Top of The Crop
A Cool Granita Wins Readers' Easy Recipe Contest

By Bonnie S. Benwick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Compliments to the cooks are in order: Food section readers sent in more than 345 entries for our Easy Tomato Recipe Contest, and we were more than impressed. We asked for original creations containing no more than 10 ingredients, because let's face it: You don't have to do much to a ripe tomato in August.

But judging by the range of titles and treatments, it's clear there is a whole lotta tomato love out there -- and many, many ways to express it in the kitchen.

A rundown of those that didn't make the cut might seem like a recitation by the shrimp-lovin' Army private in "Forrest Gump": tomato tarts with cheese, tomato sandwiches with peanut butter, tomato pudding, tomato bruschette, tomato salsas and chutneys and sauces (cooked and no-cook), tomato salads with jicama or avocado or mango, tomato soups with dill or dried apricots or tomato dumplings, tomatoes with eggs or pasta or mushrooms or lentils or beef or rice or tuna or onions or green chili peppers or peas or corn or imitation crabmeat or soft-shell crabs or mussels or tilapia or turkey bacon or hamburger or tabbouleh or pine nuts or pretzels or watermelon juice, tomatoes in milk or vinaigrette or polenta or in a crockpot, practically alone, for 12 hours.

They were baked, blanched, BLT'd, broiled, canned, fried, frozen, gingered, gratineed, microwaved, pureed, relished, sauteed, sliced, spiced, stacked, stewed, strained, stuffed and even threaded onto dental floss to create a Hawaiian-style grape tomato lei (a photo illustration was included).

We tested and tested. Then it came down to a favored few, judged by Food section staffers, In Season columnist Stephanie Witt Sedgwick and Post copy editor Geneva Collins, who is a stalwart recipe tester with a culinary education. At the top of the heap was the simple yet sophisticated Caprese Granita, submitted by Linda Reck of Arlington.

Her recipe caught our attention right from the start. The savory, small appetizer is a play on two of Reck's Italian favorites: caprese salad and coffee granita. She strains a macerated mixture of tomatoes, garlic, salt and vinegar to make a frozen base that forms light, icy crystals. Just before serving, she folds in shreds of fresh basil. A small dollop of mascarpone cheese is a surprise that awaits between two layers of the tomato granita; a sprinkling of chopped black olives tops each portion.

The granita "evolved out of something I've been making for guests and friends for three years," she told us last week. "Everybody who's had it loves it, because it's such a surprise."

In the summer, she's in line at the Arlington Farmers Market every Saturday morning to find the best tomatoes, while her husband gets in a different line for berries.

Reck, 57, a retired National Institutes of Health administrator in international AIDS coordination, was surprised about her first-place win because she's a self-taught cook. "I actually had to sit down and figure out how to notate this for the contest," she said. "I've never taken a class."

She'll get one now: a private session with L'Academie de Cuisine founder Francois Dionot.

Alexandria resident Pat Clopper's Fresh Tomato Sauce was a close second. The National Gallery information desk volunteer has been making her recipe since 1961, when she had to prep six pounds of green beans in order to learn sauce secrets from a chef in Positano, Italy. (At 72, she recalls that incident as clearly as if it had just occurred.) Sometimes she makes the smooth, strained sauce with shallots instead of garlic and says that gives it "a French taste."

"This recipe is in my head, like it's in steel," she says.

The wow factor of Clopper's sauce, even as a supporting player in other recipes, is its pure flavor. "It's Italian, not Italian American," she says, alluding to the thicker, more-seasoned sauces she first tasted in Italian restaurants in Portland, Ore., after having returned to the States from living in Italy. "By next week, my husband and I will be making two and three batches of this red sauce every other night, until it doesn't fit in the freezer anymore. We'll eat it all winter long."

Pat and Jack Clopper are huge tomato fans; he likes Sunrise and Cherokee Purple varieties best, and she's appreciative of the specimens a neighbor brings them from West Virginia. They will use their sauce in a variety of ways: on fettucine, of course; mixed with bread crumbs, to fill the center of hollowed-out pattypan squash; and layered in zucchini lasagna. And they'll take filled containers to their 92-year-old aunt in Buffalo, who takes the Cloppers to farms near her house for -- what else? -- more tomatoes.

For her second-place win, Pat Clopper will receive an Oxo food mill.

The third-place recipe, Tomato Shrimp Delight, might be the impetus for a new venture.

Ming Soo Hoo loves to cook for the friends and fellow church members who frequent her Gaithersburg home; she especially likes recipes that don't keep her in the kitchen too long. Just a few days before she saw the contest announcement in the Food section, she had on hand some frozen shrimp, fresh spinach and many tomatoes she had purchased at Grand Mart and at Giant. A friend came over for dinner, and the dish dreamed up in an instant was deemed a winner.

Ming says she never seeds tomatoes for her dishes because she likes to taste the whole tomato. "This is very fast and very easy," she says. "I like the heat in it" from the jalapeño pepper and its seeds. "And it's pretty." The 55-year-old pediatric physical therapist is fond of tomatoes and submitted four other entries as well. She'd been rooting for her personal favorite, Tomato Eggs.

Her daughter helped her write the recipes, and now her friends are urging Ming to write a cookbook.

"I say to myself, middle age? What else can I do now? Maybe I should do that cookbook," she says.

To help her make short work of future tomato endeavors, Ming will receive a Lamson Sharp tomato knife.

"Top Tomato" aprons are on the way to all 10 winners, too. Thanks to all who participated. Shall we do this again next year?