're simply going to cut that tomato into some nice large thick slices okay something like that and by the way pro tip get a nice serrated knife for slicing tomatoes it is the best tool so if you're using a regular knife that's not razor sharp you're going to be squishing your tomatoes as you cut them and we don't want to squish tomatoes for this but anyway we're going to slice that up and move on to the star of the show the burrata mozzarella's way sexier cousin oh man check it out so i'm going to take a knife here cut into this so i can show you what's going on and basically what we have here is kind of a mozzarella shell kind of a skin almost and that encases what's basically an extra rich extra creamy version of mozzarella in fact i believe brotha means buttered which is a great description for this center because compared to regular mozzarella this is way more rich and decadent and not everything tastes as great as it looks this however totally does okay so our tomatoes sliced our cheese is out let's start building this salad so we're gonna throw down a slice of tomato and we'll season that up with some freshly ground black pepper and some sea salt okay and be generous the only way to screw up this salad besides using mozzarella would be to under season the tomato so a nice big pinch of salt and then we will spoon over or spread over some of the burrata cheese and then on top of the cheese we're going to go ahead and tear off some pieces of basil i don't want you to chop it i don't want you to mince it i don't even want you to chiffonade it i want you to tear it and this is going to give us the purest sweetest most mild basil flavor and then last but not least we're going to drizzle that liberally with olive oil and of course you're breaking out the good stuff for this and that is one layer completed so go ahead and throw another slice of tomato on that and repeat the whole process and you'll notice i am using the flaky large grain sea salt i think that's what you want to use for the salad and then of course some more cheese and really the hardest thing about making this salad is not eating all the bread as you do it but be strong and we'll top that with some more of our torn basil and some more olive oil of course and some of you might be thinking that's a lot of olive oil isn't that too much no it's not you need a lot here and besides you've heard me say before no one's ever gotten fat eating olive oil proven medical fact okay and then we'll go ahead and throw another slice on there and we'll simply continue until we're done and by the way if you're wondering about using an acid here we're going to talk about that later but you certainly can if you want be drizzling over a little bit of red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar as you build this thing up but i'm not going to like i said i'll explain later so you're going to go ahead and continue building those layers using the exact same order of ingredients and as my good friend drake once said we started from the bottom now we're here we started from the bottom now the whole tomato is almost here we did eat a piece at that point we'll finish this off with a small little sprig of basil and i know but it's cliche for a reason and that tomato mozzarella salad is done and of course by mozzarella i mean burrata but we've gone over that and while it's almost too beautiful to cut into we're gonna anyway so i can show you the old cross-section shot i mean look how perfectly that came out and i was barely trying as i mentioned earlier if you want to make this thing with a little bit of vinegar involved go for it but before you do try it like this right that tanginess from the cheese the acidity from the tomato really do balance that peppery olive oil and if you've used enough salt you really should be enjoying an incredibly flavorful bite but anyway there we go i really think i'm going to turn this into an annual tradition where we use burrata once a year just to remind you it exists so go try to find some then head over to the farmers market get some perfectly beautifully ripe heirloom tomatoes and make this salad before it's too late it's going to be snowing soon okay so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] fire roasted cherry tomato salsa that's right show me someone that plants cherry tomatoes and i'll show you somebody that has too many cherry tomatoes to eat and if you're one of those people there's no better way to use up all those extras than by making this delicious and dangerous looking salsa and for whatever reason if you didn't plant cherry tomatoes don't worry they're super easy to find at the market especially this time of year when they're extra extra sweet so to get started we're going to take a foil lined baking sheet and drizzle on a little bit of olive oil and brush that all over and once that's done we're going to go ahead and dump on our cherry tomatoes those of course have been rinsed and drained and little green things taken off the top i'm actually using a variety called sweet 100s which if you can find are really really good for this and then to that we're going to add one onion that i've just roughly chopped and we'll place those pieces in and about the tomatoes now since this is all going to get blended later please don't worry too much about precision cutting and then besides the tomatoes and the onions we're also going to do some garlic cloves but leave the skin on leave the paper on the clove okay we'll peel that off after this is fire roasted and then last but not least i'm also going to do some sliced jalapeno which i've partially seeded so i cut them into thick rings whatever seeds fell out i left out whatever seed stuck in i left in and we'll scatter those in the mix and that's pretty much it and then when our game plan is here we're going to put this under a hot broiler until these vegetables are well charred and for the purposes of this recipe we will refer to that as fire roasting and you want to get these veggies pretty close to the heat so what i like to do and what you might have to do is put a pan on the rack first so when i slide my veggies