Roasted Roma Tomatoes and Turkey Pot Pies for the Day After Thanksgiving

I am amazed that it's time to order a Thanksgiving turkey already. 2016 went by very quickly.

Happily in the fall, I was busy traveling for writing assignments and video taping chefs in their kitchens showing me their favorite recipes.

For Thanksgiving I am using a new recipe from one of those experiences.

This recipe is insanely easy and incredibly delicious: slow roasted Roma tomatoes used on sandwiches. When I was working on a profile of chef Andrew Pastore at Clifton's in downtown Los Angeles, to appreciate his menu I ate at the restaurant on the first floor, which is actually a cafeteria. I ate a rare roast beef sandwich that was excellent. The meat was perfectly cooked, moist and tender. But what made the sandwich memorable was the addition of these slow roasted Roma tomatoes.

 Putting the slow roasted tomatoes on a sliced turkey sandwich would be awesome!

With chef Pastore, I wanted him to demonstrate his turkey pot pie, a dish he serves every day at Clifton's and one I thought would be perfect for after Thanksgiving. I wrote the article about Pastore for Zester Daily. Please take a look. The recipe is really easy. The dish is delicious. And the video is fun.

Festive Pot Pies Celebrate Thanksgiving Leftovers

Slow Roasted Roma Tomatoes

Roma tomatoes work really well for this technique because they hold their shape even as they are exposed to prolonged heat. After they are cooked, I remove the skin. I've used them on sandwiches (of course!) but also cut up in pastas, in soups and in braises. They add a great umami quality.

The amount of time in the oven depends on the size of the tomatoes. Large Roma tomatoes could take 8 hours. Smaller ones, maybe only 4 hours. Check them after 3 hours. What you want is for the tomato to collapse on itself so the flavors concentrate as the water evaporates. You do not want them dried out so they resemble sun dried tomatoes. They should have a pulpy moistness.

With the larger Roma tomatoes, I put them in the oven before I go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, the house is filled with the most delicious aroma.

Yield 8 servings

Time to prepare: 5 minutes

Time to cook: 4-8 hours

Total time: 4 hours 5 minutes - 8 hours 5 minutes

Ingredients

8 large Roma tomatoes, washed, pat dried

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Preheat oven to 200 F.

Cut each tomato in half, the long ways, from the stem to the bottom.

Lay the tomato halves cut side up on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a Silpat sheet.

Season with oregano, sea salt and pepper.

Drizzle with olive oil.

Place in oven. Check after 3 hours, then every hour after that.

Remove and cool. They can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week.

Quick and Easy Mac & Cheese Goes Au Naturel

I remember the "blond" stage of cooking for our sons. White bread, spaghetti with butter and that store-bought, powdered flavorless Parmesan cheese and, of course, Mac & Cheese. We kept boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese in the pantry so we could make the boys food whenever they wanted.

Once they graduated from high school and left for college, we stopped making Mac & Cheese. A few months ago, I was cleaning out the pantry and found a box pushed way to the back. I think it expired in 2007.

Last week we were invited to a pot luck dinner party. For no reason in particular, the dish we were to bring was Mac & Cheese.

As classic American dishes have gotten make-overs in the past decade, restaurants now serve Mac & Cheese with lobster, Dungeness crab, shrimp, truffles, artisanal cheeses, blue cheese, heritage bacon, gruyere béchamel sauce and gluten free pasta.

For the dinner party I wanted to make a Mac & Cheese that was close to the comfort food we served the boys with a few "adult" touches, but not so many that the dish lost it's identity.

I prepared the Mac & Cheese two ways. One, with charred shallots and kale added for color and texture. The second, I added slow roasted Roma tomatoes and thin sliced shiitake mushrooms along with the shallots and kale.

Mac & Cheese Au Naturel

To be "comforting," Mac & Cheese needs hot fats. Cheese alone won't be smooth enough, so I added heavy cream, whole milk and sweet butter. Not very dietetic but it tastes good. Serve the Mac & Cheese with a tossed green salad and fresh fruit for dessert and the calories will balance out.

For the cheese, use whatever kind you like. I used Kerrygold white cheddar and that worked well.

