Category Archives: Tomatoes

Contest, Tomatoes

The Hamakua Springs “You Say Tomato” Recipe Contest!

We are excited to announce our brand new tomato recipe contest!

We look forward to seeing your best tomato recipes. You can enter original recipes in one (or more) of three categories:

• Entree
• Salad
• Preserves & Condiments

Each category offers three prizes: $350, $300 and $250 Makana cards (gift certificates) good at Foodland and Sack and Save stores.

Top recipes will be prepared by students of the food service program at Hawai’i Community College, and then judges will select winners.

Winners will be announced on March 14, 2007 on the Hamakua Springs blog Ha Ha Ha!. Entries may be featured on the blog, in other promotional materials, and possibly in an upcoming Hamakua Springs cookbook.

Read the blog for updates on the contest and more about Hamakua Springs Country Farms.

Allan_okuda_richard_haAllan Okuda, director of the Hawai’i Community College Food Service Program, left, and Richard Ha, owner of Hamakua Springs Country farms, right

How to enter

Email your entry to contest@hamakuasprings.com, or mail it to Hamakua Springs Recipe Contest, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720. Include the recipe’s title, ingredients list, preparation, your full name, address, daytime phone number and email address. Enter as many recipes as you’d like (each recipe must be submitted in a separate email or on a separate page, each with full information as above) but we must receive all entries by 11:59 p.m. on January 31, 2007.

The rules

1. Submit your favorite original recipe that includes tomatoes in one of the following three categories: Entree; Salad; Preserves & Condiments.

2. Entry requirements:
Ingredients must be readily available. Please indicate which category your recipe falls under. Please include the name of the dish, ingredients with exact U.S. measurements, how it’s prepared, and the number of servings. Your recipe must not have been previously published and it must be an original creation.

3. How to enter:
Email your entry to contest@hamakuasprings.com, or mail your clearly written or typed entry to Hamakua Springs Recipe Contest, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720. Include your full name, address, daytime phone number and email address. We must receive your entry on or before January 31, 2007.

4. Judging:
Judges to be announced here soon! Judges’ decisions are final. Winners will be announced at Ha Ha Ha! on March 14, 2007, and by phone soon thereafter.

5. Prizes:
Three grand prizes (one per category): $350 Makana Cards (valid at Foodland and Sack and Save stores) Second place in each category: $300 Makana Card. Third place in each category: $250 Makana Card.

6. General rules:
Open only to Hawai’i residents. Employees of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, its affiliated companies, contest sponsors, their agencies and families are not eligible. No purchase is necessary. Enter as many recipes as you’d like. Hamakua Springs cannot be responsible for problems with email transmission or late, lost, damaged, incomplete, illegible or misdirected mail. Entries cannot be acknowledged or returned. All federal, state and local laws and regulations apply. Prizes are nontransferable and may not be redeemed for cash. Judges’ decisions are final. Hamakua Springs Country Farms reserves the right to use entrant’s name and likeness and to publish any entry submitted. All entries become property of Hamakua Springs Country Farms. Entry constitutes permission to edit, modify, publish and otherwise use the recipe in any way without compensation.

7. Winners:
For a list of winners (available after March 14, 2007) send a stamped, self-addressed #10 envelope to: Hamakua Springs Country Farms, 421 Lama St., Hilo HI 96720.

And one last thing:

Now that you’re here, we hope you’ll look around our blog. We generally update it three times a week and we have a lot of fun with it.

Here at the blog you can read about Hamakua Springs president Richard Ha’s “39 pounds in 39 weeks” weight loss goal. He updates how it’s going–and how he’s doing it–every Monday. As of 11/1/06, he’s almost halfway there!

We also blog about:

our farm
our employees
our tomatoes, lettuce, bananas, cucumbers and new products
trips we take
our community
riding bicycles
restaurants that use our products
how we operate
the beautiful Hamakua coast of Hawai’i
sustainability
charity events we are involved with
articles written about us
hydroponics
wearing shorts
and much, much more.

If you like what you see at Ha Ha Ha!, please bookmark us or sign up for our RSS feed. And now go get your tomato recipe together!