in they're nice and close to the heat source so find something that gives you that perfect distance but anyway we're gonna slide those vegetables in and broil those on high until very well charred so let's go ahead and take a peek this has been about five minutes and you might be thinking hey those look perfect they got a nice little char going they look nicely roasted no these are not even close what we'll do is we'll go ahead and turn the pan and put those back in because when i say charred i mean charred they need to look like this all right the tops of those tomatoes are going to get black same with the onions the onions are going to kind of soften up those garlic cloves are going to have been roasted in the skin and then all we need to do is let this sit for a few minutes until it's cool enough to handle because what we need to do before we blend this is pull off those garlic skins now of course i didn't take my own advice because i was in a hurry and i peeled these while they were hot thereby burning my fingertips so do as i say not as you just saw me do but anyway let those veggies cool a little bit and then hopefully painlessly remove those garlic skins and at that point we're going to transfer everything into a blender and of course be sure after you transfer the vegetables to add any accumulated juices oh that stuff's amazing do not throw that away so we'll pour that in and then before we blend this let's add the rest of the ingredients so first up i'm going to squeeze in the juice of one lime and i know because of my bad editing it only looks like i'm putting half in but actually squeeze the whole thing in there and then we will season this up with some salt good amount and some freshly ground black pepper we'll also do a few shakes of cayenne it doesn't need it but we're going to put it anyway and i apologize in between each of these ingredients i keep bumping the table hey i got big hips what can i say i also want a very small pinch of dry oregano just a little bit and a little pinch of ground cumin or cumin depends on where you're from and then last but not least a nice handful of fresh cilantro leaves and that is ready to blend so we're gonna head over to the blender and by the way blender makers you're putting too many buns on these things we just got a new blender which i'm still trying to figure out i mean come on we're making salsa i'm not trying to launch a nuclear sub why do i need all these buttons but anyway let's try number four and that seems to be working although with anything like this generally it's a good idea to pulse it on and off that tends to ensure even blending although one big tip while the pulsing is a great technique for something like this you really want to make sure your lid's on tight but i did not have my lid on tight which as you can see produced what we call wall salsa which you know what wasn't that bad just kidding i did not eat that allegedly but anyway to finish this off let's take a spatula and scrape it down give it one more quick blend in that fire roasted cherry tomato sauce is basically done so let's go ahead and transfer that into a bowl and you can see how gorgeous that looks and by the way it's gonna get even more gorgeous because there's a lot of air bubbles in there now so as this sets it's going to get even darker and more sexy looking now obviously at this point you're going to want to taste you can adjust the seasonings a little bit especially salt but you really do want to do the final adjustments once this is cold which is the next step we really want to wrap this up and put this in the fridge for a few hours to develop the flavors okay yes you can serve it right away but much much much better if you let it sit for a few hours okay so i did let mine sit and mature i pulled it out i tasted it again i adjusted for salt as i mentioned earlier and of course we're going to transfer that into some kind of appropriate serving container which as you can see i surrounded with chips and garnished with a little sprig of oregano we gave cilantro the day off and finally that fire roasted tomato salsa is done i just love how this looks it just looks like it's going to taste awesome which it does charting those vegetables really brings out a tremendous amount of flavor and in the meantime i really hope you give this amazing salsa a try and yes that is how you pronounce it salsa i mean come on who are you going to believe me or your spanish teacher but anyway no matter how you pronounce it you definitely should make it so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] gazpacho and i know i waited kind of late in the summer but the tomatoes around here just weren't that great but i got some really sweet ones and i decided to make it and here is my technique the first thing we need to do is something called conquest tomatoes which means peel and chop so i'm going to do this as actually an extra separate demo but long story short you put an x in the bottom you cut the core out of the top that is controversial some people do that after and then you just throw them in boiling water for about 30 seconds and what happens is that hot water makes that skin peel off really easy and as soon as they're cool enough to handle the skin should come right off then you cut them in half you pull out the seeds and you chop and that's conga say tomatoes and by the way let me be captain obvious here this gazpacho is only as good as these tomatoes so you gotta use sweet vine ripened real tomatoes not those pink supermarket abominations crime against nature's those won't work those will be lousy okay so i conquested about a pound and a half of tomatoes next up i'm going to take half an english cucumber now you don't have to peel english cucumber the skin is not really bitter like conventional cucumbers are but the texture's a little tougher so i took off about half the peel i'm going to cut that in thin slices cut that in like little sticks and then oh yeah we're gonna dice it small now gazpacho can be really super chunky or really super fine i'm more of a fine gazpacho person so i cut mine pretty small i'm gonna toss that in with