The Washington Post recently ran a Top Tomato contest in which amateur cooks were invited to submit their recipes. These are the top three:
[ul]
[li]Chipotle shrimp[/li][li]Stuffed peppers[/li][li]Smoked salmon pasta[/li][/ul]
Shouldn’t tomatoes be the main ingredient?
:rolleyes:
To be fair, the top three are actually named:
[ul]
[li]Chipotle Shrimp With Tomato Corn Salsa[/li][li]Stuffed Corsican Peppers[/li][li]Tomato and Smoked Salmon Pasta[/li][/ul]
How dishes could possibly be made with tomatoes as the main ingredient? As a supertaster, I find tomatoes very overwhelming to the tongue, and I wouldn’t eat even be able to eat something that was mainly tomatoes.
Is this a serious question? I understand you’re a supertaster, but are you seriously asking how tomatoes can be the main ingredient in a dish? Really? I mean, tomato soup, tomato sandwiches, gazpacho, tomato pie, tomato aspic, bruschetta with tomatoes, fried green tomatoes, stuffed tomatoes, etc. I have a bumper crop of tomatoes right now, and tomato-centric dishes are my focus right now. Tomatoes are easy as a main ingredient.
Well, yes, but I did mean to say how* many* dishes could be made with tomatoes as a main ingredient. A few, yes.
I looked at the recipes a little more closely, and I can see Lukeinva’s complaint. Most of these recipes feel more like recipes that happen to have tomato, rather than focusing on tomato as the star of the show. It’s not quite as bad as some contests I’ve seen, where the featured ingredient just seems like a gratuitous add-on, but if chipotle shrimp can win, then any Mexican dish with a tomato-based salsa can. And the stuffed pepper recipe I would expect in a pepper recipe contest, not a tomato one. Why not stuff tomatoes? At least the recipe itself has a good deal of tomato in it.
Here is my entry. It’s a simple tomato salad with hard egg, red onion, parsely and a broken red wine and evoo vinaigrette. It wasn’t even mentioned (:()which is okay really, but at least tomatoes are the featured ingredient; which were supremely ripe heirlooms. Next year I’m submitting lobster, with tomatoes. 
This is common in cooking contests like this. The listed ingredient isn’t the main one, and the judging standards are abitrary. Winners I’ve seen in these tend to have a lot of ingredients and seem to be more about appearance and trendy styles than flavor. This may be better than live cooking contests where several people assure me the judging is rigged. Those several people of course did not win.
A few? I would add to pulykamell’s list: chili, bouillabaisse, cioppino, manhattan clam chowder, bolognese sauce, lasagna, creole, caprese salad, pico de gallo, and BLTs for cryin’ out loud.
I saw a recipe for a gazpacho salad the other day (here?). There are also stuffed tomatoes, tomato aspic, sun dried tomato dishes, tomato pies, stewed tomatos, and any number of stews and soups with a tomato base.
Hey! I mentioned like half of those! 
I’m not sure I would consider stews and soups in a tomato-centric recipe contest, unless tomatoes truly are the showcase ingredient. For me, a contest like this should have something like a tomato tart, a simple pasta dish where tomatoes carry the flavor, something of that nature. Actually, with a little Googling, most of the recipes in this article is what I’d expect from a tomato-focused recipe contest.
As anyone from Indiana or from anyone from any other tomato growing state can tell you… there is one clear winner.
Pick one fresh vine ripened tomato
Slice
Sprinkle with a dash of salt
Eat.
Yeah, sorry, visions of tomato dishes were dancing in my head 
What are the herbs on that? We love tomatoes and hard boiled eggs.
According to his post, parsley. Chives (or even scallions) would work very well, too, and is how my parents made a similar dish.