Rob: Hi, my name is Rob Carson, I’m a radio personality, and I cook, and today we are cooking with a friend of mine. This is chef Bryan from bryanskitchen.com, and that’s Bryan with a B-R-Y, bryanskitchen.com. You do what here?
Bryan: Well a, well I would call this a cooking studio.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: 1,200 foot, 1,200 square foot cooking studio, we do corporate team building, we do private classes, public classes, private dinner parties.
Rob: They do iron chef’s competitions here.
Bryan: Lot of fun.
Rob: Uh huh. Excellent.
Bryan: Lot of fun.
Rob: Alright, so, we’re gonna cook a little side here that looks pretty fun. What are we calling these?
Bryan: These are roasted parmesan tomato crowns.
Rob: Roasted parmesan tomato crowns. Excellent.
Bryan: And the reason we call them roasted parmesan tomato crowns is because we cut the tomatoes into little crowns. Okay.
Rob: Okay. Alright, so, Bryan, what are we going to need as far as ingredients.
Bryan: Tomatoes.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Salt. Pepper. Herbs of your choice.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: We’re gonna use today, sage, thyme, and parsley.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Olive oil.
Rob: Uh huh.
Bryan: And parmesan cheese.
Rob: Okay, and these by the way are roma tomatoes.
Bryan: Italian roma tomatoes, you’re also going to need a sharp paring or boning knife.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: And a cutting board.
Rob: Cool. This look kind of fancy, it’s like, hey look I’m going to prom. How do we get the tomato to look like this.
Bryan: Very simple process.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Basically what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna take your boning or paring knife, basically we’re just gonna cut the ends off.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Alright. Then we’re going to hold the knife, kinda like a pencil.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. And then you’re gonna start with an angled cut all the way down to the cutting board, start at the same point, all the way down to the cutting board, and just make, try and keep that angles the same. Make sure that the last cut intersects with the next cut, all the way around the middle of the tomato. Make sure that the knife actually hits the cutting board each time, and when you get around, you can pull them apart.
Rob: Hey.
Bryan: And you have your little tomato crowns.
Rob: Excellent.
Bryan: Okay.
Rob: Now you wouldn’t recommend doing it like this, right.
Bryan: No.
Rob: That would be bad. Yeah, that would be bad, don’t do that. Make sure it’s on the cutting board.
Bryan: If you, there is another way you can do them, if you don’t want to do the crown themselves, just take the ends off so they’ll set flat, cut them across, and you can do the same thing, it’s gonna be the same taste, flavor, it’s not gonna be looking…
Rob: Yeah, but it doesn’t look as cool.
Bryan: Not even close.
Rob: Come on Bryan. Just one more.
Bryan: Basically what we’re gonna do is you wanna take the ends off, we’re gonna hold the knife like a pencil start with an angled cut, making sure that the next cut intersects with the previous cut, and if you’re able to do that around the middle of the tomato, when you get finished, and completely around, pull it apart, and you have your tomato crowns. What we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna start off with the olive oil, okay. Can do 2 different ways, if you have a, little oil curette, you just drizzle a little bit on, you could use that, or you could use a pastry brush, basically all you wanna do is enhance the flavor of the tomato a little bit with the olive oil, okay. So we tap the tomatoes with the olive oil and then for the ingredients, what we’re gonna do is the fresh herb blend that we have.
Rob: Okay, and again that is…
Bryan: This is sage, thyme and parsley. Okay. I would not suggest using dry herbs on this just because they’re not in the oven that long, and the dry herbs need temperature and moisture to release their flavors, now, then the other thing that I like to do, is I like to season after I got my herbs on, so that the herbs gets seasoned as well.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: Okay. so we put our herbs on it, then we’re gonna take our salt, koshered salt, so again this is personal preference, you want to, you know, make sure you get enough of the salt on it, so we get our salt and pepper on there. and basically that’s all we’re gonna do, that’s the prep work on it.
Rob: Alright, so we got the seasonings on here, now what are we gonna do, stick them in the oven at what, 425 again.
Bryan: Then put them in the oven at 425 for about 2 minutes.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: We’re gonna pull them out, top them with parmesan cheese, back in the oven for about 3 minutes, done.
Rob: Sounds good, let’s do it. alright, so the parmesan tomato crowns, without the parmesan yet are in the oven they’re at 425 and they’ve been there for what, about 2, 3 minutes, what.
Bryan: 2, 2 and half minutes.
Rob: Alright, cool, let’s take them out, put the cheese on.
Bryan: And this again be a very quick process.
Rob: Alright.
Bryan: What we’re gonna do, we’re gonna pull them out, set them down on our trivets, so we don’t burn the counter, then we’re gonna add a little bit of parmesan cheese, right on top.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: And then they’re gonna go right back in the oven.
Rob: Remember, everything is better with cheese.
Bryan: Another variation you could do with this is goat cheese.
Rob: Oh, that’s a fantastic.
Bryan: Goat cheese works really well with this.
Rob: Absolutely, and they would melt all over the place.
Bryan: Yup.
Rob: It would be awesome.
Bryan: Okay, so that’s all we want to do, you can go heavy or as light on the cheese, I wouldn’t suggest going to heavy.
Rob: Sure. You wanna have the flavor of the tomato.
Bryan: Correct.
Rob: And the herbs, I should say.
Bryan: Back in the oven.
Rob: Another 2 minutes.
Bryan: 2 to 3 minutes, basically what we want is just the cheese to start to melt, we don’t want it falling Rob: all over the place.
Rob: Yeah, and you know what, your tomatoes become too mooshy. I see the bottom, the juice is kinda bubbling, and the cheese are just starting to melt, looks fantastic, now we’re gonna plate it I guess.
Bryan: Go ahead and put it on plate, and this is a nice, you know, afternoon snack, when you do this, if you do a couple at a time.
Rob: Yah.
Bryan: Pop this in the refrigerator, and you can, you know, enjoy them as an afternoon snack.
Rob: Sure.
Bryan: So you just take, you know, couple of the tomato crowns.
Rob: Love it.
Bryan: Just kinda set them on the plate.
Rob: Uh hm.
Bryan: Then we can finish it up with a little bit of, little bit maybe, little bit of rosemary.
Rob: Rosemary’s always nice.
Bryan: Rosemary is always nice, and I’m a big fan of the chive.
Rob: Okay.
Bryan: So we can.
Rob: Now, what you might do is, you can do this as a course, I would assume, can be a salad course, or you can obviously serve it as a side, this looks fantastic. There you go roasted tomato parmesan crowns.