By David Harbilas

This dish can be made a number of different ways—with fresh tomatoes, canned, roasted, diced, or peeled and seeded tomatoes.

I opt for peeled and seeded tomatoes, as you get a balance between all the ingredients.

Skin-on chicken breasts provide a bit of crunch, and fresh herbs added at the end, like basil, add a slight kick.

Serves 4

• 4 skin-on chicken breasts
• 1 head of garlic
• 4 red globe variety tomatoes
• 1 shallot, minced Read the rest of this entry »

By David Harbilas

This is the epitome of an easy sauce.

It is essentially two ingredients, tomatoes and port wine.

What those two ingredients don’t tell you is the really interesting part.

Port wine is a fortified wine, which means it is just red wine with more alcohol added after it is made, giving it a “hard liquor” characteristic.

To professional chefs, port wine is a great cooking wine, since its fruit needs to off-set the alcohol. This pretty much means that when it is reduced it has a very rich, fruity flavor. What better to compliment that richness than tomatoes?

What’s great about this sauce is that you don’t really need the best quality tomatoes available. It goes best with game, like venison, lamb, ostrich, or bison. (I’ve used it with all.) The only thing that Read the rest of this entry »

By David Harbilas

Steamed mussels are as basic as it gets: put them in a pot with some white wine, garlic and butter and cook until they open.

Sometimes it’s good to add a little something extra, and most often on restaurant menus that means tomatoes.

Diced, raw tomatoes add acidity, but roasted tomatoes give a slow-cooked flavor to something that requires little assembly after the initial preparation.

Serves 4

• 2 pounds mussels, cleaned
• 6 plum tomatoes
• Extra virgin olive oil
• About 1 tablespoon sugar
• About 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves Read the rest of this entry »

By Amelia Tucker

Finding things to do with all those tomatoes is something that every gardener faces each year.

I have found something that I bet is a new one for even the most seasoned tomato lover- Tomato wine!!
Read the rest of this entry »