Fermentation station

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Traditionally, kimchi is a pickled vegetable buried in a clay vessel underground to ferment over the winter.  It’s classically Korean, and Americans primarily see kimchi take the form of cabbage - good, hot, pickled cabbage.  I’ve been making cabbage kimchi for years, although it is not the standard fermented variety.  Up until recently, I was a little afraid of home fermenting experiments.  With the success of the sauerkraut trial, though, I’m over it.

And so my real kimchi experiment begins!

A bunch of small Daikon radishes came in this past week’s CSA share.  What better way to use the Daikon than to make them into kimchi?

First things first: I had to find Korean ground chile paste.  A trip to the H-mart in Upper Darby provided a massive wealth of choices.  I cannot tell you what brand I purchased because the brand name is in Korean.  However, I snuck a taste at home and it was the perfect choice.  This kimchi is going to be fabulous!  I picked up a ginger root, as well, and the project was off to a great start!

So here’s the recipe:

1 head garlic (cloves separated and peeled)
2 pcs. of ginger root (1-inch)
2 Tbsp. Korean ground chile
2 Tbsp. Salt
2 large Daikons (peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes) - or in my case, one bunch of small Daikons
1 bunch of Swiss chard (chopped into 1-inch pieces)
Sugar

Whirl the ginger, ground chile, salt and garlic (from my garden) in a food processor until it’s minced.  Place the chile mixture and Daikon radish (from the CSA share) in a large ziploc and mix together.  Really mush the chile mixture into the Daikon - make sure it’s absolutely covered with chile mixture.  Grab a couple of freshly sterilized canning jars (wide mouth pint jars work best for this) and load the Daikon in until the jars are about a quarter full.  Layer in some swiss chard (from the CSA share) and sprinkle a bit of sugar on top of the chard.  Layer in more Daikon until the jars are half full.  Layer in more swiss chard and sugar.  Layer in more Daikon until the jars are 3/4 full, and top with more swiss chard and sugar.  Wipe the threads of the jar to remove any bits of stuff that fell over the jar, and screw the lids on really tight.

Burying your jars underground for the Winter is not necessary for fermentation, I’m happy to say!  In fact, you need only find a dark, cool space and place your jars in there for a few days.  The kimchi should ferment within three to four days.  My recipe says not to disturb the jars while they’re fermenting, and you’ll know they’re fermenting because water will rise from the vegetables.  I made my kimchi last night and I can already see the fermentation process in action.

When the kimchi is done fermenting, refrigerate the jars.  It should last for about a month in the fridge.  I have three pints and a half pint of kimchi currently fermenting.  I love kimchi, but enough to eat four jars of it in a month?  Probably not.  My plan is to keep two jars, give one jar away to a friend, and put one jar through a water bath.  I really want to see if the texture of the Daikon is negatively affected by the water bath.  Certainly canning pickles for long-term storage is a common practice, so why not kimchi?

Beet and goat cheese stacks

Friday, September 14, 2007

We are a one beet-eater household.  I adore them; my husband thinks they’re vile.  Because the opportunity to make lunch or dinner only for myself rarely materializes, I don’t make beets very often.  Today, though, I took a sick day off from work and started to feel better toward lunchtime, so I figured I’d make something soothing and comforting.  There just happens to be a bag of beets from Paradise Organics and a big old chunk of Shellbark Hollow Farms sharp goat cheese in the house right now, so it seemed a clear choice: roasted beet and goat cheese stacks with sorrel from the garden.

Eating this made me feel loads better - it’s pretty to look at, didn’t take a lot of effort to prepare, and has a lot of flavor without being hard on the stomach.  It’s the perfect sick day food!

I started by roasting the beets in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes.  After peeling the skin off the beets, I sliced them up and let them cool.  A quick walk to the garden procured a bit of the sorrel, which was then cut into chiffonade using kitchen shears.  The cheese was warmed to room temp, making it very easy to handle.  Putting the layers together was a snap.  The only ingredient that wasn’t locally grown was the balsamic vinegar I drizzled over top before eating.

