Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- You know, there's one ingredient in the world that's lousy anywhere you go, and that's the tomato.

Now, I've been to a lot of countries; in Israel, for example, where they said they have great tomatoes.

(chuckling): And a lot of other countries; sometimes Romania actually has pretty good tomatoes.

But here in the supermarket, most tomatoes are not great.

So today at Milk Street we're going to take the tomato and do three different recipes to really punch up the flavor.

A Burmese tomato salad with peanuts.

It's one of our all-time favorite salad recipes.

Next we do a panzanella, which is an Italian bread salad, but we actually make our own bread croutons that really give it a lot of flavor and crunch to it.

And the last is to do actually a quick version of an upside down tomato tart with a Parmesan crust.

So stay tuned with us here at Milk Street as we try to take tomatoes to the next level.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - So cucina povera, which is my favorite style of cooking.

I was in Calabria not too long ago.

The food is so tremendous because it's simple but ingenious.

So this is a bread salad.

It's made with something called friselle, which is a very dry and very hard bread.

And this is one of those little lessons, right, you get from cucina povera, which is taking stale bread, essentially, and making something lovely out of it, which is the essence of this recipe.

so I spent some time one day with a guy called Giancarlo Suriano, who actually sells a lot of Calabrian products across Italy and also the rest of the world.

And he has a little kitchen in his place there in his office, and he showed me this recipe.

So you have some stale bread, and we're gonna toast this bread over medium-low for, I don't know, ten minutes or so, until the edges get a little crispy and you end up having something that's really delicious, so.

A little bit of salt and pepper; so that's the basis for the salad.

The second thing we're gonna do is a technique, which is what do you do with tomatoes if you want to do two things; you want to increase the flavor of the tomato, but you also want to get rid of some of the excess liquid.

So we'll get to that in a second, so.

Half a small onion.

Tomatoes go in a colander.

We're going to add the onion as well, and we're going to add a little salt.

And you let that sit 15, 20 minutes, something like that.

A couple times, you might want to toss it or use your hands and just move it around.

Now, tomatoes-- so regular tomatoes, "vine-ripened."

I don't know-- they glue the vine on or something.

They don't really taste very good.

Little cherry tomatoes, especially Sun Golds; the yellow ones I like a lot.

Cocktail tomatoes are bigger than cherry tomatoes.

Those seem pretty good.

They actually have some flavor.

You can salt them, cut them up, salt them to improve their flavor.

You can also roast them in an oven to get some of the liquid out and concentrate the flavors.

In fact, if you sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar, when no one's looking, over cherry tomatoes or cocktail tomatoes that have been cut in half.

A little salt, put them in the oven.

Those really concentrate the flavor as well.

You know, when I went to Calabria, I had no idea what it was going to be like.

I thought it was going to be flat and dry.

And it actually has mountains, it's quite green, has lakes.

It's just a lovely place.

And what's so great about it is the food is by definition local.

Everything is simple and absolutely delicious.

So the only way to know if this is done is to try it.

And it's getting there.

Now, you can hear that the outside is definitely crispy.

So you can see... ...we've gotten rid of some of that liquid there.

So that's going to go in.

Red pepper flakes.

Capers.

Oregano.

Fresh basil.

Olives-- so these are Gaeta olives from Italy.

You can use Kalamata.

These are Cubanelle peppers.

Very, very low on the Scoville scale, like around 1,000.

So not much heat, but has a nice flavor.

And I'm also gonna add a little bit of olive oil to this as well.

This is a place where you don't want to use cooking olive oil.

There should be two kinds in your kitchen.

Cooking olive oil is inexpensive; use it for cooking.

And this is olive oil for drizzling.

If you guys weren't looking, I would do this with my hands because it's much more efficient.

But somebody would get upset about using hands in the salad.

Now, I like to add a little bit of salt on top.

So there we are.

First, two things I notice is the tomatoes actually have tomato flavor, which is a good thing.

