Tomatoes

Lend an ear to Seth Ford-Young 

Mood music if there ever was some

If you've ever read The Last Bite in August or September, it won't come as a surprise to you that I'm swimming in the glory of tomatoes right now. Largely due to the stash that I've gleaned from Cornman, I've cooked and preserved about 100 lbs by myself: frozen cherry tomatoes, roasted, sauced, jarred, dried, gazpacho-ed.  Most were  just eaten sliced on sesame semolina with copious amounts of mayonnaise, salt and pepper. And occasionally I've been known to eat a tomato like an apple.

This meal from a few nights ago was one I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. When I helped Chef Alex cook at the Roadhouse Cornman Farms dinner last month (i drop this like it wasn't one of the most fantastic days of my life), we started with the idea of a heirloom tomato stuffed with pesto rice. But after the brainstorming phase, I lost control of the dish. There were so many moving parts that day, it dropped off my radar. It ended up as a tomato stuffed with arugula pesto rice, then roasted. it was fabulous, but...

In my home kitchen I went back to my original concept, a cooler fresher version.

Whole heirloom tomatoes stuffed with Pesto rice salad:

Jasmine rice, cooked then cooled.
Tossed with fresh arugula pesto (garden works arugula), a full handful of chopped flat Italian parsley, chopped roasted chicken.