my tomatoes and i'm gonna add some peppers i'm gonna use red bell pepper very sweet very delicious and some jalapeno give it a little bit of heat a little bit of bitterness some onion of some sort is traditional a lot of people use red onion i like a little green onion just the light parts and some fresh garlic i'm going to give that a mix and then we're going to add salt cumin a little bit of dry oregano just a pinch and some black pepper we're going to give that a mix that salt is going to start drawing liquid out of the tomatoes all right it's going to create some juice so set that aside then we're going to go to a separate tomato step i'm going to take some a sweet 100 tomatoes those are those small sweet cherry tomatoes you see in the store some lime juice some worcestershire sauce some balsamic vinegar and a big splash of olive oil i'm going to take that over and blend this really smooth and then strain that in to my chopped tomato mixture so i think you get a really nice combination those cherry tomatoes really are the sweetest tomato you can buy and it really works perfectly to give this like the soupy base and that strainer is going to catch the little seeds and skin particles we don't really need that in there all right i'm going to give that a stir and that is just a magnificent color and you can see still quite chunky last step an optional step i like to puree some of this mixture and put it back in because i want to puree a little bit of that pepper and cucumber and tomato and get that back into this so generally i take about half of the mixture and puree it again i like a pretty smooth gazpacho if you want it chunkier don't even do that step and by the way you don't have to strain that step now i'm not going to taste this yet i'm going to give it a stir i'm going to refrigerate this for at least two hours it's got to be ice cold then i'm going to taste for salt and pepper and adjust the seasoning yes you cayenne freaks i will add a little bit of cayenne probably all right so i want you to wrap this up then taste it before you serve it it will need more salt how much how do i know all right you figure it out but it will need some all right so it's chilled it's been seasoned to perfection as they like to say i'm going to serve it up in cold bowls i'm going to finish with some chiffonade of basil which gives it a beautiful beautiful herby final touch you can also use cilantro very common probably even more so but i have a beautiful basil plant in my backyard so i went with basil and by the way some versions use bread in this like fresh bread to be mixed in with this i am not a big fan i don't like wet bread so i don't put bread in mine and that's it it's like a salad on a spoon it's so delicious you gotta try this only if you can find some awesome tomatoes though like i said the supermarket tomatoes aren't going to work go to the farmer's market get some end of summer sweet sweet tomatoes and give this a try all the ingredients are on food wishes.com as usual and as always enjoy shakshuka that's right we're doing breakfast for dinner although technically this was originally a dinner that became a breakfast so i guess we're really doing dinner for breakfast for dinner but regardless of when you serve this north african dish it's always comforting and delicious and never not fun to say in fact sometimes when i'm not even making this i'll just yell for no apparent reason shakshuka and now that you know about this i'm assuming you'll probably do the same but anyway let's go ahead and get started and what we'll do is we'll place a heavy skillet over medium-high heat and drizzle in a little bit of olive oil and as usual by a little bit i mean a lot and then to that we're going to add two ingredients some diced onions which is very traditional as well as some mushrooms which are definitely not traditional and we do also want to add some salt at this point and while the mushrooms are not a classic addition i really think they're amazing in this and for me just make the dish more savory and what we want to do here is cook these onions and mushrooms like i said over medium-high heat for i'm going to guess and say about 10 minutes or so until they give up any and all excess liquid and start to turn golden and as they start to take out a little bit of color that flavor is going to get meatier and in my opinion way more delicious so like i said we're going to take our time and we're going to cook them until they look something like this so those are looking pretty good right there and at this point we can introduce another key ingredient our peppers we're going to use three kinds even though it only looks like two i have some diced sweet red bell pepper as well as a red jimmy dardello pepper which is also mild and then as you can probably see one sliced jalapeno and we will stir that in and we'll cook that for about five minutes until those peppers start to soften up a little bit and then once that's happened before we add our tomato product what we want to do is add our spices and cook those for a couple minutes in this mixture so at this point i'm going to add a spoon of cumin as well as some paprika and by the way any kind of ground chili pepper would work here we're also going to do a little touch of turmeric which by all reports is super good for you and you should try to eat a lot of we're also going to add some cayenne of course you knew that was coming and then last but not least a little bit of freshly ground black pepper and we'll stir in those spices and we'll let those cook for a minute or two in this mixture to as i like to say wake up the flavors which really has to do with the flavor of those spices sort of infusing into the oil as opposed to adding them after the tomatoes go in when everything's kind of wet and does it really make that big of a difference who knows but why take any chances so like i said we'll cook those spices for a minute or two at which point we can finally add our crushed tomatoes and of course unless you're using fresh tomatoes you're going to want to use those san marzano tomatoes and sure i guess you could use a lower quality