Food and Drink, Tomatoes

Where To Have Your Own ‘Tomato Fest’

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When Richard told me about the heirloom tomato sampler that Hilo Bay Café serves—it’s made with several types of Hamakua Springs heirlooms—I had to see it for myself.

30_mos_chef_joshua_closeup_2 If you don’t live around here and haven’t eaten at Hilo Bay Café, the restaurant itself a good enough reason to come visit. Classy but casual, full bar, great food with an emphasis on local produce, local, free-range grass-fed beef and organic ingredients (even the bottle of Heinz ketchup on the table says “organic”—who knew!). It’s an easy-going, elegant and delicious place to eat.

But not only are the ingredients above par, so are the resulting dishes. Joshua Ketner, executive chef since the restaurant opened three years ago, struggled to describe the food in only a few words.

“It’s an eclectic blend of Island ingredients,” he told me, “as well as American and French, with undertones of Japanese. The dishes themselves are more new age. Some are traditional with a new twist. We call it ‘Good Food.’” 30_mos_chef_josh_3

Richard and June, who like “good food,” are regulars. One time they brought in samples of their heirloom tomatoes and Chef Joshua loved them.

He ordered more and started serving them, very simply presented, as a sampler platter. “I didn’t want to disguise the flavor of the tomatoes,” he said, “because they’re so good. I tasted them straight, and they were just great by themselves. I like to bring out the flavors instead of putting in a lot of ingredients to mask the vegetables.”

The special appetizer, normally served at dinnertime (but thank you again, Chef Josh, for making it for me yesterday at lunchtime) consists of thick wedges from different heirlooms—all beautiful, different and very tasty. They are served on a platter with a small mound of deep red ‘alae salt from Kaua‘i, for dipping, and another of cracked black pepper.

30_mos_tomato_sampler_long_4It’s a beautiful presentation. The thick cuts of the very different tomatoes are capped off with a couple Hamakua Sweets—the tiny, tear-shaped tomatoes from Hamakua Springs that are, truly, so sweet they taste like they have sugar on them. In a very, very good way.

I brought Emma Rose, my 2-1/2 year old tomato aficionado, along with me to the restaurant to help me taste. This girl knows her tomatoes. You might remember her eating a Green Zebra heirloom like it was an apple back when she was much younger.

She did not disappoint. She pulled that platter over to her side of the table and got busy. She dipped tomatoes in the salt and ate, sometimes with one tomato in each hand. She tried every piece, and made them look as delicious as they were. I finally realized I needed to stop taking pictures and get in there before they were gone. I’m glad I did.

From the yellow tomato on the end, that’s the Striped German variety, the Red Brandywine, the Purple Cherokee, the Lemon Boy and a Green Zebra. The tiny red tomatoes are the Hamakua Sweets.

Chef Josh said he also serves the Hamakua Sweets in his tofu dish. The tofu is baked in balsamic vinegar. Then he caramelizes some Kekela Farms fennel, then adds the Hamakua Sweets, some spinach and some basil pesto. That’s served with the tofu and topped with some feta cheese. Sounds like I’ll have to go back.

Richard, an heirloom tomato enthusiast who just returned from a whole festival devoted to them, loves that Chef Josh presents the heirlooms so simply. 30_mos_tomato_sampler_3

“He has enough confidence in his ability to just let the tomatoes do what they do,” he said. “To let the tomato just sit and shine by itself. I thought that was great. I think a lot of him. I think he’s a real artist.”

An older Japanese woman, who told me she used to have a guava farm at Hakalau, not far from Pepe‘ekeo where Hamakua Springs is located, sat at the table next to us with her granddaughter and marveled at our platter of beautiful tomatoes. I told her I was taking photos for Hamakua Springs, who grows the heirlooms, and she knew about Hamakua Springs: “Their tomatoes are just beautiful,” she said. “Tell them we like their produce.”

Richard, they like your produce. Emma Rose and I, and a lot of other people, do too. — posted by Leslie Lang

Tomatoes, Travel

I Say Tomato…

3 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I’ve had a strong interest in heirloom tomatoes since we grew our first ones a couple years ago. They were far and away tastier than any of the regular tomatoes. And heirlooms hold together better.

