How to Make a Simple Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette
With all the wonderful produce available during the summer months, I thought it would be fun to write about yellow tomatoes and provide you with a couple of recipes illustrating their simple but complex characteristics.
So I went to a new chef friend, Chris Beane, and asked him for recipes that will bring out the incredible flavors of these pommes d’amour (love apples).
Chef Chris is a native of Utah but has traveled some during his 22 years of professional cooking. He didn’t go to culinary school, but learned his trade on the job starting at the Utah Seafood Company and then moving on to other popular SLC sites like Ruth’s Diner, Santa Fe, and Red Butte Cafe.
He currently is working at Campagne Specialty Foods preparing their daily take out. When I approached Chef Chris for this article, I told him I was looking for recipes that didn’t include a lot of ingredients and were not difficult to make. He gave me his simple Pomadoro (tomato) sauce for pasta and his Wood Grilled Yellow Tomato Vinaigrette that he makes for Campagne.
I looked at him and said, “Oh yeah, we all have access to a wood burning grill”, but he assured me there were ways around it and these recipes will display the light freshness of the tomatoes. Chris gave me the recipes in “chef talk” so I asked him a bunch of questions to help translate.
Questions and Answers
RG: What if I don’t have a wood grill?
You can roast the tomatoes in the oven or in a Weber grill. In the oven you would roast them at approximately 400° F for 20-30 minutes until brown, put them in a covered container, and let them cool down in the refrigerator. When I make this vinaigrette, I usually make a couple of quarts of it so I grill a bunch of tomatoes. So I recommend you roast a bunch of tomatoes and use the remaining ones as a side dish or for making other sauces.
RG: What is Chef’s Blend oil and what can I use instead?
Chef’s Blend is a mix we use at Campagne and sell to the restaurants. At home you can use a blend of 60% canola oil and 40% olive oil. The reason we don’t use 100% olive oil is it would overpower the flavor of the other ingredients.
RG: Why do you wait to add the oil last and slowly pour it in?
Oil and vinegar don’t naturally mix well with each other and will break (separate) if you don’t add the oil slowly at the end. This is called emulsifying and is how you get your dressings thick and satiny in texture. Also the mustard helps emulsify the oil and vinegar.
I hope you try these recipes from Chef Chris and are enjoying this feature of having the chefs answer the questions. Please check out my Novice to Pro page for more recipes and interviews.
Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette
Ingredients
- ¾ pound yellow tomato wood grilled or roasted in the oven
- ¾ teaspoon shallot minced
- 1½ teaspoons garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- ¼ cup red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram chopped
- 1 ounce Gorgonzola cheese
- 1 ounce Stilton cheese
- 1 cup Chef’s Blend olive oil ½ olive oil and ½ canola oil
Instructions
- Puree the roasted tomatoes in a food processor, food mill, or blender.
- Add pureed tomatoes and remaining ingredients, except oil, to a bowl and mix together.
- Slowly add oil while whisking to incorporate the oil into the dressing.
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