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There may be perfectly good reasons for coring or seeding or peeling a tomato\u2014sometimes.<\/p>\n
Maybe you want a supersmooth sauce. Maybe that unpredictable pool of juice could throw off the ratio in your nkrakra<\/a> or pudding<\/a>. Maybe you\u2019re in French culinary school and it\u2019s tomato concass\u00e9 day (when you\u2019ll learn to strip away everything but small cubes of flesh\u2014and then form your own opinions).<\/p>\n But, for anyone who appreciates a bursting BLT, or the pop of a whole cherry baby crushed like a gum ball\u2014doesn\u2019t throwing any tomato away feel like a missed opportunity?<\/p>\n This was the tension I felt on my own concass\u00e9 day, as we scored the bottoms of plum tomatoes with a small \u201cX\u201d and cut out their dry scars, dunked them into boiling water and then an icy bath, peeled back their skins, ejected their seeds and juice, and threw away everything that wasn\u2019t a cube. Why aren\u2019t we just eating all of this?<\/p>\n Over a decade later, as I was hunting for easy, welcoming recipes for the Simply Genius<\/em><\/a> cookbook, there it was again, tomato concass\u00e9, my old frenemy, still taught as an essential technique in some beginner cookbooks.<\/p>\n It may be cooking school canon; it may be useful to a certain strain of classical haute cuisine; but by this point in my career, I felt assured: When learning to cook, concass\u00e9 is not essential.<\/p>\n And then I stumbled on the Rice Pancakes with Ham & Tomato-Basil Sauce<\/a> in And Still I Cook<\/em>, by Leah Chase, the late, longtime chef of Dooky Chase\u2019s Restaurant in New Orleans. It sounded like a vibrant, comforting summer dinner, and it called for \u201c2 cups chopped ripe fresh tomatoes,\u201d emphatically \u201cwith<\/em> seeds.\u201d<\/p>\n With this subtle but direct instruction, Chase\u2019s recipe from 2003 fit right into not only our modern (and timeless) resistance to food waste, but our growing attraction to texture swings and crunchy and saucy garnishes. Except, instead of making them separately or buying them ready to swoosh and scatter, here she found them all in one place: a ripe tomato\u2014from taut skin to the puddle of seeds\u2014largely left to be.<\/p>\n She warmed the chopped\u2014and only chopped\u2014tomatoes just enough to soften them, with butter-sizzled ham, scallions, fresh basil, and garlic salt, then spooned the sauce over crispy pancakes plumped with leftover white rice. When I make it, no part of me wonders What\u2019s this peel doing here<\/em>?<\/p>\n For my own riff<\/a>, for this, my last Genius column, I tested my assumption that Chase\u2019s pancake template could accommodate whatever flour and leftover grains and beans we might have on hand (yep). I also wanted to see if her crisp-edged cakes could be just as thrilling in a gluten-free and vegan outfit (yep). All I had to do was swap in rice flour, baking powder, and salt for the self-rising flour, and a mix of cooked brown rice and chickpeas for the white rice. Chase had done the rest.<\/p>\n My sauce on top is just juicy tomatoes, which is what my family calls our other favorite way to eat the whole beast: ripe, sliced, salted, and drizzled with olive oil, then left for a few minutes to make their own dressing. Chunkily torn herbs optional. I hope the Queen of Creole Cuisine would have approved.<\/p>\n Her recipe holds exactly the sorts of cooking details I\u2019ve obsessed over and celebrated in 12 years of gathering Genius Recipes for\u2014and very much with\u2014all of you. The treasures tucked in decades-old cookbooks, or the new ones breaking ground. The questioning of what\u2019s classically taught or widely assumed. The shortcuts that make us feel smarter and the meals that we\u2019ll talk about, maybe forever.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll never stop returning to the collection we\u2019ve amassed on Food52<\/a> and in three Genius cookbooks<\/a>, and I\u2019ll never stop wanting to hear about your genius finds\u2014you can find me on Instagram @miglorious<\/a>. Thank you for cooking with me.<\/p>\n More from Food52<\/h4>\n
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\nWhat’s your all-time favorite Genius Recipe? Tell us in the comments!<\/em>
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