Tomato_fest_sign_21

I was fascinated by the fact that there were several hundred varieties of heirloom tomatoes, and I wanted to grow the best of the best. But where to start? When we first heard about the Tomato Fest at Carmel, California—and that it was all about heirloom tomatoes—we had to come and see what was up.

We have not been disappointed.

We arrived at the Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley Sunday an hour and a half before the gates opened and a lot of people were already there. The shuttle buses were running and there was a line waiting to get in.

The event is a charitable fund raiser for the Chef and Child Foundation, a project of the American Culinary Federation. Some consider it Central California’s best annual food and wine event. We bought VIP tickets because in addition to contributing to the good cause, we wanted an opportunity to check out the many different heirloom tomato varieties.

Gary_ibsen_2And that way we got to meet the Tomato Fest director Gary Ibsen and his wife Dagma Lacey, too. Gary started the Tomato Fest 15 years ago as a way for family and friends to celebrate the season’s tomato harvest, and it has since grown to 3,000 participants.

The VIP tent was buzzing by 11:30, an hour before start time, and there was a line for wine and a double line for samplings of tomato dishes. We got a glass of wine and sat down next to a guy wearing a Poipu Beach shirt. He was from Hawai‘i, in town to attend his third Tomato Fest and to golf.

Musicians kept the mood in the VIP tent upbeat. We each received a tray that holds the souvenir wine glass and pupu so one hand is free.

Lines_of_tomatoes_1We were allowed into the display area a little ahead of the 12:30 start time and headed straight for the heirloom tomato sampling tent. The large tent was devoted entirely to the display and tasting of heirloom tomatoes. Not to sound like a Dr. Seuss book, but there truly were big ones, little ones, green ones, purple ones, red ones, white ones, yellow with stripe ones, round ones, long ones and everything in between ones.

Tables were set up around the perimeter and tomatoes were displayed on a continuous line so people could sample and keep moving. Each was displayed on an upside-down plastic glass, which served as a pedestal that showed off the whole fruit. On the platter below were small cubed pieces to taste with a toothpick.

Richard_tastesWhen we got there, no one had yet sampled any tomatoes yet and the display was perfect. The tomatoes were of all shapes, sizes and many different colors. I took more than 50 pictures of the more than 200 different varieties on display and sampled even more.

When the gates opened up it was a madhouse—people were trying to taste as much as they could and as fast as they could. It was very interesting listening in on conversations of non-farmers talking about heirloom tomatoes. I can’t imagine any other type of tomato generating this much interest. I sense that interest is building in Hawai‘i, as well, and we want to bring to Hawai‘i the very best varieties we can find.

Once we finished with the variety tasting, we visited the three tents with the chefs’ creations. The chefs did a great job creating their dishes and it was apparent that they put a lot of effort into it.

Tomato_shootersThere was a tomato tower, made of carmelized onions and slices of different colored cocktail-sized heirloom tomatoes. Another tasted suspiciously like Kalua pig and heirloom tomatoes served on a toasted cracker. The tomato sorbet was surprisingly good: refreshing with a hint of basil, and leeks sauteed with something sweet and tasty underneath.

We had a tomato shooter made up of yellow lemon boy tomato soup with a red heirloom tomato soup on top. The instructions read: “Sip the red soup and notice the burn, and then drink the rest of the lemon boy soup with syrup to top it off.” It was very good.

There was a slab of heirloom tomato that was red, flecked throughout with yellow, something like a striped German heirloom tomato. It looked like a 10-pound slab of ahi.

The chef made smaller squares about an inch and a half square served on a toothpick. I don’t have a clue how he did it. It tasted like heirloom tomatoes with basil and was delicious. Cherokee_purple_6

We went from station to station. It moved very rapidly and was a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I looked forward to finding out, at each station, how I would be surprised yet again. It was a spectacular tasting event.

The whole area was as big as maybe three or four football fields. In the middle, there was a sit-down area of 30 or 40 tables. Along the sides were specialty tents with some of the commercial tomato-grower sponsor booths, wine tasting booths with wines from the Monterey area, olive oil from local orchards as well as other products. There was a stage and a live band that kept people jumping all day with songs like “Lucille.” We stopped at the fried green tomato booth. Maybe something for our fruit stand/snack bar?

