Backyard Farms is a 38-acre greenhouse located in a very small, central Maine town that raises the best tomatoes in New England! I have the good fortune to cater their important board meeting luncheons and dinners. They are all great eaters and a few are real epicureans. I love to dazzle them. My motive is always to show them all the possibilities of the fruit that they work so hard at making perfect. Every course is created around the tomato and sometimes it gets very challenging to top the last meal that I have created for them.
Last spring I wrote tomato tarts for dessert into the menu without having a clear idea how that would happen. I had 5 varieties to work with, all colors and shapes to inspire me. I ‘slept on how I would create this’ every night for two weeks until it was show time. The night before I slowly baked ½ thick slices of all five varieties of tomatoes on buttered parchment paper-250 degrees, slow enough to dehydrate them but not too long that they became leathery. It took 2 hours and I let them sit in a cool room overnight because refrigeration would make the texture change for the worse.
I gathered my French tin tart pans out of the back of my kitchen cabinet, buttered them and preceded to take this dessert from the drawing board of my mind to the dessert table. I imagined that every component of this dessert should be seamless, meaning - not any part would dominate the other. So, I made a pastry crust with homemade tomato paste, finely ground and toasted pine nuts and dried basil. Why, dry basil? It is dried already, stable, not over powering and perfect. I know, a bit too much thinking, but this dessert was going to rock!
The crust rested in the freezer as I moved on to the filling. A quick trick filling that I use for fruit tarts is cream cheese, sugar and whipped cream flavored with a liqueur or a good quality vanilla. Instead, I flavored this cream filling with a chiffonade of fresh basil and honey. Remember, the cream cheese filling has to be stiff enough to hold the weight of the slow baked tomatoes but light enough to be interesting texturally. Done and in the refrigerator to meld the flavors.
I didn’t know how this would come out but I had a vision and so far so good. What great dessert doesn’t have a sauce? Our honey man at our store brought a batch of honey harvested 3 days before and when I sniffed it, all the flowers involved were apparent. Perfect. A honey sauce with finely cut basil and toasted pine nuts - the color was a stunning flecked green.
The present CEO of Backyard Farms last position was the CEO of Ben and Jerry’s. I make a pilgrimage there every few years and fantasize that I am their ice cream designer with free reign to create endless ‘wild’ ice cream flavors. Well, that’s another story. I make a lot of unusual ice creams at my store so I made ice cream to top off the tarts to blow his mind. Tomato ice, to be exact with toasted pine nut praline and basil folded in at the end. The components were complete, except for assemble.
The beautiful white plate was a composition in beauty with a slice of tomato tart; the crust was a red, orangey color, specks of dark green basil showed through respectfully. The tomato slices weren’t weepy and sat at attention on the light creamy filling but it lacked just the right color that I dreamed of.
Blowtorch time. A light sprinkle of fine sugar, a quick pass with the flame and it was gently caramelized. To top it off, I scooped tomato ice cream right in the center; it was magically the same color as the crust. A drizzle of honey basil sauce over the whole affair and it dripped decadently...