2009/07/19
Here in Northern California, we are blessed with a very long season for local tomatoes. They start trickling in as early as May, and last nearly until winter! But that doesn't mean they're delicious as early as May. Just in the past two weeks, we've started to get some really tasty tomatoes, and I have it on good authority that the best of all--Dirty Girl Produce's dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes--will be available in another two weeks. They are the most intensely flavored, delicious tomatoes I've ever tasted. And unlike some wonderful heirloom varieties, they taste precisely like you expect tomatoes to taste.
In the meantime, I picked up some small, firm but yielding, perfectly round Green Zebra and what I think are "Smeig Craig" tomatoes (the red ones, which look like Green Zebras, but red). They were a nice size to eat in a single bite. So I decided to use them as such. I wanted all the flavors of a caprese salad in that single bite.
Caprese salads are a standby for us. When you have such great tomatoes and have access to excellent, fresh mozzarella, there's just nothing better. For this dish, I decided to twist it around a bit. I wanted to intensify the caprese experience. The creaminess of the the mozzarella plays so well off the tart sweetness of the tomatoes, with the rich grassiness of olive oil, and unique herbal quality of the basil rounding things out. I like to use a crunchy salt on caprese; I use Maldon. And I think a bit of balsamic vinegar makes the whole thing just a little more tasty by cleansing the palate constantly. I wanted all of that to explode onto the palate in each bite. Here's what I did:
I took the tomatoes and peeled them. The best way to peel tomatoes is to blanch them in boiling water for only five seconds or so. Immediately shock them in ice water for a couple minutes to cool them. The idea is to loosen the skin without cooking the tomatoes and thereby destroying the fresh flavors and making them mushy. After that, they peel very easily (though it's still somewhat labor intensive).
Next, I wanted to hollow out the tomatoes, so I could fill them. To hollow them out, I took an icepick and stuck it into the top, where the stem had been attached. I then turned the icepick so that the tip of the icepick (inside the tomato) would move all around and pulverize the inside of the tomato into juice and loose pulp. I was being very careful not to stick the icepick too far into the tomato, and not to move it around too much (and in fact, I still ruined at least one by pricking it). Once I was satisfied with each one, I removed the icepick, inserted a small straw in its place, and sucked out the pulp. If you're uncomfortable doing that for hygiene reasons, using a syringe to suck out the juice also worked, though not nearly as well as the straw.
I blended some fresh mozzarella (Gioia) with some fresh cream (Straus Family Creamery, only pasteurized at 170F for 19 seconds, not ultra-pasteurized) until fully liquid, adding a bit of salt. I then injected this mix into each hollowed-out tomato until it was nearly full, then topped it off with some very flavorful olive oil.
I plated three of these tomatoes along with chunks of the mozzarella, some yellow variety of tomato, freshly snipped basil (Dirty Girl as well), and a couple leaves of wild arugula (Star Route Farms). Just before finishing, I injected just a couple drops of balsamic vinegar into each tomato. I finished off the dish by drizzling with great olive oil, a bit of balsamic vinegar, and sprinkling with some Maldon salt.
Fucking fantastic. The first thing you taste when you eat each of the tomatoes is the delicious, sweet pulp of the outside of the tomato (that's why it's essential to peel them), followed immediately by a burst of cream. The cream fills and coats your mouth, and you taste the olive oil. And then the acids from the balsamic and the tomato kick in and cut through the cream and again you taste the intense tomato flavor of the delicious tomatoes, but this time with the distinct taste of basil in the background.
There are only two problems: 1) I need a good name for it. "Bursting Caprese?" "Caprese Explosion?" "Caprese Balls?" 2) They're a little awkward to eat--they can't really be tipped over without the cream spilling out. This could be fixed through various means, such as "gluing" the hole shut with, e.g., a cornstarch or gelatin-based gel (or take your pick of other hydrocolloid). In the future, I think I'll just serve one of these tomatoes as an amuse. Easier to instruct a diner to just eat one bite whole. And there's less worry about tipping. Either way, they're amazingly delicious.
Posted by Barzelay on 2009/07/19 @ 22:19 | Comments (5) | Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese
Comments
That sounds AMAZING good!!! I don't have the patience or skill to make it :) so I will stick to the 'stacked' caprese!!!!
Posted by: Kelli at July 20, 2009 4:54 PM
Caprese Gushers? Those gross fruit snacks that were out when we were little are what this sort of thing remind me of - although clearly yours are delicious, unlike the original Gushers. I thought of Gushers when I had a wine-filled chocolate at a vineyard a few years ago, too.
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Posted by: vincent at July 29, 2009 10:11 AM
David -
I tried this last night and I have a suggestion and a couple of questions.
I found it difficult to "core" the tomatoes after blanching because the now skinless fruit was very delicate and crushed easily in my hand. Perhaps "core" is the wrong word, but I found it hard to cut through and around the "stem scar" and the core while keeping the tomato intact. (This was before I started churning up the insides). I wonder if it would be easier to use a little pearing knife to core the tomato or at least cut off the "stem scar" before blanching, and then peal them?
I haven't tried it yet but it seemed like it might make the process easier and protect the delicate fruit.
Do you have any proportions for the cheese and cream mixture? How liquidy should it be?
Also, how much of the tomato did you remove? Just the core area or did you try to hollow most of it out like a pumpkin?
Thanks,
Bart
PS - My wife and I sat next to you guys at Minibar. What a meal!
Posted by: Bart at September 15, 2009 4:45 AM
Hi Bart! Minibar was indeed an awesome experience. I'd love to do it again some time.
The tomatoes I used were excellent quality--available only in Northern California. Hehe. Seriously, you can eat them like candy and there is no woody core. So, I did not remove the core as a separate step from churning up the insides and removing them. I just tried to get the core all pulverized along with the rest of it for removal. I was trying to get them as hollow as possible, but you're not really going to be able to get them completely hollow without puncturing them. You just need enough of their insides removed that there is room for the cream. As for the cream, it's really more like mozzarella-infused cream than a mozzarella puree. I just "eyed it" for the proportions, but try this: blend the mozzarella and the whey in which it is packed with an amount of cream equal in weight to the whey. Blend for several minutes, then let infuse in the refrigerator for twenty minutes or so. Then strain through a chinois and add salt.
Posted by: Barzelay at September 15, 2009 5:40 AM