How to Use Fermented Cherry Tomatoes | From the Jar to a First Course
THE LINK TO THE PRINTABLE IS BELOW ⬇️
There is a part of food preservation that I don't think we talk about enough.
We spend a great deal of time learning how to fill the jars.
How much salt?How long should something ferment?How do we know when it is finished?
All important questions.
But eventually you open the refrigerator, look at all those beautiful jars and face another question:
Now what do I do with them?
That is a skill too.
I don't want us to learn how to ferment food only to collect jars. I want those ferments to become ingredients we instinctively know how to bring back into our kitchens.
So this lesson begins where our fermented cherry tomato lesson ended.
The jar is done. Now we're going to put it to work.
[DOWNLOAD THE FREE WAYS TO USE FERMENTED CHERRY TOMATOES PRINTABLE]
From a Jar of Tomatoes to a First Course
For this lesson, I wanted to do more than simply spoon fermented tomatoes onto something.
I wanted to show you how I would take a very rustic preserved ingredient and build it into a first course I would be happy to serve to guests.
We start with baguette sliced on the bias, brushed with olive oil and toasted until genuinely crisp. While the bread is still hot, it gets rubbed with a cut clove of fresh garlic.
The order matters.
Rubbing the garlic over the rough surface of the finished toast releases its flavor without subjecting the garlic itself to enough heat to burn and become bitter.
Then we build the plate.
Learning to Build a Plate
Beautiful plating isn't about adding decorations.
It is about understanding what every element is doing.
For this dish, honey goes onto the plate first. It brings sweetness without being mixed into the fermented tomatoes themselves.
Next comes a slab of feta, warmed and torched until its edges begin to sear.
Then the fermented tomatoes go on cold, along with their fermented garlic and shallot.
Fresh herbs provide brightness, and cracked pepper finishes the plate.
That means one bite can give us:
salt + acid + fat + sweetness + heat + coolness + crunch
That is why a relatively simple collection of ingredients can taste much more complex than it actually is.
The Fermented Tomato Dressing
I also turn the tomatoes into a simple spooned dressing using fermented cherry tomatoes, fermented garlic and shallot, olive oil, lemon juice or fermentation brine, oregano, pepper flakes and black pepper.
And there is an important lesson hiding in the proportions.
A traditional vinaigrette might use roughly three parts oil to one part acid.
I don't want that much oil here.
The feta already contains fat. The crostini has already been dressed with olive oil.
So this dressing isn't responsible for adding richness.
Its job is to cut through it.
That is why understanding the entire plate matters more than automatically following a ratio.
The Same Tomatoes Can Do Much More
Once you start thinking of fermented tomatoes as an ingredient rather than merely a ferment, they become incredibly useful.
Serve them on a cheese or charcuterie board. Use them on sandwiches. Add them to salads. Fold them into softened butter or cream cheese. Spoon them over burrata.
They can also finish eggs, pasta, roasted vegetables, chicken, fish or warm white beans.
When using them with hot food, I generally add them toward the end so we don't unnecessarily dull the tang we spent all that time developing during fermentation.
And Don't Throw Away the Brine
Once the tomatoes are gone, you still have another useful ingredient sitting in the jar.
The brine.
It is salty, sour and garlicky, and it can replace some or all of the vinegar in a vinaigrette, brighten soups or beans, contribute to marinades, loosen dips or hummus, and even provide a starter splash for another batch of fermented vegetables.
That is really what I want this series to teach.
Not simply:
How do I preserve this?
But also:
How does this preserved food become part of the way I cook?
Because a well-stocked larder isn't a museum.
It's there to feed us.
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