Challenge meal week one

Thursday, September 13, 2007

For the first week of the September Challenge I wanted to make something simple. I’ve had some short ribs from Meadow Run Farms in the freezer so I figured what’s easier than braising some beef for a couple of hours. I found a couple of recipes and narrowed it down to the simplest. I set the meat out to defrost, decided I’d roast some potatoes to go with it and steam some green beans. I went out and bought a couple of bottles of local Cabernet. Then around 3.30 I got home and realized I’d lost the stupid recipe. I searched my browser history hoping it would turn up but it didn’t so I browsed my cookbooks and epicurious until I found a similar recipe and a good hour after I wanted to I got to work.

The biggest problem was that I didn’t RTFR. (thank you Smitten Kitchen for the perfect acronym.) I spent hours slaving over a hot stove in my un-air conditioned kitchen on a hot, humid Philadelphia summer day. The initial recipe called for all of the cooking on the stove top in a dutch oven, but the other recipes all called for the short ribs to braise in the oven. Never having made short ribs before I wasn’t willing to mess around. My dutch oven’s so large that cooking the potatoes in the oven was out so I decided to use my leeks and make mashed potatoes with leeks and thyme instead. Since I had a leek or two left over I found a recipe for swiss chard with leeks and made that instead of the green beans.

All of the cooking was extremely hands on and hot and by the time it was ready to eat I’d lost interest completely.  The worst part was that the ribs weren’t even all that good. The chard and potatoes were fantastic, but the ribs just weren’t as flavorful as I would have hoped. And seriously, braised short ribs with mashed potatoes would have been fine on a crisp, almost fall day like today, but it was not an appropriate meal for last Saturday’s stickiness.

At least my husband liked it.

Short ribs- Meadow Run Farms
Chicken stock- made from chicken from Meadow Run farms
Cabernet- Chadd’s Ford
Rosemary- my garden
basil (instead of sage)- my garden
Carrots- Lancaster, Pa via Farm to City farmer’s market
Onion- Red Earth Farm
Garlic Red Earth Farm
not local- salt, pepper, tomato paste, oil, bay leaf

Mashed Potatoes with Leeks and Thyme

Potatoes- Red Earth Farm
Leeks- Red Earth Farm
Thyme- my garden
Milk- Merrymead Farm
not local-salt, pepper, butter

Seared Rainbow Chard with Leeks

Chard-Red Earth Farm
Leeks-Red Earth Farm
not local, butter, oil, salt, pepper

Baking the Green Zebras

Monday, September 10, 2007

I was trying to think of some way of using the Green Zebra tomatoes that didn’t involve putting them in a salad. As much as I love fried green tomatoes, I’m trying to cut down on fried foods, so that also wasn’t an option. I decided to bake them, thinking that the high heat would temper the tartness.

I sliced the tomatoes, put them in a baking dish, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and drizzled some olive oil. In a saucepan, I sauteed an onion, a clove of garlic, and a bell pepper (all from a previous CSA share) in a little olive oil until they were soft, then I spread them over the tomatoes. I then covered the top with grated Pecorino Romano cheese and put it in a 400-degree oven to bake for 25 minutes. When they were done, I sprinkled some chopped fresh basil (also locally grown) and served the tomatoes as a warm side for dinner.

To my surprise, baking the tomatoes brought out the tart taste rather than mellowing and sweetening them. They were still delicious, though. Green zebras might just be better for pickling if you like sour pickles, I think, but give them a try if you can get hold of them.

Baked eggplant cutlets

Eggplant was a foreign thing in my household growing up.  They were certainly available, but my mother had no idea what to do with one.  In fact, she still doesn’t - last Summer she called and asked how to make eggplant parmesan for my vegetarian cousin.  My people just don’t know from eggplant, I guess.  And while I like eggplant and do know how to prepare a mean eggplant parm, my experience with eggplant is still so limited my first instinct is always to go with what I know when faced with eggplant.