if you wanted that's up to you but remember you're in charge of making sure your shakshuka is off the hookah so suit yourself but i'm going to go with the san marzano's and then because i do want to simmer this mixture for about 15 or 20 minutes i'm going to go ahead and stir in a nice splash of water so things don't thicken up and reduce too quickly and i would say about medium heat's probably the best but you can adjust that up or down a little bit depending on what you're seeing in the pan but i do want to let this simmer about like that stirring occasionally for like i said about 15 or 20 minutes to really give those veggies time to soften up and sweeten up and just generally give all those flavors time to meld together okay so i let mine simmer stirring occasionally and approximately 15 to 20 minutes later it looked like this and by the way even though we added some salt at the beginning you definitely want to taste this for seasoning before we add our eggs on top so make sure you check this especially for salt and then once we've determined this mixture is cooked long enough what we'll do is we'll prepare the surface for our eggs and what i mean by that is we're going to take a spoon and make sort of a depression in that sauce one for each egg we're going to place down which in my case is gonna be five so i'm gonna make five little wells into which we're gonna carefully place our eggs and to do that successfully here is a huge and very important tip do not crack the egg directly into your sauce crack it into a ramekin first because you're gonna be able to see it before it goes in here okay so very important crack it into a ramekin first that way there's no possible way the yolk can break whoops looks like that one broke anyway so let me rephrase that by using a ramikin you can lessen your chances of a broken yoke but it still could happen and yeah i probably should have stopped the camera and fished that one out and had them all come out perfectly but i didn't and no it has nothing to do with ethics or keeping it real it has much more to do with laziness plus as you'll see it's really not that big of a problem so i really wasn't that upset allegedly and then once our eggs are down we will give each one a little bit of seasoning with some salt and freshly ground black pepper and then all we need to complete this dish is to keep simmering this on about medium heat i'd say until our eggs are cooked to our liking which can be for someone like me very very soft to others who like it cooked all the way through like a hard-boiled egg and while some people like to pop this in the oven to finish the eggs i prefer to just do it right on top of the stove with a cover except i don't have a cover that fits this pan so in that case i just use a sheet pan which totally works fine and this is not going to happen super quick but you definitely don't want to go anywhere you got to pay attention so we'll keep that covered and then every once in a while we'll give our shook a little looka and right here was kind of getting close and one thing to keep in mind here if you want your eggs soft like i always do you're definitely going to want to err on the side of taking this off a little too early because that mixture is super hot and by the time you plate this up and find some toasted bread that egg is going to continue to cook so i gave it a few more minutes and i'm right here even though it was still under done i could tell i was only a couple minutes away so i proceeded on to the final touches which really you could do at any time but i tend to do it at the end here so i'm going to finish this by crumbling over some feta cheese to be honest i usually prefer goat cheese but this time i did go with feta cheese which is very wonderful and then besides the cheese i'm also going to give it a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil it's going to add just a little bit more richness and flavor and also freak out my guess because it looks like raw egg yolk and then last but not least a little bit of fresh herb i'm gonna go with italian parsley although i believe cilantro is probably more traditional and that's it as soon as you think your eggs are perfect your shakshuka is done so let's go ahead and serve this up while it's still nice and hot so i usually recommend putting some sauce down in the bowl first and then topping it with an egg and then possibly more sauce and of course we'll finish that with the mandatory slice of toast i mean otherwise what are you going to sop up all that goodness with you got to have some toast and then my final touch was a few more drops of olive oil and yes that was mostly for the pictures and once i'd taken a few of those it was time to dig right in and you'll notice that even though those eggs were pretty soft when we pulled it off the stove because that mixture underneath is so hot by the time you serve this up it should be perfect and as i mentioned i do like my yolk a little runny so this was just perfect for me other people like to cook this all the way through which is fine who am i to judge your eggs but this is exactly how i like mine and that is just extraordinarily delicious that beautifully aromatic spicy sauce just an amazing thing to poach those eggs in and while admittedly not maybe the most beautiful thing to watch someone eat this is just so delicious so hearty so satisfying so comforting it's just no surprise at all became such a popular dish in that part of the world just a fantastic thing to eat whether it's for breakfast lunch or dinner in fact there's an old tunisian saying that basically roughly translates to any time is shaq shook a time and i could not agree more so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 140,068

Keywords: tomato, tomatos, tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, tomato recipes, fresh tomato recipes, panzanella, tomato tart, tomato salad, caprese salad, tomato basil, tomato sauce, tomato soup, shakshuka, gazpacho, cherry tomato, heirloom tomato, tomato salsa, salsa recipe

Id: 4HNAtAT-2IU

Length: 71min 55sec (4315 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022