Serves 4

Time to prep: 20 minutes

Time to cook: 20 minutes

Total time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

1/2 pound small macaroni pasta
1/2 cup whole milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon sweet butter
1/2 pound good quality white cheddar, shredded
1 cup kale, preferably curly green or purple Lacinato, washed, pat dried, leaves removed from rib and thin sliced
2 tablespoons shallots or 1/2 small yellow onion, washed, pat dried, skin and ends removed, thin sliced
1/2 cup homemade bread crumbs
2 large Roma tomatoes, washed pat dried (optional)
1/2 cup shiitake, brown or portabella mushrooms, washed, pat dried, thin sliced (optional)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon canola oil
Sea salt and black pepper to taste.
Pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

Directions

1. If using Roma tomatoes (optional), preheat oven to 200F. Cut each tomato in half, slicing from top to bottom. Place on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat sheet or parchment paper. Place in oven. Roast eight hours. Remove. Let cool. Remove and discard skins. Refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Bring 1 gallon water with kosher salt to a boil. Add pasta. Stir well. Cook 8 minutes. When draining pasta, reserve 1 cup salted pasta water. Toss pasta and set aside.

3. Place a carbon steel pan or a sauté pan that can take high heat (not a non-stick pan) on the burner. Char the shallot or onion slices in a few drops of oil. Remove when edges are blackened being careful not to burn. Remove. Set aside. Do the same with the kale. Char but do not blacken. Remove. Set aside. If using mushrooms (optional), add a few drops of oil to the hot pan. Char but do not blacken. Remove. Set aside.

4. Melt butter in carbon steel or sauté pan. Add milk and heavy cream. Stir well. Season with sea salt and black pepper to taste.

5. Pre-heat oven to 350F.

6. Break apart cooked macaroni and add to pan. Stir well to coat. Simmer 5 minutes.

7. Add charred shallots or onions and kale. Stir well. If using slow roasted Roma tomatoes, fine chop and add to pasta along with charred mushrooms.

8. Transfer cooked pasta to large bowl. Add shredded cheese. Toss well. If more sauce is desired add 1/4 cup pasta water, remembering that it is salty so use sparingly.

9. Transfer to decorative baking dish. Top with bread crumbs. Bake 20 minutes or until cheese is gooey and bubbling. Serve hot.

The Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival 2016 - Up Close and Personal with Chefs, Winemakers and Mixologists at the Lexus Grand Tasting

You may have heard of the Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival but you might not have attended. The Festival celebrated food and wine in venues in and around Los Angeles for four days, August 25-28.

In its sixth year, the Festival expanded to the West Side with events at the Fairmont Hotel in Santa Monica and the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport.

If you have attended Barney’s twice-annual sale at the Barker, you know the cavernous space. A football field sized interior without character was transformed for the Festival. Off-white fabric was draped along the walls, giving the warehouse the feeling of a very large, very elegant tent.

Because the venue was sponsored by Lexus, there were half a dozen beautifully polished cars outside and inside the hanger.

People were dressed like people always dress in LA. Casual, very casual and red carpet premiere chic.

Local chefs from the Los Angeles area were joined by chefs from as far away as Miami to celebrate the Festival. Walking from table to table, you could experience a variety of regional cuisines, American, Vietnamese, Peruvian, Italian, Thai, Mexican, to name a few. You could enjoy appetizers, entrées and desserts. And you could sample spirits, beers and a great many wines.

Wines were poured from California, Spain and France.

How to Festival

After showing your ticket, you entered Barker. A friendly server approached you with a glass of wine. What an excellent way to begin!

If this was your first festival, hopefully someone told you to pace yourself. Eat every small plate you are offered and you wouldn’t make it half way around Barker.

The best way to experience a food festival is walk around before you eat anything.

At each table, a menu placard indicates the name of the chef, the restaurant, the dish being served and the ingredients. Write down which ones look good to you. When you have finished your survey of all the vendors, go back to the ones that looked good.

If you are like me, there were a lot of dishes you wanted to try. The next choice is, eat all of the small plate or take just a bite and move on until you have sampled all of the dishes that looked good to you.

At that point, you can return to those chefs whose dishes you really LOVED and eat an entire plate of their food.

Even though the plates are small, eat half a dozen and you will become very full.

You will discover that not all chefs are created equal. Some dishes are wonderful. Some not so much.

The best chefs understand that the festival is like a cocktail or wine party. Everyone eats standing up, holding a plate in one hand and a fork in the other.

One chef served a duck sausage bahn mi, an open faced version of the popular Vietnamese sandwich. The portion was generous but the design was not. The sausage was cut in half length-wise but the casing was left on. Eating the sausage without a knife and fork was difficult because your teeth could not cut through the casing.

