This week’s recipe for Cook the Book Fridays comes from Dorie Greenspan’s cookbook, Everyday Dorie. Giverny Tomatoes are slow-roasted tomatoes that were inspired by a trip to Monet’s home, Giverny.
Dorie says in this NYT Magazine article:
The dish is simply a tomato, peeled and roasted at a very low temperature for a few hours in a pan with an ample amount of olive oil, enough to baste the tomato regularly. Even before it’s ready, it’s lovely: Each new application of oil is like a fresh coat of glossy polish. When it’s cooked through to tender, it holds its shape, its color too, but it seems almost translucent — you see a tracery of ribs and veins along its contours. But you can’t know the true brilliance of the dish until you taste it: The tomato is vegetal and rich, as you would expect, but it’s also a bit sweet and a touch citrusy. The surprise is at the core. At the start, you peel the tomato, then cut a small, conical wedge out of the top, a hollow to fill with sugar and lime zest. During the hours in the oven, basting with that blend of oil and sugar and zest, the ingredients find their way into every fiber of the tomato, technically making it a kind of confit, a dish cooked in fat (like duck confit) or sugar (like candied cherries).
Sounds intriguing, huh? And the image in the book (and in the article linked above) is stunning. I was intrigued by the cooking method – indeed it’s almost like confit-ing the tomato – and loved how it looked but it was simply too sweet for me. I ate it but it wasn’t my favourite thing… Neil has the second tomato in his lunch today so I will be interested to see what he thinks of it! For me, the sugar inside the core just took it over the top for sweetness (and I used pretty run-of-the-mill tomatoes – not very ripe so not already sweet themselves). I *might* like these more without the sugar filling though – because they sure do look pretty!
Get the recipe for Giverny Tomatoes on p 41 of Dorie Grenspan’s Everyday Dorie or here.
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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of “Everyday Dorie” for review purposes. I was not asked to write about the book, nor am I being compensated for doing so. All opinions 100% my own.
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I lightened up the amount of sugar and worked it in the zest. That’s worked for me.
I would need to reduce the zest…way too much lime for us haha. I guess the take away is to customize it, but the method is good 😀
This sounds so simple that (probably) even I could make it.
Nice pic, Mardi.
I added a quarter teaspoon of rose water into the cone of each tomato and we thought it was sublime.
Interesting. that would have pushed the “sweet” factor over the top for me!