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December 5, 2008
Winter at the Wine and Tomato Bar
It's winter and my thoughts are turning to yummy hearty hot tomato dishes. Most of you will remember my ongoing fantasy of the Wine and Tomato Bar. (Find link here: for some reason moveable type won't put them in anymore! http://www.mprize.org/blogs/archives/2006/12/wine_and_tomato.html)
Well, I've been thinking of what the Wine and Tomato Bar would be serving up this winter. My very own after-the-revolution dream job is owner/manager/executive chef of the Wine and Tomato Bar. So I think I'll just spin the fantasy on the blog and even though we have no building, no tomato, and no bar, we can imagine.
Tonight is a Friday and the Wine and Tomato Bar is hopping. We're serving a hearty cabernet blend, as well as a fruity pinot noir. We're also pouring mixed drinks and hot Christmas-y spiced genmai cha, which is genmai cha with sucralose and cinnamon. The real Japanese tea drinker would faint but the Wine and Tomato Bar customer loves it to warm up with before hitting the road on this cold winter night.
Tonight we're serving a piping hot tomato and goat cheese soup, composed of fire roasted tomatoes, a bit of yogurt, goat cheese, black pepper, and a few diced scallions on top. It's an edgy comfort food: hot and creamy but tart and with just a bit of bite. For something more substantial, we've got the tomato portabella pizza of the day: it changes with the season, and today it's a portabella topped with beefsteak tomatoes smothered with tomato sauce and fresh rosemary, then topped with fat free mozzarella and baked till the mozza is golden brown. We've also got a root vegetable tomato puree, composed of butternut squash, turnips and parsnips cooked and pureed with tomatoes plus a few tablespoons of fat free sour cream and some diced garlic, served extremely hot and topped with diced tomatoes and cilantro.
The Wine and Tomato Bar is different in the winter because the tomatoes aren't as freshly delicious, so we have to rely on canned, roasted, or otherwise preserved tomatoes a lot of the time. But this just makes us more creative. For instance, we're serving tart Granny Smith apples topped with canned tomatillos and diced red onions as an appetizer. Whole tables are splitting the fire roasted tomato guacamole, which is fire roasted canned tomatoes mixed with avocado and garlic and served with carrots, red peppers, and celery for dipping. A green tomato preserve is being served fresh out of the can, hand-canned by grandmothers in North Carolina and served over veggies here in Philly in December. My step-mother is honored that a low cal version of her pepper jelly appetizer is circulating: tomato slices topped with nonfat cream cheese topped with tomato hot pepper jelly. Six per plate, and they're gone almost as soon as the wait staff sets them down.
My cocktail servers are encouraged to be wild and eccentric in their dress, and several are wearing big fluffy skirts in the color of tomato or cabernet. I'm wearing a tight red dress, black boots with five inch heels, and my nails are painted the color of a shiny pinot noir. I have spies all over the city looking for healthy winter tomatoes, and every once in awhile I will circulate with a plate full of small chunks of whatever yummy tomato we could find. Every customer can have a bit for free, compliments of the owner.
Once it's summer again we'll have The Pint again, where a customer can order a pint of grape tomatoes, served straight up with a dish of sea salt and a dish of garlic oregano olive oil for dipping. We'll be serving our green tomato gazpacho and our yellow tomato mango chutney. But winter is hotter, heartier. We need comfort food: tomato soups and heavy dishes we can hold in our hands like mushroom pizzas. We're serving stuffed peppers with red tomatoes, garlic, onion, brown rice and zucchini smothered in fat free mozzarella and topped with olive oil. We're making a stroganoff with fresh tomatoes, nonfat sour cream, mushrooms, onions, and Quorn grounds instead of ground beef. The Wine and Tomato Bar is a vegetarian hot spot, not so much by design as de facto, as we just can't bother ourselves to worry about cooking meat. The Wine and Tomato Bar is vegetarian heaven, and it's a place where people find they're losing weight without even trying. The food isn't weighed down with cream or butter: the vegetables speak for themselves.
But as Billy Joel says, it's just a fantasy. I made a nice dinner tonight and will again tomorrow, but I have a city and then a state to organize and no time to own a bar. Next week I'll have some friends over and get to play hostess for a spell, but for the most part, the only person I get to subject to my culinary whims is MR. Lucky for me, he is a willing audience.
Happy tomatoes to all, and to all a good night!
Posted by april at December 5, 2008 5:50 PM
Comments
OMG! The descriptions of the foods you create in your head are driving me absolutely MAD! I must immediately go cook. Please make me the tomato root vegetable puree; it sounds divine! As soon as you've had enough organizing, let me know! DRP can design your website, signage, cards, ads, etc. FTed can do the build-out. I'll help select the decor and whatever else you need! I'm in! Just a caveat, though: ditch the 5" heels or your feet will punish you! :-)
Posted by: Judith at December 5, 2008 6:50 PM
i want to be there on opening day.
how fun it would be to be a coctail server,
although i would prolly wear all black.
Posted by: sheila from norcal at December 6, 2008 2:23 PM
Mmm, all that sounds so delicious! Hurry up and open that bar!
And man, I envy those dinner guests of yours. . .;)
Posted by: Shveta at December 8, 2008 8:13 AM