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A Good Appetite

Tomato Water (Remember That?) Charms Once Again

Credit...Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

IN the 1990s, chefs around the country seemed mesmerized by an intense translucent liquid, a nectar of the vegetable garden: tomato water. Brightly flavored yet almost invisible, it was the clear essence of summer in spoonable form.

It’s debatable which chef started the trend, but tomato water quickly became beloved in four-star kitchens. It was ladled into oversize white plates as a fragrant consommé for fish. You saw it emulsified into sauces and frozen into sorbets.

Then, suddenly, it all but disappeared, though it pops up in the occasional cocktail.

Back in the day, I, too, fell victim to its charm. Everyone loved the seared salmon with tomato water I made from a magazine recipe. I served it repeatedly, until I threw it over for some other passing trend (cucumber gelée, perhaps).

Recently, a couple of overripe heirlooms that were just about to burst on my counter reminded me of tomato water and tempted me to capture their precious juice.

While even the mighty Internet could not find the original salmon dish for me, I found other tomato-water recipes using a range of techniques.

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Credit...Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

In one, tomatoes were puréed with aromatics (garlic, lemon grass), then strained into dark viscous juice. Another would have me mashing up tomatoes with a mixer, then draining them in a dish towel.

I used to halve the tomatoes, tie them up into an old thin T-shirt in lieu of cheesecloth and let them drip for hours. This gave me a potently flavored clear liquid with a faint yellow cast.

This time, to extract more juice, I cubed the tomatoes, exposing more surface area. I also salted the cubes lightly to season them and draw out the moisture. For a faint pinelike flavor, I tossed in a bruised rosemary sprig.

A few hours later I had an aromatic, albeit cloudy, liquid. I drizzled a little on some fish fillets seared alongside olives (using local blackfish in place of salmon), then topped it all with a slick of good olive oil, flaky sea salt and torn mint and basil.

The dish was sweet and a little tart from the lemony character of the heirloom tomatoes, and extremely vibrant and fresh.

I could easily see why I pulled out that salmon at every dinner party I held back in 1998. And why I think it could make a comeback this summer.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section D, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Tomato Water (Remember That?) Makes a Comeback. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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