SOPHIE'S WISDOM # 1

Many cooks may already know this but for those who do not: Always peel tomatoes that you plan to cook. Or the peel will come off anyway in cooking and roll up into tiny little splinter looking twigs in your dish. They are soft and do no harm but for a pleasing looking dish, and appearance is key to presenting good food, you don’t want them in your food.

    You want your dish to look good. People usually smell the food first, and the aroma calls to them just like the old cartoons used to show. Second people usually see the food, and it should look appetizing, even pretty. A good cook knows presentation is part of the pleasure you are seeking to give the folks you cook for, so make a great appearance, and be willing to set a fabulous table as well. Eating a meal should be experienced and relished, not gobbled mindlessly. Everyone likes to go to a really nice restaurant for the pampering and ambiance, and let them receive the same treatment and environment when you cook for them. You are giving a gift.

     

   Now as to peeling tomatoes, it may seem like a chore if you do it while they are raw. However the peels shrink and want to roll as soon as they get heated. So a very simple solution is to blanch (immerse quickly) them in boiling water, for a count of 12 seconds. Then immediately put them in cold water. Be sure the tomatoes are completely under the water holding them down with a spoon to keep them from floating. The heat will cause the peels to pull away, and the cold will stop the heat process so you are not cooking the outsides of your tomatoes.

          Now you just need to take a sharp knife and core or cut around the stem end of your tomato and remove that part. You will find the peels are already coming away from the tomato and just need to be pulled off. In addition many recipes have you remove the seeds as well so all you are cooking with is the meat pieces of the tomato.   

     Just a note, 12 seconds is ideal for the blanching, just enough and not too much. Incidentally 12 and 7 are sacred numbers in Biblical and Ancient numerology. They symbolize and are used to show the following: Seven is the number of individual completion. God created man and upon this completion rested on the seventh day. Twelve is the number of corporate or communal completeness, 12 tribes, 12 apostles. You think our 12 makes a dozen and 12 inches were just arbitrary numbers? They were not, but numbers that symbolized significance to ancient peoples. All sadly lost to modern understanding. I like to use these numbers whenever I can in cooking, with a consciousness of what I’m doing, sort of as a spiritual component to the act of my cooking. If I can use 7 carrots or 7 potatoes, or 12 potatoes for a group, I do. I Count twelve seconds, I always make dinner rolls in multiples of twelve, according to how many I’m serving. That’s just me, but to me cooking is a spiritual art. You want to bless the folks you serve with your efforts do you not?

 

P.S. Roma tomatoes, AKA plum, pear, Italian, tomatoes. Which come in red and yellow, are best to cook with. 

Blessings mes amis