Facing a glut of cherry tomatoes? Turn 'em into a cobbler
This time of year, I could live on tomato sandwiches. But it's hard to make a sandwich out of cherry tomatoes, and I have loads of cherry tomatoes. I don't know what it is, but I can't resist buying them when I see them at the farmers market. If you are like me and have a glut of cherry tomatoes, this recipe is for you.
Often, I make a simple fresh tomato sauce with cherry tomatoes, but this week, on a rainy day, I was craving summertime comfort food. There is nothing more comforting than homemade biscuits and I had all those cherry tomatoes. so I decided to combine them and make a biscuit-topped cobbler. Just the idea of it, hit the spot. To be honest, I had never made a tomato cobbler or even tasted one, but it made so much sense. Once I decided to make the savory cobbler, I thought of one of my favorite childhood sandwiches; a hot open-faced pimento cheese and tomato and so, pimento-cheese biscuits it would be!
I wanted the cobbler to be simple and showcase the fresh vine-ripened local tomatoes, so I kept it to basically two ingredients, leeks and tomatoes. I sweated three leeks with olive oil, salt and white pepper, but you could use about half as many shallots instead. Once they were soft and fragrant, I deglazed the pan with balsamic vinegar which would be the “tang” in the cobbler. I gently mixed in the clean whole cherry tomatoes and seasoned them with salt and granulated garlic — not wanting to add any more “wet” ingredients. Finally, I added some cornstarch to thicken the juices. I wanted the cherry tomatoes to cook in a similar manner to a berry cobbler.
Since the filling was so simple, I decided to up the ante on the biscuit topping. When I make a sweet cobbler, I make sweet cream biscuits but since the tomato cobbler was savory, I decided to make my “Praise the Lard” biscuits and add pimento cheese turning the biscuit topping into pimento-cheese biscuits.
Depending on the size of your biscuit cutter and your pan, you may need to cut some of the biscuits in half to fit. You want the biscuits to be close together, but leave a little room for rising. Make sure to bake the cobbler long enough so that the biscuits are cooked all the way through. If you have any extra dough, you can make extra biscuits on the side while you are baking the cobbler — but remember that the biscuit will only take about 10-15 minutes to bake.
After nearly an hour in the oven, I was more than rewarded. Although the ingredients were few, the combination of the leeks, farm-fresh cherry tomatoes and the balsamic vinegar baked into a luscious complex filling that was perfectly accented by the flaky pimento-cheese studded biscuits. I may never eat cherry tomatoes any other way — this is one dish that I am going to have on rotation until the vines run out of cherry tomatoes!
• Elizabeth Karmel is a barbecue and Southern foods expert. She is the chef and pitmaster at online retailer CarolinaCueToGo.com and the author of three books, including “Taming the Flame.”