Asia Times Online


	September 8, 2001	atimes.com

Front

FINER THINGS
Just the thing for a love glutton
By Chawadee Nualkhiar

NEW YORK - As the days grow shorter and the nights nippier, those of us with our minds on our stomachs may become more inclined to gorge on that last great reminder of the summer, the tomato. With that in mind, the New York Times reported recently that some are putting the tomato to more, er, creative uses: Christian Tortu and L'Occitane are making tomato-scented candles, while the New York-based cosmetics company Kiehl's has come out with a moisturizer made from a tomato derivative.

You can bury your nose in the scent all you like, or slather yourself with the stuff to your heart's content; I, however, prefer to just eat them. The fruit that the French called the pomme d'amour has wowed gourmets for centuries, but it's interesting to note that, when the American fruit was brought back to Europe for consumption, the tomato was viewed largely with suspicion by palates unused to its squat, round shape and voluptuous juiciness. According to food historian Alan Davidson, the tomato is related to vegetables like the potato, capsicum pepper, and eggplant, and its distant relation to nightshades may have made people wary of the strange red fruit.

Apparently native to South America, tomatoes migrated north to Mexico and were featured in Aztec cuisine, where they were usually cooked with chili peppers, says Davidson. It was there that the Old World Spanish discovered the plant, changing the Aztec word for "plump fruit", or tomatl, into the Spanish "tomate". Tomatoes are speculated to have come to Europe in the 16th century, where they were thought to have aphrodisiac properties (thus the "pomme d'amour" label affixed by the French, which became pomodoro in Italian). Although Europeans were slow to catch on to the tomato's sly sweetness, the fruit today has found its way into kitchens all over the world, where it can be easily integrated into meat, cheese, or vegetable dishes and can come in a wide array of colors, shapes, and even textures.

But one thing hasn't changed: the best time to enjoy them is in the summer. So before the supermarket aisles become studded with different varieties of squash, turnips, and greens, I plan on guzzling the love apples crushed with garlic and olive oil on toasted hunks of bread, cut fresh in salads and drizzled with vinaigrette, cooked slow and long in the oven to reduce them to their sweet and savory best, and blended with cream into a soup, like in the recipe below.

Tomato Bisque (serves 10)

This dish was concocted during a recent brunch we managed to pull off for 25 people. Although the meal was a bit marred by mishaps like a vegetable terrine that fell apart and completely forgetting to serve the huge vat of balsamic mashed sweet potatoes we had prepared, the highlight of the six-course meal was easily this first dish, the cold tomato soup. My husband added a few touches that were departures from the usual, like using plain water as the base instead of chicken stock (although stock would add a great depth to the dish, so go right ahead and use it if you're not a vegetarian) and using tarragon as the main herbal ingredient instead of the usual basil or dill.

Ingredients:

1 large Vidalia onion (or whatever else you can find), halved and sliced thinly
1 medium leek, cleaned well (cut an "X" into the base of the white part, rinse well under a running faucet, and then slice thinly)
Garlic, two heads, peeled and smashed
Ripe plum tomatoes, 3 kg (use others if need be, as long as they are nice and ripe)
Butter
Sugar (about 2 teaspoons)
Salt
Tarragon
Sage
Parsley
Thyme
Bay leaves, 3
Cream
Water or chicken stock

1. Roast your garlic in foil with some pats of butter until the garlic is soft and slightly brown.
2. Peel and seed all your tomatoes (peel by making an "X" at the bottom end, putting in boiling water until skins slip off easily. Take them out immediately and plunge into ice water).
3. Make a large bundle of herbs (called a "bouquet garni") by stuffing fresh thyme, tarragon, and sage into an "envelope" made from the green part of the leek (I used three), and then tying them together with kitchen string. If you don't have kitchen string, as I didn't, a branch of fresh thyme tied tightly works nicely.
4. Chop onion and sweat in butter over low heat until clear and slightly caramelized in a heavy pot.
5. Place roasted garlic in the pot.
6. Add peeled and seeded tomatoes and turn heat up to medium.
7. Add a little sugar (nowadays it's needed to simulate the sweetness of truly fresh tomatoes, but if you are lucky enough to have garden fresh tomatoes, this may not be needed), bay leaves, bouquet garni, and a little salt.
8. Cook slowly and stir often for 20-30 minutes.
9. Add enough water (or stock) to double the volume in the pot.
10. Cook for another 30 minutes or until the tomatoes are really soft.
11. Saute the leek in a little butter in another pan.
12. Add the sauteed leek to the soup.
13. Remove bay leaves and bouquet garni.
14. Take the pot off the heat and blend (if you're using a blender, blend the soup in batches. We used an immersion or hand-held mixer).
15. Pass the blended mixture through a medium strainer to ensure smoothness. Check the consistency, because some of the pulp may have to be re-added if the mixture becomes too liquid.

Before serving:

1. Heat up the soup, but do not boil.
2. Add freshly chopped tarragon (if you want to go the traditional route with basil or dill, by all means go ahead. We used tarragon because that was what was left, and because it was different).
3. Take off the heat, and then add cream to taste. We added enough to make the soup a pinkish-orange.

It's now ready to serve, but you might feel you need a little more texture, or visual oomph. We purchased a ready-made sheet of puffed pastry, cut it in little squares, puffed it up in the oven, and filled the squares with a roquefort-creme fraiche mixture. You might find this work tedious. Little squares of good bread, toasted, would work just as well, and who's stopping you from spreading some nice cheese and butter on those squares of toast? Oyster crackers, Pepperidge Farm goldfish, anything works to add a little texture and thickness. Just make sure those croutons are eaten quickly, because nothing is worse than soggy bread falling apart in the soup. Enjoy.

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