SAUCE TOMATE DE MAISON TASTEBUDS
Ah bonjour to all you in the villages of Tribland and I hope you are well always during the strange times we are in. Your home-grown tomatoes are now being ready so I thought for this issue I’d look to my annual crop in the greenhouse of Chez Pierre and share the making of the CP house tomato sauce, the basis of many excellent sauces for our dishes which we serve here.
Sauce Tomate de Maison Tomatoes, or Pommes dè Amour as the great Auguste Escoffier called them, are one of the bestloved fruits in French cooking (yes the tomato is a fruit). There are thousands of recipes where the tomato appears so at CP we tend to feature just a few for our guests’ menu. Tomatoes are also known as the summer's quintessential, overproducing crop which makes them even more versatile in our kitchens and many of the great recipes are from the south of
France where tomatoes are both cheap and very available in our markets.
To create our house sauce: I roughly cut up the large fruits into smallish chunks however many I have picked, maybe a dozen or so large tomatoes, and sauté in a wide pan with some olive oil, a handful of chopped streaky bacon with all its fat, a handful of chopped basil, two chopped onions, a large glass or two of white wine, frequent doses of ground pepper and salt and sugar for seasoning (to taste) three fat chopped garlic cloves and reduce over a low/
medium heat for something like an hour, adding more wine if needed. Season/sugar further to taste and place a large knob of unsalted butter to finish. This will give you the basic Sauce Tomate we use here, but for pan-fried steaks and chicken plates of food I will probably add four of five sliced mushrooms to the ready-made sauce which I have already sautéed in butter and to finish with a swirl of single cream, creating a really quite special experience for our guests.
The rough and ready shape and size of our home-grown tomatoes and actually the vast majority of what is sold in French shops and markets, are not it seems considered particularly ‘acceptable’ in the UK. Our fruits’ shape often resemble the head of your unfortunate Mr Elephant Man, not the pristines clean and perfectly round offerings in Mr
from the kitchen of
Tesco’s shop. My picture shows our tomatoes from France being prepared at CP having been sold at a local shop and are also big and smaller, in deep reds and yellows and have flavour in spades, not a watery centre with pale skins of the quickly grown tomatoes. Next time you go into France buy some tomatoes, enjoy their sun-kissed beauty and then keep some of the seeds to grow them here in your greenhouses. The basic sauce I make sometimes a lot and then portion into freezer bags and freeze. It can be just taken out anytime and used without any real flavour loss and is of course very convenient for soups and casseroles whenever they demand proper tomatoes, not tinned, and as I have demonstrated above they are the base of many lovely sauces to enhance food and to ensure none of your lovely home harvest is wasted.
To answer the email question from T in Ailsworth: I am recommending lightly grilling your salmon for your upcoming light lunch party, top with pancetta, a thin slice of tomato and grated parmesan and grill for another five minutes. You might also try an unusual sauce too, like a mayonnaise with chopped tarragon or maybe a bercy sauce. I’ve emailed you the easy recipes. A lightly-chilled white wine like a Pouilly-Fumé or a Sancerre would lift the appreciation too. Bon Chance, Pierre x askchezpierre@gmail.com
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