Concasse
Like myself you have probably done this many times in your kitchen. You have made concasse tomatoes. What is it you ask? It is a term taken from the French word concasser which means to crush or grind. This particular cooking term means to rough chop any ingredient, mainly vegetables and especially applies to tomatoes.
A tomato that has been concasse has been prepped by removing the core, a cross hatch made in the skin on the opposite side then dropped (carefully) in boiling water and removed after 20-30 seconds. The tomato skin peels off easily and when cut in half you can remove the seeds using your thumb. Final step is to chop the tomato into whatever size dice fits the recipe you are making.
So when you have made an Italian bruschetta, that's exactly what you have done to the tomato. Another thing I learned is that if you dice the tomato small enough and add it to a Béarnaise sauce, that sauce then becomes what is called a Choron Sauce. You have to love Chef Escoffier who is the founding father of the five mother sauces and all the creations of sub sauces that came after.
A tomato that has been concasse has been prepped by removing the core, a cross hatch made in the skin on the opposite side then dropped (carefully) in boiling water and removed after 20-30 seconds. The tomato skin peels off easily and when cut in half you can remove the seeds using your thumb. Final step is to chop the tomato into whatever size dice fits the recipe you are making.
So when you have made an Italian bruschetta, that's exactly what you have done to the tomato. Another thing I learned is that if you dice the tomato small enough and add it to a Béarnaise sauce, that sauce then becomes what is called a Choron Sauce. You have to love Chef Escoffier who is the founding father of the five mother sauces and all the creations of sub sauces that came after.
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