And the bread is crunchy and crisp on the outside, but soft on the inside, which is exactly what you want.

Mm.

I think this is my favorite version of this panzanella, this bread salad.

So if you have some leftover bread or you have some rustic bread, and you have 15 minutes or 20 minutes, you can throw together a great panzanella Italian bread salad, and you could, in fact, make this on a Tuesday night.

- So tomatoes are one of the most vexing vegetables to cut.

They have thick skins, they can be mushy, they can fall apart.

So we're going to work through a few different ways to cut tomatoes for different recipes.

So whenever I'm working with tomatoes, the first thing I do is hone my knife.

Now, honing isn't sharpening.

It's using a honing rod, which just ensures that blade is straight and sharp.

So it's very a light touch.

I'm just gonna give it a few swipes.

Make sure to give it a wipe before you cut anything.

There may be metal left on that blade.

The first thing we want to do is take out the stem.

And I like using a very small paring knife for this.

You can cut very little of the tomato and have really little waste.

Just pop that out.

I generally always cut off the bottom because that bottom can be very tough.

So I'm going to start at the very tip and slice down.

I'm going to put my finger there, just holding that slice in place to make sure it stays together.

Then I can lay that down, and I'm making sure each slice is the same, using the whole length of that blade.

So that's how you get those beautiful slices for a caprese salad.

Now, if you don't have a really sharp knife, a serrated knife is gonna be your best bet.

So we can go ahead and cut rounds that tomato.

Those serrations make this really easy.

So there is our sliced Roma tomato.

A lot of recipes will require diced tomato without the seeds and the pulp on the inside.

I'm going to work with a slightly smaller knife.

Again, I'm going to want to cut out that little stem.

I'm going to cut off the bottom.

And I don't want to cut the tomato like that because it's rolling around.

A vegetable that's going to roll around the countertop is just not safe.

So I'm going to stand it upright.

Then I'm going to cut it in half... lengthwise.

I'm going to take it down to quarters, and I'm just going to lay my knife flat on the flesh and push down a little on the tomato and just scoop those seeds right out.

So now what we have is these four really flat, almost rectangular pieces of tomato, which are really, actually really easy to dice.

I've cut that rectangle into strips lengthwise, and now I'm going to cut it crosswise.

So there we have our dice of tomato, without the gooey seeds, without the juices that are going to dilute the flavor of the tomato.

Now we use a ton of cherry tomatoes.

Because cherry tomatoes are often sweeter and more tender than a lot of supermarket tomatoes; they tend to taste better.

So with cherry tomatoes, I'm just gonna pinch it and, you know, there's all sorts of tricks and techniques for cutting cherry tomatoes.

You can sandwich them in things and cut all at once.

I prefer to do them one by one because I feel like there's more precision to that.

Don't live in fear of cutting tomatoes.

Use the sharpest, thinnest knife you have.

Hone before cutting your tomatoes.

Use the entire length of the knife's blade.

And if in doubt, a serrated knife will work just fine.

- This salad is the very definition of vibrant for both the eyes and the taste buds.

And if you fall in love with this salad as quickly as I did, you are going to look for every excuse you can find to make it.

Let's start with the shallots.

These are two shallots already sliced.

We're gonna put these into a bowl of ice water.

Now, the ice water does a couple of things.

It tempers the sharpness of the shallots just a little bit, but its real purpose here is to give them crispness.

Then I have the other two shallots here.

We're gonna slice them in the same exact way, very thinly into rounds.

Now, these second two thinly-sliced shallots are going to go into a small saucepan with about a quarter-cup of oil, and we'll let the oil come up to a simmer.

Once they do start browning, they're going to go pretty quickly, so you want to stay close by while this is happening.

We're using a combination of shapes for this salad.

The larger heirloom tomatoes and smaller cherry tomatoes.

You can see we have an assortment of colors here.

The smaller tomatoes simply need cutting in half.

The larger tomatoes, you want to cut in wedges about a half-inch wide in the back.