The chefs

Homegating Slider Zone sponsored by the NFL Shop. After declaring your favorite NFL team (Go Patriots!),  you constructed a beef slider.  I customized mine with Cole slaw, sautéed onions, butter pickles with sriracha aioli.

To the right of Homegating was Eagle Rock Brewery Public House Restaurant which served a shrimp fry bread with pickled corn and okra small bite round. Great crunch and heat. A nice way to begin the festival.

Not just Los Angeles chefs made appearances. Chef Billy Ngo from Sacramento’s Kru served a crispy ball of white snow crab shushi-kani miso avocado mousse nori & arané (crumbled toasted rice crackers). Very tasty.

Robert Irvine from the Food Network cheerfully posed with fans who wanted to preserve the moment. It is a rare opportunity when the dining public can meet chefs who rarely stray from their kitchens. Even rarer when a chef performs their craft on television, so this was an exceptionally special moment for fans to meet a chef they love on TV.

For those who wanted to taste Irvine’s cooking, he served up a small plate of half a deviled egg and southern fried chicken seasoned with buttermilk and sriracha. The chicken was crisp and nicely seasoned with a good amount of heat.

Established restaurants used the Festival to feature their culinary point of view. Some chefs used the Festival like a soft opening. Chef Bruce Kalman and Marie Petulla the partners behind Union in Pasadena and Bread downtown, plated an excellent octopus and garbanzo bean salad seasoned with a preserved lemon yogurt dressing a crunchy Egyptian dukkah (Sesame seeds, Coriander, pistachio and cumin). 

The dish was exceptionally good. The tasting was not only to illustrate the quality of the menu at Union and Bread, but also to announce their new restaurant in Culver City, slated to open in mid-2017.

Chef Tomas Mendez’s Peruvian restaurant Picca was represented by his ceviche criollo with seabass, rocoto, leche de tigre, choclo, canchas and a small cube of sweet potato. 

Illustrating the culinary influence on Peru from Spain, Japan, Italy and China, the dish was complex but thoroughly integrated. A lovely combination of sweet heat and fresh seafood. A key ingredient is Peruvan corn. Purchased dried, it is deep fried very quickly in hot oil. As Mendez joked, Peruvian pop corn. 

One of the most fun parts of the Festival is the accessibility of chefs. When I took a bite of Mendez’s ceviche, I was filled with questions. Happily, chef Mendez was standing at the front of the booth, readily available to talk. What fun!

For me, Mendez’s ceviche was the best dish in the Festival.

After walking around the hanger, one thing became very clear. Ceviche was popular.

One of the best, besides Picca’s, was from chef Brian Huskey of Orange County’s Tackle Box. His shrimp ceiche with jicama and cucumber was fresh tasting with good heat. He nicely sauced the ceviche so after the shrimp and vegetables were enjoyed, the Michelada flavored juice was the last part to be consumed along with the topping of crunchy tortilla chip strips with cilantro sprouts, cherry tomatoes, red onions.

Another very good ceviche was served at the Stella Artois booth. Chef Marcel Vigneron from Wolf served two ceviches. One he called “Laughing Bird Ceviche” with melon, tomato, puffed quinoa and leche de tigre. The other he made with Hamachi, seasoned with Vietnamese nuos cham, watermelon radish and puffed rice.

Not just wine

I confess I was not able to taste the wines that were being served. If I had sampled the ones that looked interesting, I would have gotten too inebriated to have completed my circuit around Barker.

I limited myself to samples at the Hendrick’s gin, Owl Brew and Soyelent booths.

Hendrick’s went all out with two mixologists pouring two different cockatils in a bar set up backed by a vintage car decorated in wildly fun graphics. The two cocktails were good. 

One was a riff on a familiar cocktail called the Unusual Negroni (1 part Hendrick’s Gin, 1 part Lillet Blanch, 1 part Aperol). The other was an entertaining refreshment called the Tropic of Capricorn (1 part Hendrick’s Gin, 1 part Kiwi Green Tea, ½ part fresh lemon juice, 12 part simple syrup, ¼ part pear juice, Peychaud’s Bitters to taste, 1 part soda water).

So if you missed this year’s festival, you really must put into your calendar that you will attend the Los Angeles Food & Wine Festival in 2017.