Farmers_marketThere was a Farmers Market booth where people could buy a basket of mixed varieties of heirloom tomatoes. The mixed basket looked so farm fresh. This is decidedly different from the all-same look of commercial tomatoes.

People were paying close attention to a chef preparing a tomato dish from a mini-cooking stage. Close by was a souvenir tent selling t-shirts, baseball caps and other things. I got several Tomato Fest baseball caps and June got some t-shirts.

The influence of the Tomato Fest is pretty evident. We had lunch at a small cafe at the Barnyard Shopping Center in Carmel and there were heirloom tomatoes on the salad bar. Heirlooms were also served in salads in place of regular tomatoes.

June_with_chefs

That evening we had dinner at Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey and noticed heirloom tomatoes in the regular salad there as well. I commented to the waiter that we had come from the Tomato Fest and he said that he just recently started eating tomatoes; and that it was only because he tasted heirloom tomatoes and liked them. Before that he had hated tomatoes.

I feel that heirloom tomatoes could be very popular in Hawai‘i. When we get home, we’ll start to increase our supply and see what we can do about bringing heirloom tomatoes to the masses.

Community, Government, Tomatoes

A Whole Lot of Salads and Pasta Sauces Were Made

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When Hamakua Springs had an unexpected tomato surplus recently, Richard called over to the county building and said he had some extra tomatoes he wanted to give to county workers.

P1010053_3Dayday Hopkins, Economic Development Specialist at the Hawai‘i County Department of Research and Development, says she asked Richard how many tomatoes he was talking about. “I thought it was a case or two,” she said, “but he asked how many departments we have.”

“He went hog wild in sharing,” she said. “He gave us like 25 cases. Who gives away 25 cases of tomatoes? For him to do that, it really makes you feel good that there’s a business person who is not only for himself and his business but also wants to share with the rest of the people that touch him.”

Richard says sometimes they give extra tomatoes to the local schools their grandchildren attend: Kalaniana‘ole Elementary, Keaukaha Elementary and Kea‘au Middle School. P1010061_2

“Or schools that are having a hard time with the ‘No Child Left Behind’ thing,” says Richard. “We give to the teachers and staff and try to do a morale booster kind of thing.”

Last month, though, when they had a lot of extra cocktail tomatoes, Richard sent some to the Hawai‘i Island Food Bank and then took the rest to the Hawai‘i County Building.

He explains that sometimes there’s an unexpected short spike in production due to timing–one crop comes into production as another is going out. “Because we harvest the tomatoes when they’re vine ripe,” he says, “we cannot hold them very long when that happens and we have to move them quickly.”

P1010055_3

“The reason we chose the county workers,” says Richard, “is because they are pretty much not recognized for the work they do and we wanted to acknowledge their hard work.”

Dayday couldn’t say enough nice things about Richard. “We ask him for donations of bananas when we have fundraisers for the schools, and other community activities, and he’s always open and accommodating,” she said. “Mr. Ha is just one of those unique breed of farmers and people. June was here, too, and as goodhearted as the husband. I couldn’t believe she got up in the pickup truck and was getting out cases of tomatoes. She said, ‘Yeah, I have to help.’”

Richard took some cases to the Department of Water Supply, which isn’t located in the county building. Dayday got some help and took the rest around to offices in the County building: Planning, Parks and Recreation, Civil Service, Finance, Office of the Aging, Corporation Council and others.

Pat_koga_exec_scty_tp_chris_yuen_plannin_2

She says some of the workers were surprised and even suspicious when handed containers of tomatoes. “They asked me, ‘Are you selling them?’ I told them, ‘Mr. Ha wants to share his bounty of tomatoes for you to taste and enjoy. He has a big heart; he just really wants to share with the people in the county because he said the county has been very nice to him.’” Others, she said, were surprised they were such beautiful, perfect tomatoes and not “seconds,” or tomatoes that weren’t good enough to sell.

Dayday even sent some to the mayor’s office, where they were a hit. The mayor Harry Kim called her and asked if there was any way he could get two more. (He got them.) Andylevin_2

In these last two photos, that’s Dayday with Pat Koga, executive secretary to Planning Director Chris Yuen, and then with Andy Levin, executive director to Mayor Kim.

