Chef Tom – TOMatoes

Tomato season. My favorite time of year. All the colors, flavors, textures and…juice. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. When something is in season, eat as much of it as you can. In season means the produce is at peak nutrition. Have tomatoes every day if you can. You’ll maximize the good-for-you.

With tomato season comes all the stone fruit. Their sugars and acid are perfect matches for tomatoes, especially peaches and nectarines. Go for a variety of colors and shapes to make each dish more appealing. Experiment with your own combinations.

Here are just a few of my favorite recipes.

Chef Tom – Salad Niçoise

“Sometimes people mistake the salad bowl for a lawless place of disorganized and mismatched ingredients, chopped and discarded – dried cranberries on pumpkin seeds on soggy corn – which offends even me.”

Chef Tom – ¡Esta muy caliente!

Aguas frescas, water-based fruit drinks, are a cool way to make your fresh fruit go further—especially in the summertime when you might have a larger watermelon than you know what to do with, or peaches that are starting to shrivel.

Chef Tom – Hail Caesar!

Caesar salad is often a crowd pleaser. Here are a couple of versions sure to get your guests drooling, and standing with their plates at the door of your kitchen.

Chef Tom – Berry, Berry, Delicious!

For most of the country, June is prime time for strawberries. Grab some next time you’re at the market. Look for evenly deep-red berries.

This way-moist treat is ready to cool on a rack in 30 minutes. Fast, easy, and delicious. The trifecta of summer yum.

Chef Tom – AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Food related news recently came across my feed (no pun intended), so I thought it might be interesting to share a couple of stories. The first is about the Zuni Café in San Francisco. Long-time dining destination for the well-heeled, as well as the hoi polloi, or in this case, the gay polloi. Who knew it was one of the first gay-friendly restaurants, with a mostly gay staff, with large picture windows for full visibility.

This is a fascinating read. 

Chef Tom – Dranks

Pandemia afforded us the “luxury” of time – lots and lots of time – spent indoors. No restaurants, no movies, especially no bars. So we took it upon ourselves to do a deep and liquid dive into cocktails. We even put together a fancy-ass cocktail table.

Get Buttered Up with Chef Tom

Compound butter is a wonderful, enrichening method used by the best chefs, and a simple way to quickly add flavor and elegance to any dish. Mixing herbs or spices with butter, letting it solidify in the fridge in a log shape, then slicing off a disc and letting it melt over a steak or piece of chicken or fish, or a ragout of veggies before serving…all those wonderful flavors come together over whatever you’re serving.

Chef Tom is Feelin’ Mighty Soulful

Chef Tom – Here’s eating with you, kid.

Quirky-yummy kid food (for grownups)