Caprese Tart - Music Pages For Matthew Cook, Artist

Here is a fresh and lovely summer dish that takes full advantage of tomato season at the local Farmers Market. You could make this with canned tomato sauce but you’d be missing the opportunity to pack it full of fresh tomato flavor. We will use as much of the tomato as we can, packing a big punch into our sauce and leaving behind very little waste.

Someday maybe I will write up the tart shell recipe but for now just use your favorite pastry crust recipe and blind bake it with pie weights for 15 minutes at 400 degrees.

Cut an X in the top and bottom before parboiling.

Parboil the tomatoes. Cut an X on both the top an bottom of each tomato. Not deep, just break the skin. This makes them easier to peel. Drop into boiling water for a minute or two – just until you see the skin start to all away. Immediately transfer to an ice water bath.

Parboiling the tomatoes a few at a time.

Peel the tomatoes. Put the skins in a small pot with a little water and let them boil for a while. Just leave them on the stove while you do the next few steps but make sure the pan doesn’t boil dry.

Skins cooking in the pot

Cut the tomatoes into quarters. Pushing into them with your fingers, squeeze the seeds out into a bowl. This is wonderfully messy – just get into it and enjoy it. Cut the seeded tomatoes into small chunks.

Put a generous amount of oil into your stock pot and put it on medium high heat. Add some chopped garlic and cook for about one minute – enough to get some flavor going but not enough to caramelize the garlic or turn it brown.

Add your tomatoes to the pot along with some salt and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Bring that to a boil and then turn the heat down and let it simmer. Eventually this will reduce down to your desired consistency but it takes a while.

Simmer down now.

Take the seeds and membrane and pt them in a strainer over a bowl. Using the back of a large spoon, work the seeds against the strainer until you have extracted all the juice. This part of the tomato has a really bold flavor the will add to your sauce. Put this juice in the stockpot with your tomato chunks.

Strain the Seeds. Look how bright that juice is!

Take your skins off the burner and put them into the strainer. Work them against the strainer to extract the tomato paste. This is another flavor that helps round out the sauce. Now you have most of your tomatoes cooking away, leaving very little waste.