Just Three: Tomatoes, Chilis, and Parsley

Tomatoes, dressed with tomatoes, and not much else

If you've spent any time at all with me, you already know I talk too much, so today's project is to keep it tight. Tight lips, tight keys, tight dish. Put up or shut up. Make it count. Insert cliche here, but make sure it all nets down to a tight little post.

As I've already confessed, I'm a pretty lousy gardener, but - as with most things in life - luck trumps skill, and Lady Luck planted a big, wet snog on my tomatoes this year. Seriously, to judge by my Green Zebras, she might even have used some tongue. If you're lucky enough to live here in the 707, you already understand that tomato season can acquire near-mystical qualities, spoken about in the same hushed tones normally reserved for yield, brix, and how badly hosed the wine industry may or may not be in the latest rags, so I take this bit of fortune seriously: What can I do to flatter all this sexy fruit?

Yesterday's project: Construct a complete tomato dish that even my kids would eat, using only three ingredients, all of which we grew. To hand: Tomatoes (Lemon Boys, not technically an heirloom, with their lower acidity and mildly tangy sweetness; and the aforementioned Green Zebras, their distinctive, racy zing a great match to the Lemons), chili peppers (Serranos, a great go-to chili for heat and flavor, and particularly good raw), and a bed full of herbs (a whole Simon-Garfunkle reunion of parsley, sage, rosemary, and culinary thyme, alongside basil, lavender, and chives), from which - basis the chili - I could have plucked basil, but thought the flat-leaf parsley a bit more interesting and marginally less obvious pairing. The clever if likely unoriginal (296,000 Google hits in 0.21 seconds) insight: A vinaigrette, described (as far as I know) by none other than Thomas Keller as "the perfect sauce", consists of nothing but acid, oil, and seasoning. So, why not use tomatoes as the acid, for a tomato vinaigrette? (A truly excellent discussion of vinaigrettes, citing all my favorite cook-book sources and getting it right, can be found here.)

Tomato Salad with Green Zebra Vinaigrette and a Fresh Parsley and Chili Garnish

The same tomato-tomato salad, but fast-plating version

1. Concasse a few Green Zebra tomatoes, maybe 1/2 to 1 tomato per salad (click the Foodista widget below for an explanation of the proper concasse technique) and, while slightly annoying, can be done in bulk, stored, and used later in any number of preparations). Seed, rib, and finely mince a fresh Serrano (or other red, say Arbol) chili pepper. Pick a handful of small leaves off the parsley.
Tomato Concasse
2. Push the tomatoes concasse through sieve or ricer or whatever to get a smooth texture and ensure that all the seeds have been removed (tomato seeds tend to add an unpleasantly bitter flavor and odd texture to smooth sauces) into a small mixing bowl. Season with a dash of white wine vinegar, finely milled salt and fresh white pepper (you don't want black flecks in it).
3. Whisk olive oil into the tomato base, in roughly equal proportions (a typical vinaigrette requires a 3:1 ratio of oil to acid, which would be fine here as well, but I prefer to let the tomato remain center stage, and its textural weight seemed to hold the oil just fine in this ratio), and adjust seasoning as required.
4. Spoon the dressing to cover the bottom of shallow pasta bowls.
5. Cut the Lemon Boys, remaining Green Zebras, and/or whatever other tomatoes you have to hand (Tangerines, Cherokee Purples, and Early Girls would all look and taste phenomenal; you can't go wrong, just try to balance the zesty acidity and color of the greens with sweeter, and yellow-red colored, cousins) into roughly uniform medium-dice. 
6. Sprinkle a little of the minced chili on the sauce and judiciously place the tomato cubes (skin-side up or not, depending on their look) on the sauce, adding a leaf of parsley to the top of a few of the not-green cubes.

As a speedier alternative, simply give the parsley and the whole tomatoes a rough chop, toss the tomatoes with the sauce, and then sprinkle the chili and parsley over the top.

Beer snack

Soda Rock Farms' Padron Peppers & Racer 5 IPA: Two of a Perfect Pair

Every once in a while, I'm lucky enough to find a combination of flavors that just works. At its best, a food pairing transcends the individual elements, and the dominant sensation on the palate is something else entirely, something distinct from any single component, a taste  uniquely created by the interaction of all  the elements working together.

Many of the finest and most classic examples are, of course, well-known, and I use them in my own cooking all the time and without apology: Rustic lamb and vin rouge from Hermitage; mint and dark chocolate; Sauternes and fois gras; scallops and bacon; sushi and soy sauce; baseball and Dodger Dogs. (Despite a birth certificate proclaiming San Francisco as my rightful home, I'm really a life-long recovering Angelino, but that doesn't change the empirical fact that the hot dogs at Dodger Stadium put any tubed pork products served up by the A's or Giants to shame.)

Then again, someone will on occasion serve me something so completely unexpected that it completely changes how I think about flavors, not because it is so radical, but because it sounds radical at first, but is in fact perfectly natural: Think of white chocolate and caviar or salmon poached in licorice (both found at the Fat Duck), or the French Laundry's justly celebrated dish of tapioca with oysters and caviar.

