Notes From The Chef

The Day of the Tomato
September 2007

September is a bittersweet month for me. Along with the welcomed hints of autumn: the scattered strokes of gold, oranges and russets peaking from the trees and the cooler, crisper, nighttime air, comes a reluctance to give up the laidback days of summer and acknowledge the reawakening desire to be more “productive”…

My home now eerily quiet after months of boisterous noise from kids and weekend quests, demands a time of adjustment----to be in sync with a new rhythm.

What does not seem to be in rhythm, are the supermarkets; already adorned with pumpkins and mums. What’s the hurry? It’s still blazingly hot in the sun! And I’m still in the mood to play and experiment with all those wonderful “ugly” tomatoes bursting out of gardens and farms everywhere! For me, September is the month to celebrate and honor the tomato--not the pumpkin…!

Every September, growing up, I spent weekends in the kitchen canning tomatoes. An arduous process---needing the helping hands of family members and neighbors---for which the compensation of mason jars filling the shelves of our cellar pantry were worth their weight in gold when in the middle of winter we had fresh tomato sauce unsurpassed in flavor from anything canned. I don’t imagine that too many contemporary kitchens host such gatherings. Too busy---not enough helping hands. How unfortunate.

I realized recently why I love tomatoes so much. It’s because they are so much like me. The tastiest ones are imperfect on the outside. And they grow in community, so abundantly, they have to be shared or else they’ll go to waste.

My mother had a saying about procrastination that she repeated--often---to us kids. If we took too long to do something that was asked, she’d scold that we would get around to doing it, “il giorno de lo pomodoro” or in other words, “never”. Though the “the day of the tomato” loses something in the translation, I’ll take it to mean, September.

So I need to get cooking with all these “real” tomatoes while I still can. If you too are so inclined, I remind you of a variety of wonderful archived recipes that are perfect to make right now: Fresh Tomatoes with Goat Cheese and Arugula, Warm Penne Salad (the pasta is warm and the sauce is a cold dice of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, sun dried tomatoes and olives) and many others…... I also offer you a new recipe in which I pair this wonderful fruit with an equally flavorful vegetable, eggplant. Add capers and kalamata olives to make a quick caponata sauce that is deliciously versatile. Serve it with pasta, as a bruschetta topping. or simply scoop it up with a slice of fresh baked bread. Heavenly...

Enjoy September,
Chef Silvia

Improving Your Cooking Skills: Soffritto/Sofrito

I’ve recently been experimenting with ways to add additional flavor to various dishes such as soups, pasta and sauces (so that covers just about everything) so I returned back to my native soffritto which simply means a mix of aromatic, finely chopped vegetables and herbs gently sautéed in olive oil and added to many dishes for intense flavor. In many parts of Italy a basic soffritto consists of onions, carrots and celery. In the Italian kitchen of my youth, soffritto was usually a sauté of chopped onions and crushed red pepper flakes in olive oil, used to start a dish but sometimes a version of this was added at the end. One of my favorite was dried red chile peppers broken randomly in small chunks and sautéed gently for about 45 seconds in olive oil, seasoned with salt and drizzled on top of a simple pasta with tomato sauce. I can’t tell you what an amazing difference this addition made--bringing a good dish to the sublime.

Little did I know however that many cultures have their own versions of soffritto (or sofrito as it’s spelled in Latin cuisines) and though each uses finely chopped vegetables and herbs, the variations are endless, yet the purpose (to add intense flavor) and results are all similar.

One of my favorite--because of it’s versatility--is a Latin sofrito that in prepared in a food processor and then can be frozen in ice cube trays or air tight containers, ready to use all winter long. My version was a Mediterranean mix of Vidalia onions. garlic. jalapeno, chile and cubanello peppers, tomato and fresh parsley.


I placed one of each vegetable in the bowl of my food processor and pulsated until all were finely chopped. I stored the mix in a plastic container in the refrigerator and have used it almost every day since. I sautéed a few spoonfuls in some olive oil and added it to a 16 bean soup. I pan seared a skillet steak and rubbed a bit on each side of the meat a minute before taking it off the fire and it mixed in with the meat juices to make a delicious sauce. I also of course drizzled some over my linguine.