It should come as no surprise that the eggplants that came in my CSA share last week are on their way to becoming eggplant parm.

Well, sort of.  Who wants eggplant parm when it’s 90 degrees outside?  Not me.  So the eggplants are now hibernating in my chest freezer, made into baked and breaded eggplant cutlets.  So they’re halfway to eggplant parm.  I imagine that one day this Winter I will want to hug myself for thinking to have locally-grown, organic eggplant cutlets put up.

Making breaded eggplant cutlets is a breeze, but you do need to plan ahead a little.  Eggplant has a way better texture for cutlets if you salt and press the slices before breading and baking.  So slice up the eggplants about a 1/2 inch thick.  Put down a plate covered by a paper towel and put down a single layer of eggplant slices.  Sprinkle salt on the eggplant slices (I like to use sea salt for this).  Put down another layer of paper towel on top and another single layer of eggplant and salt.  Repeat until you run out of eggplant and end with a paper towel.  Now put another plate on top of that and weigh it down with something.  You don’t want to use anything too awful heavy, but something that’ll weigh down the top plate a little.  The salt will draw the water out of the eggplant and the paper towel sops up some of the extra water.  Just walk away for about an hour.

In the meantime, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

OK, whisk and egg or two with a bit of water blended in.  Put out a plate of bread crumbs.  Depending on how much salt you used, you might want to brush some of the salt off your eggplant cutlet prior to dipping it in the egg.  And after you dip the eggplant in egg, coat the cutlet in bread crumbs.

Bake in a 450 degree oven for five minutes.  Flip the cutlets and bake another five minutes.

Let them cool, layer them on wax paper, and freeze in a freezer bag.  There you go: baked eggplant cutlets for a snowy day.

Picked a peck of roasted peppers

Sunday, September 09, 2007

The other day I mentioned to a friend that I planned to roast peppers this weekend (my kitchen is overrun with bell and hot peppers).  She was confused.  “Why would you bother?” she asked. “That’s so much work for something you can just buy in a jar at the store.”

This weird idea that cooking or canning takes so much effort and time is pervasive in people who don’t do either.  And yes, you can certainly make a bigger production out of cooking or canning than is necessary - but it can also be a simple, quick thing, too.  And roasting peppers is one of those simple, quick things.

Realizing that not everyone in the city has the space for a grill, I’ll discuss oven roasting, gas range-top roasting, and grilling for the purposes of making roasted peppers. 

Grilling.  Turn your grill up to high and coat the peppers with olive oil.  Sure you can be genteel and use a brush, but I generally just pour a little oil on my hands and rub the peppers.  It’s quicker and you get the benefit of a little olive oil bath for your hands.  Toss the peppers on the grill and wait for the peppers to get charred.  Turn the peppers so all sides get charred.

Gas range.  Turn on a burner or two on your stove top.  Make sure the flames just reach the trivet.  As with grilling, coat the peppers with oil.  Place them directly on the trivet over the open flame on the burner.  Wait for them to char and keep turning the pepper until all sides are charred.

Oven roasting.  Preheat your oven’s broiler.  Coat the peppers with oil and arrange them on a cookie sheet.  This will generally take a little longer than roasting over an open flame, but keep an eye out for the peppers to start getting charred.  Turn the peppers so all sides are charred.

In all cases, this is your next step: grab a ziploc bag and seal the hot peppers inside.  Wait at least 10 or 15 minutes and then peel the peppers - the charred skin should come off pretty easily.  Discard seeds and membrane and pepper stems.

They can be stored in a few different ways.  If you plan to eat them immediately, you can store them in oil in the fridge.  They’ll last for maybe a week or two.  For longer term storage, freeze them.  It’s easiest to freeze them in a single layer on wax paper.  Or peppers can be canned - pack jars with peppers, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace and pour in hot water and a smidgen of canning salt.  Process in a water bath for 30 minutes.

Linvilla Orchards - raspberries!