Dayday took her tomatoes home. “My husband eats tomatoes like grapes. And I cut some up and made a green salad.”

She also shares her recipe for a salsa she makes. She chops up Hamakua Springs cocktail tomatoes with a pinch of cilantro, some green onions and sea salt, and puts that salsa over her special fried rice: “I buy poke, cut it a little smaller and sauté it with garlic. Then cook it with rice, soy sauce, and put the salsa over it.”

“Ha ha ha!” she said as she recounted the recipe. Our kind of person! — posted by Leslie Lang

Bananas, Our Employees, Tomatoes

Employee Spotlight: Ida Castillo

Ida_4

Tomato packing house supervisor Ida Castillo has always been so good at her job, Richard says, that it was almost hard to promote her.

“She’s one of those workers who you think you can’t afford to take out of her present position,” he says, “because she’s so good. But in our company we try to make sure we give people opportunities as they arise, no matter how uncomfortable it may make us feel in the short run.”

Ida came to the company 13 years ago, when she was hired as a banana packer at what was then Kea‘au Bananas.

“Ida was always the fastest and most efficient banana packer, and it always seemed effortless to her,” says Richard. “When we started raising hydroponic tomatoes we asked if she would consider packing tomatoes, and she immediately became the most efficient tomato packer.”

Ida2_1

Now, he says, she’s doing a great job as the tomato packing house supervisor, her position since the beginning of the year. “Ida has the little things under control and that takes care of the big things,” he says. “She is a quiet person but she is efficient and she definitely gets the job done very well. I’m extremely proud of her.”

Outside of work, there’s her family. She is married with three children. Her sons are 24 and 19, both in the army. Her daughter, 22, recently gave Ida and her husband their first grandchild, Shayla, who is 18 months old. “That’s the first (grandchild), and we love her so much.”

She laughs when she admits she likes to watch her soap operas. “The Young and the Restless, and some Filipino soap operas,” she says. “I go to church when I’m not working. I love to go shopping.”

And how does she feel about tomatoes after years of packing 15 pounds of them into 60 boxes a day?
Ida4
“I love to pack tomatoes,” she says. “I just love holding them, and the color. And I still like eating them. These are good tomatoes.”

She says she likes her job. “I always loved to work agriculture. Before I worked bananas, I worked papayas, flowers. I love it.

“Plus the management, they’re good,” she says. “They treat us like family, not a worker. They’re nice people.”

The 45-year-old says she hopes to work there for awhile. “Until I retire,” she says. “Then they going kick me out.” — posted by Leslie Lang

Bike, Losing Weight, Tomatoes

3 Down

Richard Ha writes:

I’ll be posting my training updates here on Mondays. Here are my first week’s results.

At 8:00 am on Sunday, May 28:
Starting weight 214.6 lbs.
Week’s target weight 213.6 lbs.
Today’s actual weight 211.4 lbs.
I am 2.2 lbs. ahead of schedule

Goal 175 lbs.
Weight loss since 5/23: 3.2 lbs.
Starting resting heart rate 65
Today’s resting heart rate 63 beats per minute.*

* This goes down as one gets into better shape. Lance Armstrong is said to be at 32 beats per minute. My lowest was 52 beats per minute many years ago.

I’m 2.2 lbs. ahead of schedule this week. I lost 3.2 lbs. this week when my goal was to lose 1 lb.

Although I am not dieting, I find myself looking up the caloric content of what I might be eating. And because I’m exercising, I find myself eating more apple bananas and snacking on cocktail tomatoes a lot, which have zero penalty points on the Weight Watchers list of foods. Fortunately, we grow these things at Hamakua Springs, and we grow the ones we do because of how great they taste.

Tomatoes

Losing this weight by exercising means I’ll be stronger and in better shape than I am now. I won’t be able to keep up with “the boys” on the Kulani trails. But maybe I can soon keep up with our mountain-biking President if he joins them.

The leader of “the boys” is Chris Seymour, owner of Hilo Bike Hub. He is featured with Chris Clark and Ray Brust from Oahu in the Hawaiian Airlines in-flight magazine Hana Hou. He is a friend of mine; I went with him to the bank to vouch for his bank loan when he started his bike shop, though he didn’t need me at all and had it well under control.

