(con)Fit to Be Tied

I got good news and bad news. The bad news is I'm going to talk about tomatoes again. The good news is the tomatoes I'm going to talk about are the kind in a can, so you don't have to live in LA, go to the Hollywood farmer's market and perv-out fondling late summer heirlooms, their shape and heft like an Edward Weston wet dream come to life.

But you still must have standards, and procure a decent can of Italian whole tomatoes. They don't need to be San Marzano, though they can be, but the brand name needs to end in a vowel. We are going to perform an act of slow, low-temperature magic together, and make a tomato confit. It's a nice piece of music. An olive oil concerto for tomato, garlic, basil and lemon peel, the olio deeply and evenly infused with the soul of what has bathed in it. 

This is a get out of the way and let time, nature and chemistry do their thing dish. There is no chefery involved, except the love and joy of the task. So much of cooking is intent. The understanding of, and desire for flavor. How much flavor can you imagine? That's the question. I can do without a lot of things, and have no interest in a “first-class” existence, but when it comes to what I put in my mouth, I'm a stickler. I know what's possible, and what my taste buds can envision, and I try to bring that into being. Okay, now I sound a little nutty, but you have to be a little gone to be truly here. (That makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from the great avant-garde bluesman Captain Beefheart. An interviewer asked him, "Do you think you hear differently than other people?" Beefheart's answer. "No. But I'm here differently than other people.")

So you got to get your hands on some good olive oil. This is essentially an olive oil dish and only as good as the oil used. Any decent EVOO will do the trick, but if you have the means and access, get the good shit. 

Now, open that wide can of those nice Italian tomatoes like you're a seventy-eight-year-old woman named Giulietta, a mole on your chin and a pair of big strong, slightly jiggly arms. Strain the tomatoes. We don't want the liquid or puree anywhere near us. It's not a sauce, it's a confit. I do it with a slotted spoon, but a mesh strainer is fine as well.

I use a 3.5 quart Le Creuset when I make it, but anything with a tight-fitting lid will do (whatever you'd make a pot of beans in is probably best). Put the tomatoes in. Now, the garlic. I always go big with garlic, but that's just me. You definitely need a worthy amount, a minimum of five large cloves. I slightly smash them to release their flavor but they should not be chopped and definitely not pressed. Next comes the fresh basil. Use a lot. More than you think makes sense. Not so much that it looks like you just trimmed the hedges, but plenty. Now, here's what makes my confit special. Lemon peel! You got to do this right and just get the yellow part, not that bitter white stuff under it. This takes a sharp knife. If you don't have a sharp knife, take a moment, ask yourself why you refuse to live your best life, then proceed. 

Peel one large lemon, and try to get decent size strips, because eating the olive oil softened lemon peel is one of the highlights of the dish, and a surprising gastronomic thrill. Better to cut larger, and scrape the bitter white off after, than to have a handful of lemon peel confetti, though that will still get you the flavor. I also toss in a few sprigs of fresh thyme, but only a few, and a small hunk of Parmesan rind to give it that little jolt of umami oomph. I hope everyone is keeping their Parmesan rinds (now, I sound like a real food writer, which is exactly what I don't want). A Parmesan rind is like a magic wand of flavor. Any savory thing you are going to cook low and slow with liquid is a candidate for Parm rinds. You can even make a stock out of them. I just like having them in my fridge or freezer, because one, it means I have been eating Parmesan, which is always good, and two, because the whole “rind” concept is meaningful. He who can extract the sacred from the ass-ends of life knows the secret. 

So, you are looking in your pot and what you see is: those lovely peeled and puree-free tomatoes, the battered but still noble garlic, the green and fragrant basilico, the strips of lemon peel (white gunk removed), a sprig or two of thyme and the Parm rind-- Any combination of these ingredients will work, by the way, but this particular sextet really swings. I also put a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt in, but I don't get nuts. There will be time to salt after. (If you don’t have Parmesan rinds, worry not, it’s still magic without it.)

Now comes the olive oil. Like the gasoline in a Molotov cocktail, this is the igniter, the vehicle of change. It will give what it has to the rest and the rest will offer up their essence to it. You need to use a lot. Again, it is an olive oil dish; that is the main ingredient. I wish I could give you a measurement, but it all depends on the size of the pot. You don't need everything submerged in olive oil, but you need it half submerged. If you've never made an olive oil confit before it should feel weird to pour that much olive oil into anything. No, don’t stop there, pour my brothers and sisters, pour-- pour and say five hosannas and a couple of thank you Jesuses in Sicilian. I'll include a pic of what it looks like before it goes in the oven as a guide.

Now that it’s all in there, cover the pot with a lid that fits. Set the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and cook for three hours. Don't touch it if you don't want to, but an hour and a half in, your home will start smelling so good, you'll be tempted to take a peek. So, peek. Just make sure to re-cover and leave that heat where it is. It has to be very low temp because you do not want the tomatoes to break up; you want them to give up, but not break up-- to surrender some but not all of their flavor. To offer up their soul, but not their blood. The same with the lemon peel and garlic. This is not total annihilation, like stock where you steal everything the chicken (or whatever you’re reducing) has to offer. This is more like Tantric sex; mutual pleasure through stillness. It's an absorption fable, and the flavors are way back in the mix, nothing front and forward; a dish that reveals itself more and more with every bite, each individual taste taking a moment in the spotlight yet always remaining one thing.

Once it’s combined with the pasta you can break up the tomatoes a bit. You can use it as the foundation for any classic tomato-based sauce and I have made killer puttanesca and amatriciana with it, but lately I just use it straight over a good, dried, long, thin Italian noodle. It's not just the flavors and the delicate way they dance with each other that makes it happen, it's the mouth feel. It's all that subtly infused olive oil, like liquid silk, leaving your soul nourished and your lips glistening. I made it the other day for a trio of native Romanos, two of them chefs. They gave it the Italian anarchist seal of approval, and were sopping it up with bread, getting their scarpetta on!

It's shockingly good if not downright elemental. Give it a try next time you got a yen for pasta. What do you have to lose except a quarter liter of olive oil?