All right, so to cut wedges, we start by cutting in half from top to bottom.

Then we want to cut out the core.

And do you see all this liquid and these seeds?

We don't want the salad to get too soggy.

Just remove some of that by, you know, sort of just get your thumb in there and you can press out the liquid and the seeds.

All right, and from there we'll cut half-inch wedges.

That's nice.

We'll go ahead and transfer these to our mixing bowl.

The shallot oil is simmering away here, but they have not started to brown yet.

They're looking good, though.

Gonna add all of these to our mixing bowl.

Okay, our shallots got deeply golden pretty quickly once they started; then we put them through a strainer, let the oil go into a bowl, and we spread them out on paper towels to finish draining.

All they have to do is cool, and they get a little crisper as they cool.

We have two fresh chilies-- these are serranos.

We'll slice them thinly crosswise.

That, of course, keeps all the seeds and membrane in, which is where the spicy heat comes from.

If you want to temper that heat just a little bit, you can slice these lengthwise, remove the seeds in the membrane, and then slice them from there.

We'll add this right to our tomatoes.

Now, these fresh chilies with the seeds in the membrane add a fair amount of punchy heat.

But if you want even a little bit more heat, you can add some dried chili flakes.

This is one of two ingredients in this whole salad that are somewhat optional, but for me, it's not exactly optional.

I opt not to use them.

The other ingredient that is somewhat optional, though it is very traditional, is chickpea flour.

And this is chickpea flour that's been toasted.

And by toasting, you're increasing the nutty flavor that's natural in chickpeas.

So if you opt to use it, you simply sprinkle it over the tomatoes and the peppers and just stir it in so that it coats everything.

Now, the next ingredient in this salad, and it's really not optional, is roasted peanuts.

You want peanuts that have been roasted, and ideally, they're unsalted.

You just don't want a lot of extra salt in the salad because the dressing has plenty of salt itself.

Just add those right in.

And now we'll take those shallots that we soaked in ice water.

Just put those right in, and stir them all together.

This is looking gorgeous already, and we're only halfway there.

Now, the dressing.

We're using both zest and juice of the lime, and a little bit of fish sauce as well.

We'll give this a nice toss.

Now, we talked about the riot of flavor this has.

It really touches on almost all the major flavor points.

The herbal element is fresh cilantro.

What I like to do is add about half the cilantro here to the salad, toss it in with the dressing, and then reserve a little bit for the top.

This is one of those salads that really should be served on a platter instead of a bowl.

You want to see the full visual effect of the salad because it's so beautiful to look at, and you just can't get that in a bowl.

The rest of these fried shallots right on top.

Once again, not an option.

And just finish off with that little bit of fresh cilantro.

You can even add some more chopped peanuts, if you want, for texture.

But this salad has everything going for it.

This is one of those salads that if someone invites me to dinner, I say, "I'll bring the salad," because I know how much people are gonna love this.

But you kind of have to be careful because this salad tends to steal the show.

So you need to know that your host can handle that.

(chuckles) This salad is a celebration of tomatoes.

It's our Burmese tomato salad with shallots and peanuts.

- Life is very quiet in these villages, and as you can hear, just the birds and sometimes the cow, cow's bells.

And we are very lucky to have found such a beautiful spot.

Uh, you see that gate?

If the gate is closed, nobody enters.

If the gate is open, people can come in.

Comparing with the big city where we are coming from, it's a completely different life.

It was a challenge at the beginning, but we somehow managed to do things the way we like to.

I mean, we grow our own tomatoes and peppers and some salads, and we can make barter with our neighbors.

I mean, when I have an excess of tomatoes, I go to them, look, you can take this, please.

I have too many of them and they will bring me a rabbit or, I don't know, something else from the garden.

This is how we do things here.

- We've already made two fresh tomato salads.

That's great for the summer when tomatoes are in season and divine, but what about the rest of the year when you're stuck with supermarket tomatoes?

