The chef’s secret: tomeato

Rosah van Schendelen reached the final of MasterChef Netherlands a few years ago and currently works as head chef at A Beautiful Mess in Amsterdam’s Bijlmer Bajes. In The Chef’s Secret, Rosah explains how you can apply a high-end cooking technique in your own kitchen. This week’s recipe is the tomeato: a cherry tomato amuse without a cherry tomato.

Amuses: delicious miniature dishes to awaken your taste buds. You often get them in restaurants as part of an elaborate multi-course menu. How cool would it be to serve your guests at home a simple yet highly amusing amuse as well? I have the perfect recipe for you.

Tomeato is the name

With this amuse, you’ll fool your friends. The tomeato is an amuse made from ossenworst, coated in a thin layer of Bloody Mary. The joke? It looks like a cherry tomato. Bright red and perfectly round—in short: a gem of an amuse. I find it extra fun to serve the tomeato with real cherry tomatoes, so your guests really won’t know what they’re tasting until they do.

Jokes in the kitchen

I always love it when a chef fools me and lets me taste something I’m not expecting. Think of Heston Blumenthal’s Hot & Cold Iced Tea: a drink in which the left half of your mouth gets hot and the right side of your mouth becomes ice-cold. If you mix a hot liquid with a cold one at home, you naturally just get a lukewarm drink. It’s genius how Heston does it. In that sense, the tomeato is much simpler, but just as fun at the table.

What is kappa and why is it needed in this amuse?

Kappa is a powder extracted from red algae; you use it to make a soft jelly. It gives the tomeato a pleasant mouthfeel and a beautiful shine. Kappa dissolves easily in a cold liquid and gels after heating between 60–80 ºC. You can always reuse the jelly by reheating and melting it. Available from wholesalers, cooking shops or online, among other places. Look for the one made by Texturas.

Method (makes 10)

1. Mix the ossenworst with the smoked paprika. Roll into balls of approximately 15 grams each. Wrap each ball tightly in plastic wrap and let them firm up in the refrigerator for approximately 30 minutes.

2. Unwrap the ossenworst balls and distribute them over a plate covered with plastic wrap. Insert a cocktail stick into each ball. Place the plate in the freezer for approximately 1 hour.

3. For the Bloody Mary, heat a pan over medium heat and add the tomato pulp, lime juice, salt and pepper. Season with Tabasco. Mix the vodka with the kappa and stir until all lumps have dissolved. Add to the Bloody Mary mixture. To prevent loss of binding, do not let the mixture get warmer than 80 °C. Use a cooking thermometer for this.

4. Pour the jelly into a large bowl. Remove the ossenworst balls from the freezer. Dip them one by one through the jelly in a single motion. Place them on a plate and carefully remove the cocktail stick.

5. Carefully pick the real cherry tomatoes from the vine and remove their tops. Place the tops on the ossenworst balls and place them, together with a number of real cherry tomatoes—depending on how many tomatoes were on the vine—under the stem.

Have you got a taste for it and really want to steal the tomato show? Then also make this delicious tomato tarte tatin.