What to cook for your PI: Tomates Farcies Two Ways

You are more likely to cook for colleagues in academia than in industry. Between your living wage and basic nutrition requirements, cooking can be the most practical gift a graduate student can offer. Follow these cooking tips to make a good impression on your PI:

1. Always use fresh ingredients and a recipe that calls for thorough cooking. Even if your PI is a microbiologist, she wont appreciate food poisoning. Leave your leftovers in the free-food area at work.
2. Make sure the dish isn't notoriously time consuming. No amount of hand-prepared fresh pasta using whole-wheat that you spent the last two years growing will impress a PI who gets a whiff of how much time you took off research to make it.
3. Choose a dish that pairs well with graduation. Hey... couldn't hurt.
4. Avoid store-bought prepared foods. Your PI is high class, even if he wears jeans with holes and sometimes sleeps on his office couch. Any dish that 'looks' home made is more respectable than guac and chips. Wine is an exception to this rule, and Two-Buck Chuck is an exception to that exception.

I'm joining my PI and his family for Thanksgiving later today, and I'm bringing a couple of Crustic Baguettes and Tomates Farcies Two Ways - a French stuffed tomato recipe. Before sharing the recipe below, here are some possible Autumn dishes that would also work well*:  Hasselback Potatoes (or anything with taters), Bread Pudding, Beet salad, or a nice bottle of Malbec.

Tomates Farcies Two Ways (12 servings, ~1 hour prep/cook time)

Ingredients
+ 12 Tomatoes (not too ripe)
+ 6 garlic cloves
+ 2 yellow onions
+ Parsley
+ Butter, Salt & Pepper
+ Splash of White Wine or Vermouth
+ Parmegiano Reggiano

Farce Type I (traditional)
+ Ground Beef
+ Bread crumbs

Farce Type II (vegetarian)
+ 1 Leek (chopped, dark green discarded)
+ 2 Bell Peppers (seeded, chopped)
+ Mushrooms, one basket
+ Dried Italian Herbs

Preparation
Wash your tomatoes (see above note about food poisoning). Cut the top off each tomato carefully; they will be the tomatoes' hats! Again, carefully remove the seeds using a spoon, but do not remove the meet on the tomato wall. Sweat the tomatoes by salting their insides and turning them over while preparing the next paragraph. Also, start preheating the oven to 460F, 260C.

For either Farce, start by blooming the onions in melted butter over a pot (with high walls, since we're adding lots of ingredients). Once translucent, add the seeds and let the juice evaporate, then add the garlic and parsley. Promptly start adding the ingredients in the order they are listed under each type of farce, waiting a couple minutes between each ingredient.  

Once the meat is cooked, or the veggies are softened, carefully stuff the tomatoes with the farce, adding enough to overflow slightly. Top them off with some Parmesan, add the hats, and throw them in a casserole dish, and throw that in the oven for twenty minutes. If possible, try to use a good looking casserole dish -- these tomatoes do NOT like being moved more than once. Enjoy.

Contributing Sources: La Tartine Gourmande, Vegetarian Cookery School, Petit Larousse de la Cuisine

*No, these are not all links to this blog. Sheesh.