We're going to cook these down into an intense, savory, jammy conserva that in an instant, becomes a wonderful winter meal.

So we want to start with four pints of cherry tomatoes, which is about three pounds, one cup of olive oil, which we want to start getting warm... with four whole cloves of garlic.

So while our oil heats and gets infused with the garlic flavor, let's talk about our tomatoes.

We call for cherry tomatoes because they're most reliably sweet in the winter, but also, if you're a gardener, they're your most prolific tomato.

So if you're trying to preserve your actual tomatoes, these are a great bet.

Our oil is getting warm.

You can see that our garlic's starting to bubble, so we can talk about the other aromatics you might add.

We're adding bay leaves, but you could add woody herbs.

It's really nice with oregano or marjoram.

Or if you know you're gonna be making pizza, rosemary is awesome in here.

So here go our four pints of tomatoes, two bay leaves, a teaspoon of white sugar, half a teaspoon of salt, and then last, that two cups of water.

All we want to do now that everything's in the pot is bring it to a nice, robust boil, then turn it down so it's still boiling, though, you want nice, vigorous bubbles for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally-- that's gonna break those tomatoes down and get a nice intense flavor.

So it's been about 30 minutes, and we still have a nice, vigorous boil going, but the tomatoes have started to really break down and the skins have burst.

That's your key that it's time to turn it down to medium-low.

And we're just gonna let it develop flavor over time.

20 to 25 more minutes.

And how do you know it's done?

The tomatoes are just gonna start sticking to the bottom of the pot.

So you do periodically want to stir in these 20 to 25 minutes, but it's mostly a handoff affair.

It smells amazing in here.

It's reduced down, and there's a little bit of browning from where it's starting to stick at the bottom-- and we're done.

You just want to remove the bay.

Now you have a couple options.

If you know you like, sort of, a chunkier tomato sauce, you're gonna use it for pasta only, you can just put it in a jar just like this, and it will be good in your fridge for a week.

Or you can go ahead and throw it in freezer bags and keep it in the freezer until you need it.

If you know you're gonna use this as the most amazing sandwich spread, or maybe for pizza, you might want to take this extra step, which is you pour it all through a sieve, get everything out of there, push everything through the sieve.

Until I get a nice, rustic-ly smooth conserva.

We're gonna pour the oil on top.

This has a ton of flavor in it.

So this makes it also preserve for a week in the refrigerator.

Conserva can become endless meals.

Most classically, pasta.

I made this the other night.

Dinner was, in fact, on the table in ten minutes, and that was because past-Rosie took care of present-Rosie and made a little tomato conserva.

Another idea.

Who doesn't love a sandwich?

I love a great sandwich.

So we have some mozzarella, prosciutto and basil.

And then we're just gonna take some of our strained conserva in this case.

And then right before you top your sandwich, nice to do a little drizzle of balsamic.

Balsamic and prosciutto are a match made in heaven.

You add this conserva, and no one needs a fancy dinner.

Last, there are future yous that need dinner quickly.

I mentioned freezing your conserva.

So if I wanna make pasta, I may defrost this whole tray or half of it.

But if I just want to make a couple sandwiches, I'll just pop out a couple ice cubes and defrost them.

So if you take an hour in the summer, when you have an abundance of cherry tomatoes in your garden, you can make this amazing pasta dish, these sandwiches, or have a secret weapon in your freezer.

- We wanted to rethink the tomato tart, and we found using the traditional technique of tarte tatin made the crispiest crust that didn't go soggy.

The other thing we really had to think about when making a tomato tart was what kind of tomatoes did we want to use?

So a really juicy vine ripe tomato or an heirloom tomato.

Even grape and cherry tomatoes were not the right tomatoes for this tart.

They just exuded too much water and really made a very soggy crust.

So we ended up with Roma tomatoes.

So what we started with was a pound and a half of Roma tomatoes, about a teaspoon of salt.

We're gonna toss them around.

I'm actually just gonna put them in a colander over a dish or a bowl.