Saturday, September 08, 2007

The Linvilla website reported this morning that raspberry picking was “excellent”.  The guys working the Pick-Your-Own stand were less enthusiastic.  “These raspberries are pretty picked out.  Jump on the back of the tractor and we’ll take you up to a patch hidden next to the apples,” they advised.

Of course, the man driving the tractor had yet another opinion.  According to him, it was the last couple of rows of the regular raspberry patch that we wanted.  “No one ever looks there!” he declared.

Happily, the tractor man was right.  The husband and I picked four quarts of gorgeous raspberries this morning.  And we amazed the guys working the stand in the bargain.  “We haven’t seen that many raspberries come out of there in at least a month,” they said.  Never underestimate the picking power of two determined people with a yen for raspberries!

One of these quarts will be frozen for a nice snack mid-Winter, but three of those quarts are now raspberry jam.  And, in a nod to the September Eat Local challenge, I used a new canning method.  Well, new to me, at least.  Short cuts tend to make me a little nervous, but the idea of skipping the water bath and simply sealing cans by inverting them was too irresistible. 

All my jars of raspberry jam have sealed correctly (I heard the “ping”!), so it seems to have worked.  It took such a small amount of work that I think this would be an ideal first foray into canning for the novice.

Here’s how to do it and what you’ll need:

3 lbs. raspberries
5 cups sugar
3 oz. liquid pectin
a mess of small canning jars

OK, start with your canning jars.  Separate the lids from the jars and put everything in the dishwasher.  Set your dishwasher to its hottest setting and put them through a cycle.  Alternatively, you can give your jars a wash in hot, soapy water and keep them warm in a 200 degree oven, and placing lids in a bowl of boiling water.  The point is that you need your jars to be hot when you start packing in the jam.

Place raspberries in a sink full of cold water.  Swish your hands around in there a few times and make sure all the stems and assorted stuff is removed.  Lift the berries out of the water gently and drain.

Puree the raspberries in a blender or food processor for about 15 seconds.

Put the berries in a large saucepan with the sugar and bring to very full boil and be sure you stir constantly.  Add the pectin and return to a full boil.  Boil hard for one minute and keep stirring!

Remove the pan from heat and skim off the foam that’s floating on the top.  Immediately ladle the jam into the hot jars (you should leave about 1/8 of an inch of headspace).  Wipe off any jam that gets on the threads of the jar and screw on the lids tightly.  Turn the jars over so they’re resting on the lid for about five minutes.

Turn the jars upright and be sure to test the lids to make sure they sealed within one hour.  There you have it: homemade raspberry jam!

And if you have a jar or two that doesn’t seal, you can always put it through a water bath for five minutes.  This made five half pints and two pints of raspberry jam.

Coincidentally, if you want to try to make jam minus the pectin, I found a recipe here.

Cucumber Salad, and About My Heritage

Thursday, September 06, 2007

As promised, here’s the cucumber wakame salad that I make every summer. The recipe is on a slip of paper that I had transcribed from talking to my mom, many years ago.

Ingredients:
1 long cucumber (preferably one with minimal seeds. I used the cucumber I got from my CSA)
4 T rice vinegar
4 T soy sauce
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 T sugar
a handful of dried wakame (found in Asian groceries, or health-food stores)

Directions:
Soak the wakame in a bowl of cold water. The seaweed will expand-- be sparing with the amount you put in.
In another bowl, combine the vinegar, soy sauce, salt, and sugar until blended.
Peel, de-seed (if necessary), and thinly slice cucumber. Add to the vinegar mixture.
Drain and squeeze wakame and add to the cucumber. Lightly toss, and refrigerate for about 30 minutes. Serve cold.

**********
I am a second-generation Japanese-American. My parents and I came to the States when I was very little. My mom often cooked washoku (Japanese food) for meals, and I learned a lot of her recipes by watching her cook. There are some things I can cook that almost taste like my mom’s, and there are some things that I just can’t quite make the way she does.

