Tomato Salad with burrata cheese, Lucy's garden basil and Sparrow Lane balsamic vinegar
Ingredients:
- 1 pound heirloom tomatoes
- 2 each scallions
- 8 ounces burrata cheese
- 2 sprigs Thai basil
- 2 slices country bread
- 1 teaspoon tomato paste
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- Balsamic vinegar
- Salt & pepper
- Slice tomatoes into random shapes, place flat on a plate. Reserve the tomato trimmings.
- Trim the scallions and slice fine. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar on tomatoes, season with sliced scallions, salt and pepper. Let the tomatoes marinade at room temperature.
- Pick the leaves from the basil sprigs and tear into small pieces, reserve the stems. To make tomato vinaigrette; place tomato trimmings, tomato paste, 1 basil stem in a blender.
- Add a small amount of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and water if necessary, season with salt and pepper.
- Cut the country bread into batons.
- Heat 2 ounces of olive oil in a sauté pan and toast the batons to make croutons, season with salt.
- Split the burrata cheese between four plates and arrange the marinated tomatoes around.
- Drizzle the tomato vinaigrette around.
- Sprinkle the salad with the torn basil leaves and crouton batons.
- Season the burrata cheese with salt, fresh cracked pepper and serve.
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Artichoke soup
Ingredients:
- 6 large artichoke hearts sliced
- ¼ cup white wine
- ¼ cup yellow onion sliced
- ¼ cup leeks (white part only) sliced and washed
- 2 cloves garlic peeled
- 1 teaspoon licorice root powder
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 quart water
Salt and pepper
Garnish:
Ingredients:
- 2 slices dense white bread cut into small cubes
- ¼ cup English peas blanched
- ¼ cup snow peas cut in ½ and blanched
- ¼ cup hen of the woods mushrooms
- 10 leaves mint chopped
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- Heat olive oil in a sauté pan, add the white bread croutons and cook until crunchy.
- In a separate pan heat olive oil and sauté the mushrooms until cooked, add the snow and English peas and heat through.
- Season with salt and pepper, add the chopped mint.
- Split the peas and mushrooms between 6 warm soup bowls. Bring the soup to a boil and pour into the bowls.
- Garnish with the croutons and serve
Bardessono
6526 Yount Street
Yountville, CA 94599
Phone: (707) 204 6000
Website: www.bardessono.com
About Executive Chef Sean O'Toole:
He has spent over 15 years in some of the most highly regarded restaurants in the United States and Europe. His broad understanding of different cuisines and techniques as well as his deep appreciation of locally-sourced, artisanal foods define the cuisine at Bardessono Restaurant.
O'Toole grew up in Wakefield, MA outside of Boston. He developed an early affinity for food and hospitality while spending time with his father, a hotel general manager, who he followed through a number of hotel and restaurant properties.
By the time he graduated from high school, O'Toole was certain he wanted to make a career in the kitchen. O'Toole graduated from Johnson and Wales University in Providence, RI with both an A.O.S. in Culinary Arts and a B.S. in Food Service Management. After graduation he took a position at Season's Restaurant in the Bostonian Hotel working under Chef Peter McCarthy.
During his year and a half in that kitchen, O'Toole developed a passion for locally-farmed produce and eventually headed west to San Francisco, CA to revel in the abundance of local, artisanal foods and produce.
O'Toole spent five years at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where Chef Sylvain Portay mentored him in the essence of true French cuisine. To reinforce his studies, he traveled to France to apprentice with Chef Jacques Maximin at his Michelin-starred Restaurant Maximin. O'Toole spent the next two years in New York City in the kitchens of Tabla Restaurant and Café Boulud.
In 2002 O'Toole returned to San Francisco to work with Chef Laurent Gras as Sous Chef of the Fifth Floor Restaurant. The following year he moved to the three-and-a-half star restaurant Masa's where he served as Sous Chef under Chef Ron Siegel. Before departing San Francisco again, O'Toole spent two months in Chef Michael Tusk's kitchen at Quince restaurant.
Upon his 2004 arrival in Paris, O'Toole trained in the kitchens of the Group Alain Ducasse in preparation for the opening of Chef Ducasse's Las Vegas outpost Mix, where he joined the kitchen management team as Chef de Cuisine.
In 2007 O'Toole became the Culinary Director of Operations at the award-winning Mina Group. Sean and his wife Cynthia O'Toole live in Penngrove with their two dogs.