But my favorite flavor pairings are the ones that I stumble upon in the normal course of every day life, that I know, with absolute certainty, will sing on the palate before I even taste it. This was my experience at the farmer's market yesterday while talking to Dan the Tomato Man of Soda Rock Farms (Dan is, in my book, the undisputed heavy weight champion of heirloom tomato growers. Seriously, he's that good. He's better than that. A multiplicity of future posts, I'm sure...). Dan was expounding the wonderful properties of Padron peppers to another shopper, and he issued the following guarantee: "If you sit down and try these peppers with a cold beer, you'll finish them off, or I'll give you your money back." And it was a big bag of peppers.

I immediately had one of those light bulb-moments of total clarity and conviction that are so tragically rare, at least for me: Blister the peppers in a pan, toss them with olive oil and fleur de sel, and serve with a chilled Racer 5 from the Bear Republic Brewery: Padrons have a mild heat and a fairly pronounced bitterness which, I felt certain, would pair perfectly with the bitter hoppy-ness of the Racer 5; the dish would require virtually zero prep, one pan, and three ingredients (OK, four, if you count the beer); and, in keeping with our theme of the proximal, both the peppers and the beer come from my town.

No offense to salty nuts, but these Padrons are, hands-down, my new favorite beer snack:

Padron Peppers, and Not Much Else

Toss over high heat to blister evenly.

1. Put a saute pan on relatively high heat (medium if you have a high-BTU cooktop, more like high otherwise) and, while the pan warms, wash the peppers and pat them dry (it's important for them to be dry - you seriously don't want to be putting water into a blistering hot pan of oil).
2. When the pan is good and hot, add a small amount of neutral, high-heat oil, and add the peppers - do them in batches, if necessary, to avoid crowding the pan. Toss the peppers frequently until they are blistered and beginning to char on all sides; they will go from hard to soft. 
3. Remove from the heat, toss with some good olive oil (something with a really pungent, green, grassy taste would be ideal), and salt liberally with fleur de sel or course-grind kosher sea salt. Serve immediately with an ice-cold Race 5 IPA (or any other beer, but preferably something with some bitterness to it).

You'll finish the beer and the peppers, or your money back.

Guacamole Bomb

Avocados are in season. By that I mean, California's seasonal crop of perfectly ripe Haas avocados is on the market shelves, and the fruit can be had for a buck per - less, if you find them on the roadside. Ergo, we're ordering in from one of our favorite local taquerias, mainly to acquire the means of transferring the vat of guacamole I'm making from the bowl to boca.

Guacamole, for me, has many optional elements, but there are, as ever, several rules that ought always to be respected:

• First, accept that 'guac' is seasonal. Please don't tell me about the ones from Florida, or the dubious merits of the aguacate so common further south. Only the proper Haas develops the fat content that is so essential to the texture of great guacamole.
• Second, don't get it from a restaurant. I don't care how good your taqueria is, I assure you, they make crappy guacamole. I'm sure there is the exception that proves the rule, but seriously, it is significantly cheaper, and takes almost no time, to produce a vastly superior guacamole at home.
• Third, some components are optional, and some are not: Take cilantro, for instance; for me, it's essential, but my wife hates the stuff, and so I've learned to make a passable version without it. Tomatoes are optional, but never too many, and only if they're at the peak of summer ripeness - there is no more common offense than the bulking up of an otherwise fine avocado with too much mediocre tomato. I believe that a little red onion is close to mandatory, but you could probably skip it. Chilies are an interesting question: I, for one, do not believe that guacamole needs to be spicy (although certainly finely minced, fresh jalapenos make an unimpeachable addition). Lime juice, on the other hand, is not optional: Not only is it essential in maintaining the color of the final product, but the dish really cries out for a little acidity, particularly in the absence of heat.

5-Minute Kick-Ass Guacamole

1. Mince whatever condiments you're going to use before dealing with the avos (keeps them from oxidizing unnecessarily - brown guac is just nasty). A good baseline is to have on hand a tablespoon each of finely-diced red onion, tomato, cilantro, and jalapeno for each avocado. (Please take the time to mince the tomato and especially the onion and the chili pepper quite finely and uniformly, it makes a huge difference in the end.). Slice and seed a lime into sections.
2. The unlikely PK addition: Garlic. Cut a small amount of garlic - you'll want to end up with a quarter or an eighth of a teaspoon of garlic paste per avocado - and mince it very finely. To turn it into a paste (which is essential in order for it to incorporate properly), sprinkle a good pinch of kosher salt over the garlic and drag and press the flat side of a knife over it. The blunt force of the knife and the grinding action of the large salt crystals will turn the garlic into a uniform, oily paste that can be mixed.
3. Scoop out the flesh of the avocados (reserve the pits), turn it into an adequately large bowl, and mash with a fork. Incorporate the garlic paste and - here's the other PK secret ingredient - a teaspoon or so of olive oil for each avocado. I know, I'm adding fat to avocados, but trust me, it adds depth the to the flavor, and makes for an incomparable textures. And it's the good fat!
4. Squeeze in the lime to taste (hard to say on quantities, as limes vary so much, but I'd guess a half to one teaspoon of juice per fruit) and then gently mix in the desired proportions of the various condiments and season with salt and freshly cracked pepper, tasting as you go. (You'll need more salt than you think. Really. Don't go to all this bother to prepare and eat a bowl of pure fat and then skimp on seasoning.) Add the tomatoes after you've got an otherwise finished product to avoid breaking them up. 
5. Garnish with the pits from the avocados, some slices of lime, maybe a whole chile, and a sprig of cilantro. An earthenware or wooden bowl would be ideal, but anything non-reactive will do, it's just aesthetics at that point.