One thing about cooking Japanese, or really any Asian cuisine, is that many dishes call for ingredients that just aren’t readily available here, let alone locally produced. There was a time when my grandmother used to send us care packages of seaweed, tea, and other foodstuffs because they were difficult to find here. Nowadays, more interest and awareness of Asian culture makes it easier to get many of these items at a neighborhood grocery store. However, I haven’t heard of or seen items like wakame, like Asian short-grain rice, being locally harvested. And to be honest, I would be loath to give up things like these for the sake of being a pure locavore.

As it says in my description on the About page of this site, I do enjoy many cuisines from all over the world. I am often creative in the kitchen, mixing and matching tastes. When it comes to the food that my mom made, my comfort food, I choose to use local items when I can, and the ingredients of my culture’s cuisine when needed.

Cooking Straight from the Farm

If you’re a self-proclaimed localvore or just someone interested in unusual farm produce, you won’t want to miss this opportunity.  On Saturday, September 29th, Weavers Way Farm, in coordination with the Mt. Airy Learning Tree, will host a unique cooking workshop that starts with students strolling rows of heirloom tomatoes, okra, squash, pumpkins, flowers, herbs, swiss chard, beets, carrots, peppers, and more to learn about natural growing practices and local urban farming as well as how to take advantage of seasonal crops at home.  Students will talk with the farmer and volunteers to understand how much effort and passion goes into naturally grown/organic food.  Once students have gathered this farming knowledge, they will then help harvest some vegetables (and buy more to take home if they wish) to take into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, the farm’s food blog host will demonstrate how to prepare three or four quick dishes using the farm’s more unusual produce (including marjoram pictured above).  Dishes will be determined by seasonal availability, but are almost certain to include quesadillas with tomatillo sauce and squash blossoms, sorrel almond pesto, seasonally filled empanadas and other delectable and super fresh treats.  After the cooking demonstration, students are encouraged to stick around to feast on the harvest dishes and participate in a round-robin discussion on buying local resources and urban farming in Philadelphia. 

To sign up for the workshop, visit Mt. Airy Learning Tree’s site for online registration. 

The delicate Delicata

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Like lots of people on Labor Day, my husband and I had ourselves a little cookout.  We grilled up some nice steaks from Natural Acres.  I wanted something different as a side, though.  And with the four Delicata squash grown by Green Valley Organics that have come in my CSA share over the last two weeks, it seemed like a good idea to cook those up.

Winter squash at an end of Summer cookout?  Well...as strange as that seems, it worked.  After cutting the squash in half lengthwise, removing the seeds, and slicing up the halves, I tossed the pieces in olive oil and roasted everything for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  The roasted slices of squash then were tossed in the last of my tulip poplar honey from Linvilla and some sea salt, and roasted another five minutes.

The result was a sweet and salty squash dish that was hearty enough to stand up to steak, but still light enough for a cookout.

I roasted all the squash, but only about 1/3 of it got the salt and honey treatment.  The rest has been packed into freezer bags to puree for soup when it gets a little cooler outside.  I can barely wait!

Last OLS 2007 dinner!

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Ta da! One Local Summer 2007 has been successfully completed!

One Local Summer 2007, Dinner Menu 10

* Homemade whole wheat pizza (McGeary Organics/Annville Flouring Mill - 94 miles) with tomatoes, onion, yellow and red bell peppers, garlic (all from Blooming Glen Farm CSA crop share - 5 miles), basil (Bux-Mont Hydroponics - 5 miles), white sweet corn (Lancaster - 84 miles) and cherry bomb hot peppers (our garden - 0 miles). Nonlocal ingredients used: yeast, olive oil, salt
* Red and yellow watermelon (Blooming Glen) and peach (New Jersey - 40 miles) fruit salad.
* Proprietors Reserve red wine (Chaddsford Winery - 48 miles)

I absolutely considered going all out with several recipes for the last meal, but thought this simple meal was much more representative of the spirit of OLS. Simplicity in making big changes with little effort. Simplicity too, in finding joy in small things; like cutting open a watermelon and discovering buttercup-yellow flesh instead of the expected pink.