Just leave them in here for about 20 or 30 minutes every now and then, maybe shake the colander to get some of that liquid out.

And then we're gonna make the crust.

This is a really simple crust for this.

We are gonna add our flour to that.

The other thing we found when we were researching this tart is a lot of people would add cheese between the crust and the tomato layer.

And we found that that actually did make the crust a little soggy, too.

So we've actually added some Parmesan cheese right to the crust.

We have a little bit of salt and pepper.

we're gonna add to that.

And some fresh thyme.

So all you want to do with those ingredients is just pulse them up... ...to distribute them a little bit.

And then, of course, we're going to add butter.

But what we're going to do is add three tablespoons of butter and really run the processor so that all of the flour gets coated with the butter.

And then we're going to add the rest of the butter.

And those we're going to keep in bigger chunks.

And that's gonna give us those little flaky pockets.

I'm gonna add three and a half tablespoons ice water to this.

And then I'm gonna pulse this until it starts to clump inside of the processor.

So I have large clumps of the dough here.

You don't want to let it go until the whole thing is incorporated-- so then you're just going to dump this onto your board.

And then I'm just gonna bring it together into about a five or six-inch disc.

And then I'm just gonna wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about half an hour.

So now that our dough is in the fridge, I'm gonna get my pan ready for the tomatoes.

I'm gonna add about a teaspoon of olive oil and I'm gonna brush the bottom and the sides of the pan.

Now that our tomatoes have sat, you can see there's a lot of liquid on them.

So what I'm gonna do is place them on some paper toweling and then you're gonna use another paper towel to make sure that you get as much moisture out of them as you can.

This is really a nice technique.

I use it all the time.

And then I'm going to arrange them in my pie pan in concentric circles and you will overlap.

We're gonna add a little bit of pepper to this.

We're not gonna add salt because we've salted the tomatoes and a little bit more thyme.

And then I'm gonna drizzle this with about a tablespoon of olive oil.

So you want to put them in a 425 degree oven for about 30 to 40 minutes.

It depends how ripe your tomatoes are.

You want them to soften and you want most of the liquid to be cooked off.

So our tomatoes are out of the oven, they look gorgeous.

You can see they've kind of caramelized a little bit and they look great.

So I have our crust, which has been in the fridge.

So we want about a ten-inch circle for this.

I'm gonna lay this crust on top and then I'm gonna tuck the edges around the tomato.

And then you want to take a paring knife and poke it so that the steam will escape.

And that will also make sure you get a really crispy crust.

So we're gonna put this back in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes until the crust is really brown and the tomatoes are kind of bubbling around the edge.

So we've taken this out of the oven.

I've run a knife around the edge right when I took it out of the oven, I let it cool on a rack for 30 minutes and now we're going to flip it over.

With conviction... flip!

And if you're lucky, everything will come out in one piece.

Look at how beautiful that is.

And you can see the crust is still really crispy.

Tomatoes are juicy, but they're not dripping all over the crust and making it soggy.

So this is cooled completely.

It's ready to serve.

I'm gonna drizzle it with a little bit of olive oil.

And the rest of our thyme, so you have a little bit of fresh thyme on there.

I love salt so I'm gonna add a little flaky salt to mine.

Do you hear how crispy that crust is?

Even with all of these tomatoes?

Beautiful.

The tomatoes are so tomatoey and that little bit of cheese in the crust is so good.

Savory, sweet and not the least bit soggy, our upside down tomato tart.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

- Why do we travel?

Good point.

It's not just to find recipes.

It's to learn something new about how to cook and how to think about cooking.

- You go all over Italy looking for this mythical dish... - But it's all the unexpected things that make the trip worth the journey.

- In the next few minutes, it may be the end of my culinary career or it'll be some culinary sleight of hand.

Ta-da!

- This is why you travel, people.

- Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From Vietnamese chicken salad and tiramisu, to easy-stretch pizza dough and Austrian apple strudel, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.