Italian Recipes - Coring and Stemming the Tomato for Papa al Pomodoro

Lisa Mushaw: Hi, I am Lisa Mushaw, owner of Treasure of Tuscany, an Epicurean Voyage. Today I am going to show you how to prepare Papaalpomodoro. Papaalpomodoro is tomato and bread soup. We are going to begin with coring and skinning the tomato.

To do this, you simply take a peering knife and you cut into the top of the tomato, making a circle and going down deep enough to get the core of the tomato. Once you do that, you release the core, you are then going to turn the tomato upside down on the bottom side and create a shallow cross, across the bottom, like so. Once you have done this, with all seven tomatoes, you are then going to place them in boiling hot water for two minutes. You will then take it out of the boiling hot water and place it in ice cold water, just long enough for it to cool off and then we will peel back the tomatoes.

Once you have boiled the tomatoes for two to two and a half minutes, depending on the ripeness of the tomatoes, you then put them in cold water. I always put a couple of ice cubes in the water, just to make sure it s really cold. Now, I am going to take them out of the water and then I am going to peel the skin. Now, the great thing about doing this to a tomato is, when you cut tomatoes, that are getting a little bit soft or starting show a little age, this is a great way to save them by parboiling them very quickly and then just being able to pull the skins off them.

This technique is really good for tomatoes that are going to be cooked. I do not recommend using this technique for salads. Anyway, so, as you recall, we make Xs in the back of the tomato, simply you are going to take one of the Xs and then peel the skin back and you see how easily the skin comes off. And you do that all the way around the tomato, like so, and you are just continuing around to each corner to get the tomato skin off. And now, do the following one also. So, again you are taking a corner from one of the crosses that you cut, and you are just peeling back the tomato.

And this is so easy, it s so much easier to do this and as you can see the process doesn t take that long. Okay, so, now you have got two skinned tomatoes. Once you skin the tomatoes, you are going to go back to where you made your crosses, and continuing through the tomato, cutting them in two quarters, like so.

At this point what you want to do is, see the tomato. Some people like to squeeze the tomatoes. I don t like to do that, I just kind to take a spoon and just shell it. And you are really again, you are just taking out the seeds and you are ending up which is the outer layer of the tomato.

Again, I just put a spoon in here, I m getting the rest of the core, getting the seeds out as much as possible anyway, and then again, doing it again, just seeding it out. They come right out; the seeds come right for you. Sometimes, the core can be a bit tricky and that s why I like to use a spoon, so I don t have to lose the shape of the tomato. And this can be a bit messy too. So, when you cut these tomatoes and I will show you, we have already started the process, so here are some of the tomatoes, that we have already used and then we are just going to place them in there.

Okay, next thing we are going to do is, chop five cloves of garlic.