Hm. Actually, now that I think about it, this dinner wasn’t exactly simple. I’d never made pizza dough before. Not that it was complex, but there’s a little bit of a learning curve to work into the math there

And that’s what OLS has been for me these past ten weeks: doing things that I never before had an excuse to do. Making pizza dough and tortillas, going to the Skippack farmers’ market and discovering artichokes, finding several local vegan protein sources - shit, me just purchasing flour to bake was an unthinkable prospect before this summer. I mean, really… I look at this and am just plain surprised with myself:

As much as I love to cook, and love local foods, I can truly say that I never would’ve made a pizza from scratch had is not been for the challenge of OLS. Nor would I have considered using corn as a topping. But! These were all good decisions!

Thank you, Liz! You are amazing and inspiring and fun.

With the the picture-taking, planning, deadlines and posting, I’m happy to have a short break from these meals each week , but I’m sure local-specific meals will maintain a somewhat regular appearance here until OLS 2008. I’m interested to see what I can some up with say, in February. Stay tuned!

Head to Headhouse and Make this Soup

Thursday, August 30, 2007

The bounty of the much-touted Headhouse Farmers Market inspired this soup recipe.  Make a list of the ingredients and head to the market to see if you can get one item from a different stand to spread the love around.  Or, just stop by our table, Weavers Way Farm, and buy everything but the corn.  Deliciously fresh, this soup can be served hot or cold so it’ll make the transition between seasons with you.  To stock up for the colder months, buy extra fresh corn to cut off the cobs and freeze.  Then buy bushels of tomatillos to make salsa verde to also freeze or can.  That way, when winter settles in, you can call upon your stockpiles to make this hearty soup to remind you of the freshness of summer.

Corn and Tomatillo Chowder
Adated from The Cook’s Encyclopedia of Soup

2 T. peanut or corn oil
4 large shallots or 1 medium onion, diced
1 hot pepper such as Hungarian Hot Wax, diced
1 sweet pepper (purple, red or green), diced
2 ears of fresh sweet corn, kernels cut off (about 2 cups)
12 or so tomatillos
3 c. of vegetable or chicken stock
1 c. light cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper


Husk tomatillos, place in a small sauce pan and cover with water.  Place on high heat until water boil and then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes until tomatillos loose their bright color and float to the top.

Meanwhile, heat oil in large deep skillet.  Add the diced onion and peppers, reserving a tablespoon or so of the pepper for garnish later, to the hot skillet and saute over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes until they get soft and brown on the edges.  Add the corn kernels to the skillet and saute for 2 minutes until softened and the color pales.  Finally, drain tomatillos from their hot water and add to skillet to toss with sauted vegetables.  Stir to incorporate.

Carefully pour contents of skillet into a blender (or use an immersion blender for extra ease) and process until smooth, adding a little stock if needed to loosen it up.  Transfer blended contents back to skillet and slowly add in stock over low heat.  Allow soup to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring every few minutes to scrap up any corn sticking to the bottom of the skillet.

Remove skillet from heat and stir in cream.  Serve soup chilled or warm.  If serving warm, gently reheat - never allow soup to come to a boil.  Garnish each bowl of soup with diced pepper and thin slices of an uncooked tomatillo.

(makes 4 large servings)

take the tomato

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

I’m glad Nicole wrote out those 10 things you can do with tomatoes. I was already plotting and planning what recipes from the NYTimes I would make. I really loved the idea of a tartlett. But I am not one to follow recipes if I can use what I already have in the house.

So I took the tartlett idea and made something yummy of my own. Tomatoes on filo. They were probably the tastiest thing I had this week.

The same concept from the NYTimes recipe is there, instead of using puff pastry I used filo dough. I put it on a silicon matt and brushed each layer with butter. Then I took equal portions of riccotta and goat’s cheese and mixed them with fresh basil. I spread it on the filo much like you would pizza sauce or if you were icing a cake. Then I put my very yummy fresh cut tomato rounds on it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, top with parmesian. Fold the edges up if you like the more picturesque tartlett picture, or leave it as it.. the cheese really doesn’t run over the sides. Pop it in a 425 degree oven for 10-12 minutes. It was absolutely delish!

