Sunday evening has become our favourite time of the week. As usual, we open a spreadsheet with our menu for the coming week and start browsing. Our weekly menu considerations usually start with a review of seasonal vegetables. After an hour wasted on inept online wanders, we usually end up seeking inspiration on the YT channel of Bon Appetit Bien Sur. So far, Joel Robuchon has never disappointed us. Simple, fresh, and relatively lean for the French standards recipes that are effortless to recreate at any time of the week.
In this episode, Robuchon and Ducasse cook stuffed tomatoes in provençal style. Try to get very ripe, but firm tomatoes. The tomatoes taste better at room temperature, served with bread and butter. And, don’t forget to finish the fish with a generous pour of tomato jus. The rich and meaty glaze is very addictive!
Stuffed tomatoes à la Alain Ducasse
Course: MainCuisine: French, ProvencalDifficulty: Easy2
servings30
minutes40
minutesIngredients
5 ripe tomatoes, each over 180g
400g lamb mince
2 slices cured ham
200g mushrooms, cut in brunoise
A sprig of thyme
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped parsley
2 tbsp breadcrumbs, or panko
4 tbsp olive oil
100g butter
Juice of half a lemon
Chicken or veal stock
Salt and pepper
Directions
- Tomatoes
- Cut the tops of 4 tomatoes and reserve them for later.
- Using a knife, remove all the seeds and reserve that flesh in a bowl.
- Blend it and reserve for later.
- Season the tomatoes generously with salt and turn them upside down to release the excess liquid.
- Filling
- Heat up a large pan and drizzle some olive oil.
- Set the heat to medium and add the mushrooms.
- Sautée them for 4-5min, then add some thyme and press a clove of garlic.
- Make sure you don’t brown the garlic too much.
- Take the mushrooms off the pan and reserve them in a bowl.
- Using the same pan, sautée shallots and minced lamb.
- In this case, browning of meat is very much wanted.
- Once the meat is fully cooked, add it to the same bowl as mushrooms.
- Chop the remaining tomato into brunoise and parsley, and add to the stuffing.
- Add chopped ham to the mix and season to taste.
- Preheat the oven to 180C with a fan.
- Stuff the tomatoes with the filling forming a small dome on the top of each.
- Sprinkle each tomato with breadcrumbs and add a 10g dice of butter.
- Place the stuffed tomatoes on a baking tray drizzled with olive oil.
- Add the chicken stock with the reserved tomato.
- Add the remaining butter to the sauce and bake for 25min.
- Cover tomatoes with the reserved tops, and cook for the following 10-15min until the tops and nicely caramelised.
- While waiting for the tomatoes to cool down, reduce the sauce until it resembles a glaze.
- Strain the glaze and reserve for serving.
- Serving
- Simply pour 5-6 tablespoons of the glaze on your plate.
- Carefully position one of the tomatoes in the center and enjoy!
- We recommend serving the tomatoes with some bread, which makes ‘cleaning up’ the plate easier!