Pat Ernst Dugan loves to cook, eat, travel and learn about regional foods. She's been doing it for 18 years.

Dugan, of Corning, shares her culinary knowledge with readers in a weekly food column. "Foodly Yours" covers cooking, dining and Finger Lakes foods, from locally grown produce, cooking gadgets and tools to a a new recipe each week, proposed by Dugan to be "quick-fix, limited ingredient and realistic."

Tomato time
Five easy ways to use that bounty of juicy fall beauties
Pat Ernst Dugan
September 15, 2005

JEFF RICHARDS/Star-Gazette
Dano Hutnik, co-owner and chef of Dano's Heuriger restaurant in Caywood, just north of Lodi on Seneca Lake, selects fresh tomatoes at Countryside Produce in Interlaken. The bounty of local tomatoes is now in, and there are plenty of ways to use them.

There's no such thing as too many tomatoes - zucchini maybe, but not tomatoes. We cry all winter long about the state of tomatoes. They're hard, tasteless, ripped from the vines green and left to ripen in large warehouses. They travel thousands of miles to reach our supermarket shelves.

So let's celebrate our fall beauties, our garden-grown, vine-ripened, picked-when-fully-red-ripe tomato bounty.

How do we do that? Let's count the ways, knowing also that not only do they taste divinely juicy, but recent medical research raves about the health benefits of lycopene (the red pigment in tomatoes), which has been credited with protecting us from cancers and linked to prevention of heart disease.

Tomato math goes something like this:

1. One-tomato day: white bread wonder.

Slice tomato, sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper and savor in an open-face fresh tomato sandwich with light mayonnaise on white Italian bread.

2. Two-tomato day: side salad and sensible BLT.

For salad, dice tomatoes, sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper, and toss with zesty Italian dressing. Fresh basil could enhance this side salad along with sliced black olives.

For BLT, slice tomatoes thickly, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Microwave bacon and toast some hearty, seedy whole wheat bread. Build a kingly BLT by spreading bread with GourMayo Caesar Ranch Mayo and small romaine leaves.

3. Three-tomato day: Salade Nicoise.

This salad is beautiful when ingredients are placed in colorful rows on a platter that is longer than it is wide. The French named this composed salad after the tiny little black olives, Nicoise. If you are lucky, you can find them locally at supermarket olive bars. If you are extremely lucky, they might be sans pits. (Pitted Kalamata olives are a great substitute.)

Place olives at the end of the platter. Cut the tomatoes into wedges. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place next to olives in a neat pile. Next, drain two cans of albacore tuna. Place tuna next to tomatoes, pulling apart with a fork into bite-sized pieces.

Cook whole green beans 8 minutes, toss with kosher salt and slide on plate next to tuna. Boil halved new potatoes, skin on, until just tender. Toss with dressing (I prefer creamy dill) and place on platter next to the green beans.

These bands of food should now fill the platter. Hard-boiled egg is sometimes sprinkled on top, perhaps to simulate the sunny skies of Nice, France. I prefer to scatter chopped baby corn on top. Drizzle the entire plate with dressing of your choice.

4. Four-tomato day: Stuff them.

Stuffed tomatoes are a perfect side dish to hamburger steaks and can be put together quickly using 1 cup purchased herb-seasoned stuffing mix, tossed with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, 2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onions, 2 tablespoons melted butter and a little Italian dressing to moisten.

After slicing off the top of tomatoes, scoop out the pulp. Salt and pepper shells, then invert onto paper towels to drain about 5 minutes. After stuffing, broil tomatoes on a baking sheet until hot, about 5 minutes.

5. Five-tomato day: Fresh Tomato Cheese Tart.

Superbly well-balanced with a crispy crust and fresh flavorful tomatoes! This crust has so much butter that it can't fail.

For crust:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

8 tablespoons cold butter, cubed

3 tablespoons shortening

1/3 cup ice water

Process flour and salt in food processor bowl. Add cold butter. Pulse until crumbly. Add shortening. Process until integrated into mix. Pour mixture into bowl and gradually add ice water, while stirring lightly with a fork. Gather together and roll on floured surface. Place in 10-inch tart pan or low-sided pie plate. Prick with fork. Freeze for 45 minutes. Bake in preheated 375-degree oven about 15 minutes until lightly brown and fully baked.

For tomatoes:

5 tomatoes, sliced into 20 slices

Kosher salt and pepper

1/4 pound grated Gruyere cheese

6 green onions, finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped

2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated

2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs

1 tablespoon butter, melted

Sprinkle slices with salt and pepper. Let sit at least 30 minutes to release unwanted liquid on paper towels. As soon as crust is removed from oven, scatter Gruyere cheese over bottom. Overlap tomatoes on top of cheese in concentric circles, filling in the center also. Sprinkle with freshly ground pepper. Scatter green onions over tomatoes, then basil. Combine crumbs and Parmesan cheese. Sprinkle over top. Drizzle with melted butter. Bake in 350-degree oven for 20 minutes.

C'est tout!