His riding is at a total different level than most people’s. Mike Tanabe is up there as well, relative to his age group (he’s 58). That’s an indication of how fun the Kulani trails are—something less challenging wouldn’t keep their interest.

When I can easily do the long ride from the farm to the oceanfront and back, then I will be ready to try Banana Hill. The bike riders named it that: it’s the uphill Kaupakuea Homestead Road ride in Pepeekeo, straight up from the farm to the forest line. If I can do this ride without weaving back and forth in first gear searching for flat ground, I will be making good progress.

This coming week, I’ll start to ride from the farm down to the ocean and back.

Articles, Recipes, Tomatoes

Meet Richard Ha

Our friend Sonia Martinez writes wonderful articles about food for the Hamakua Times, and last year she wrote this nice article about Richard and the farm. She generously offered to allow us to post this article on the website, and as it makes its way to the website we thought we’d share it here with you, too.

We were pleased but not surprised to learn that Sonia’s cookbook “Tropical Taste” was recently selected as one of the “Best of the Best of Hawaii” cookbooks, by the way. We highly recommend it! It makes a great, local-flavor gift, too. It’s available in Hilo at Basically Books, the Book Gallery and the Most Irresistible Shop, and coming soon to amazon.com.

Here’s the article:

TROPICAL TASTE

By Sonia Martinez
May 2005 – The Hamakua Times of Honoka’a

Meet Richard Ha, tomato farmer

If you have forgotten what tomatoes really are supposed to taste like, you have to taste one of Richard’s tomatoes to bring the memory back. There is nothing of the odorless, light pink, thick fleshed, hardly any juice, cardboard taste and feel we have grown accustomed to seeing in the markets and restaurants to any of these tomatoes, regardless of the variety you try.

Tropical Taste

Long known for his bananas, papayas and oranges, Richard Ha and his family have embraced tomato growing in just the last two years. The Pepeekeo farm started out with a couple of experimental hydroponics greenhouses and now they number over a hundred.

Just a few weeks ago I was invited to a visual as well as a tasting treat.
The impressive display of tomatoes being grown and packed on premises is already mind-boggling.

Walking through the rows of vines laden with beautiful fruit and smelling the aroma of real vine-ripened tomatoes is a treat to the senses. Cocktail tomatoes, beef tomatoes, grape tomatoes, mini-Romas, tomatoes-on-the-vine, Green Zebras and other heirloom varieties such as Brandywine and in colors ranging from red to yellow to even green with green stripes are just some of the varieties now being grown.

Now operating under the name Hamakua Springs Country Farms, the Ha family has been dedicating their lives to farming for over 50 years and hope to continue for at least a 100 years more. Working as a family unit, Richard, wife June, mother Florence, daughter Tracy and son-in-law Kimo Pa will ensure that the next generations will continue in the tradition of the earlier Ha family.

Look for the Ha family’s tomatoes at your favorite grocers in clear clamshell containers with the attractive label and logo designed by Nelson Makua of Hilo.

Chef Alan Wong of Alan Wong’s Restaurant and The Pineapple Room in Honolulu has chosen the Ha Family tomatoes to feature in his restaurants. I was recently surprised and pleased to read an interview with Chef Alan that appeared in my copy of the March-April 2005 issue of Produce Concepts, a mainland publication where Chef Wong extols the taste of the Hamakua Springs Country Farms tomatoes.

During a recent visit to the Ha farm in Pepeekeo, Chef Alan and his crew of chefs delighted everyone with a presentation of several dishes using the farm’s tomatoes and cucumbers.

Given a box with an assortment of tomatoes, the first thing I did on returning home was to make a simple sandwich with bread, mayo, a thick slice of ripe Brandywine, a chiffonade of basil leaves and a light sprinkle of freshly ground pepper. The tasty juices literally ran down my hand as I ate it. It really doesn’t get any better than that!

