Prime Cuts

Today we have a guest post from Christpher S. Penn.  Christopher is one of the top minds in social media, an analytics god, a foodie, and a ninja (yes, a real live ninja) on the side.  You can follow him on Twitter where he shares tons of useful information on a daily basis.

This recipe was originally posted over on Christopher’s blog and once I read it I begged him to let me post it here for all of you.  This is an innovative recipe and the first time I’ve read about something like this.  I’m definitely going to give this a try this weekend.

An interesting thing I tried over the weekend. Take a can of crushed tomatoes, add salt and pepper as necessary, then pour it all on a baking sheet and bake it in the oven at 170 degrees for 12 hours or until dry and dark. You end up with a snack that tastes like sun-dried tomatoes and handles like a fruit rollup. Cook it longer or get a cookie cutter and cut circles out of the sheet and bake at a slightly higher temperature and you’ve got tomato chips.

Unlike potato chips, these have zero fat, only as much salt as you put in (or that came in the can), and are darned tasty. For extra fun, add in exceptionally finely chopped basil before drying.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

We have a very busy and long day ahead of us as we prepare for our Luigi Bosca wine dinner that we’re hosting at the steakhouse tonight.  To follow up on our episode of Prime Cuts TV from Monday on how to properly use a sharpening steel, we thought we would bring you an episode showing you how to now use your newly sharpened knife to dice a tomato.  

Tomatoes are something that can be a little tricky to cut especially if when you want don’t want any seeds in your dice.  Well today we show you how to unzip a tomato and no, we haven’t started drinking any wine yet and yes we said, unzip a tomato.

Warning: Always be very careful when using a knife especially to dice vegetables as the blade can get wet causing the blade to slip or your grip on the vegetables to slip.

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to the feed to receive future articles delivered to your feed reader.

The following salad is especially nice during the summer tomato months.  Early summer it can be made with some of the smaller, earlier maturing types of tomatoes, even cherry or grape tomatoes if you prefer.  Mid summer we like to use the classic beefsteak variety when they are in their full glory.  At end of summer we like to use some of the more slow maturing heirloom types, such as Brandywine, Purple Cherokee, or Striped German.

As with any recipe you should always use whichever types you like best, just don’t be afraid to experiment, and remember when it comes to tomatoes, always try to buy local, seasonally, and to ensure maximum flavor – never refrigerate them.  The bottom line is to make sure you buy quality ingredients especially the tomatoes because since it is a simple salad, the ingredients need to shine.

You can download a PDF version of this Delicious Summer Tomato Salad recipe.