Tomato Dessert Surprises and Delights As An Ice Cream Smoothie

Heirloom Tomatoes In Every Course Including The Tomato Ice Cream Smoothie For Dessert.

Tomato ice cream smoothie for the dessert course using the Heirloom tomatoes was the surprise of the evening.

Chef Gorji teamed up with Whole Foods Market in August 2014 to create a three course dinner  using Heirloom tomatoes in every course—including dessert. There’s nothing old-fashioned about these wonderful and flavorful fruit that define what a tomato should taste like. Chef was thrilled to add these beautiful and tasty fruits to his new mediterranean cuisine. The result was a panzanella salad with Alaskan salmon, Texas wild boar with a grilled heirloom atop gorgonzola gnocchi with grilled okra. The biggest hit though was a tomato ice cream smoothie for dessert that pleasantly surprised everyone. Since then the tomato dessert has been added this to his savory dessert offerings and it is gaining a lot of fans.

Whole Foods produce experts Ronnie and Krista, here with Chef Gorji were available through out the evening to answer our questions about the history and availability of this wonderful produce.

Heirloom Tomatoes Taste Like “Real” Tomatoes.

The history of this ancient fruit is very interesting. Here’s a short excerpt from a master gardener association: “Heirloom tomatoes have become very popular. And for a good reason!  They are beautiful, colorful and often very unusual. But most importantly, they taste like “real” tomatoes. The most accepted definition of an heirloom tomato is that it must be “open pollinated” and have been grown for at least 50 years, or introduced before 1940. Open pollinated basically means if you save the seeds from a particular fruit, plants grown from those seeds will usually produce the same fruit. They have become known as “heirlooms” because the seeds have been saved and passed down from generation to generation. The earliest record of the use of the

Guests enjoying the Summer Supper event at Canary By Gorji featuring Heirloom tomatoes in every course

word “heirloom” to describe these varieties is 1940. There are currently more than 7500 heirloom tomatoes listed in the Seed Savers’ Exchange Yearbook. “For a complete list of heirloom tomato varieties, read more  here.

What is your favorite way to use Heriloom tomatoes?