Tomato Quiche
Serves 8

Crust of your choice
Rough Country Style Mustard
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 cup coarsely chopped fresh mushrooms (about 4 ounces)
3/4 cup chopped green onions (5-7 medium)
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
12 mini-Roma tomatoes or other ripe fresh tomatoes, thickly sliced
2 Tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3 eggs or equivalent in egg substitute
2/3 cup or 5-ounce can fat-free evaporated milk
1 Tablespoon fresh chopped dill or 1 teaspoon dried, crumbled
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 400o F.

Prepare crust by brushing lightly with a coating of the mustard.
Set aside until ready to fill.

For filling, heat oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, swirling to coat bottom. Sauté mushrooms, green onions, and garlic for 2 to 3 minutes, or until tender.

Arrange tomato slices on crust, cover with mushroom mixture, and sprinkle with Parmesan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Pour over vegetables.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Rustic Herbed Tomato Tart with Parmesan Crust
Source: Intimate Gatherings by Ellen Rose

Pastry:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted cold butter, cut into 5 pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Zest from 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup ice cold water

Filling:
1 1/2 – 2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 Tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil
1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme
1 Tablespoon freshly chopped fresh Italian Parsley
2 cloves garlic minced
Salt and pepper to taste
6-8 ripe tomatoes (about 1 -1/4 pounds) cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 teaspoon water

To prepare pastry:
In food processor fitted with metal blade, combine flour, butter, salt, and Parmesan. Pulse until it resembles coarse meal, about 5-10 seconds with motor running, add lemon zest and pour water through feeder tube in steady stream.
Process 5-10 seconds until dough begins to bind. Remove dough and shape it into a 12-inch circle.

If mixing by hand or with pastry blender cut butter into the flour and salt until it reaches size of small peas. Add zest and Parmesan cheese and combine.
Slowly add ice water stirring with fork until dough starts holding together.

If not used right away, dough can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated.
When ready to use remove and let soften to room temperature, about 30 minutes, then shape into a 12-inch circle.

Preheat oven to 425o F.

Transfer the dough to a baking sheet. Using pastry brush paint pastry with mustard leaving 1 to 1-1/2 inch border all around. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese evenly over mustard.

In small bowl combine basil, thyme, parsley, garlic, salt and pepper.
Arrange 1/2 tomato slices over must coated portion of pastry and sprinkle with herbs. Cover herbs with remaining tomatoes overlapping slices if necessary. Drizzle olive oil over tomatoes.

Fold the rim of pastry over the tomatoes to enclose sides of tart, gently draping pastry over and folding it into soft pleats every few inches. Pinch cracks to seal and prevent juices from running out during baking. Paint dough with egg wash. Bake 20-25 minutes. Let cool about 10 minutes. Slice and serve warm.

Almost Instant Heirloom Tomato Relish
A recipe recently shared by my friend Evie in California. Original source:
Chef Warren Schwartz of Saddle Peak Lodge in Calabasas, CA. Food & Wine August
2004. Yields 1-12 cups

2 pounds heirloom tomatoes, peeled, seeded and cut into small dice.
2 Tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
2 Tablespoons sugar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup finely shredded basil leaves

Heat a large skillet. Add the tomatoes and cook over high heat until sizzling, about 1 minute. Add the vinegar and sugar and a pinch each of salt and pepper and bring to a boil; transfer the tomatoes to a bowl, leaving the juices in the skillet. Boil the juices over high heat until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 5 minutes. Stir the juices, olive oil and basil into the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Make ahead: The relish can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Let return to room temp before serving.

Aloha nui!
Sonia

Tomatoes

Uncle Tomato

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Emma Rose who really loved tomatoes. When she even just saw a picture of tomatoes in a magazine, she would say, “That’s my favorite.” Sometimes she ate Hamakua Springs Country Farms tomatoes like they were apples.

One day Uncle Richard was visiting Emma Rose’s house, and he brought a big box of goodies. Lettuce, cucumbers and many different sizes and types and colors of tomatoes.

Her mama said something about how nice it was that Uncle Richard brought them her favorite food. Emma Rose exclaimed: “Uncle Tomato!” and then laughed and laughed.

When Uncle Richard heard about this, he replied:

“You know, back when I was in high school and the macho image was everything, if someone told me that in my later years I would be known as The Banana Man and Uncle Tomato, we would have to go behind the gym, scrap.”

He’s mellowed since then.