Sundried tomatoes

Monday, August 27, 2007

Continuing with the abundance of entries on tomatoes, I want to ramble on concerning a fun purchase I made last week, at the Fair Food Farmstand. 

These sundried tomatoes are from Overbrook Herb Farm in Lansdale, PA.  Two weeks ago, the Farmstand manager Emily filled a shiny steel cannister with these vibrantly red bits-o’-summer.  I sampled one, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself reaching for another one, since I usually assume I don’t like sundried tomatoes.  (I like tomatoes in sauces, but I don’t eat them plain.)

Last week, I decided to make tomato sauce, and the recipe that I wanted to try called for adding chopped sundried tomatoes at the end for extra flavor.  Excellent, I thought!  It will give me an excuse to buy those sundrieds at the Farmstand that had been insinuating themselves into my cravings.  So during my Friday morning shift, I put aside a bag of them—they are now being sold in plastic sandwich bags for $4—and I took the opportunity to ask Emily more detailed questions about them.  Apparently a lot of Overbrook’s tomatoes split early in the season, a considerable loss for a small farm.  The farmer had purchased a dehydrator, so he decided to make sundried tomatoes and sell them! 

They have a simple, sharp flavor, and I especially like the way you can clearly see different tomato varieties mixed throughout.  Despite my theoretical aversion to sundried tomatoes, I kept popping them while I was peeling & chopping Roma tomatoes for sauce...and I couldn’t even bear to put all of them into the sauce, leaving some in the bag for future sampling. 

When life deals you tomatoes, make Bloody Marys

Friday, August 24, 2007

From the sounds of things, Farm to Philly contributors (including me) have been up to their eyeballs in gorgeous, locally-grown tomatoes recently!  Yoko made pasta sauce.  Anj made pizza sauce.  And, judging by the look of the tomato plants in my garden, the onslaught of tomatoes will continue for at least a few more weeks!

There’s nothing better than lovely tomatoes right out of the garden or from your favorite local farmer, but there comes a time when there might be too much of a good thing.  If the other contributors are like me, another bite of tomato sandwich or gazpacho or salsa or tomato sauce would send me over the edge.  And with two dozen tomatoes sitting in my kitchen right now, I need something new and exciting, something I haven’t eaten entirely too much of this Summer!

With that in mind, I give you ten things to do with tomatoes (other than salsa, gazpacho, sauce, or sandwiches):

1. Grilled tomatoes with blue cheese and pine nuts.  This [recipe] was one of the winning entries for a Washington Post tomato recipe contest.  There are more recipes to be had, but this one appealed to me.  I don’t know that there are any sources for locally grown pine nuts, but one can certainly find good local blue cheese!  Birchrun Blue, for instance, from Birchrun Hills Farm.  I’m drooling just thinking about it.
2. Sofrito.  If you’re drowning in cherry tomatoes, consider making a little sofrito [recipe] for a rainy day.  For the uninitiated, sofrito is a sauce that used as a base for many Spanish and Latin American dishes.  A friend of mine uses hers to mix with mashed potatoes.  You can use it for a million things - to add flavor to sauces, mixed with yellow rice, anything!
3. Tomato gelato.  Paired with basil gelato (a personal favorite of mine available sometimes at Capogiro) and ricotta gelato [recipes for all three here], who could resist kicking back during the dog day’s of Summer with this little treat?
4. Roasted Tomato Bread Pudding.  When I make bread pudding, my husband screws up his face and denounces it.  If I call it stuffing, he eats it.  Whatever you call it, it’s good and roasted tomatoes make it better!  The recipe [recipe] utilizes both regular and cherry tomatoes.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that stale Le Bus bread makes fabulous bread pudding.
5. Dill Green Tomatoes.  It’s not the end of tomato season yet (not by a long shot), but I do always find myself with a smattering of small green tomatoes at that time.  I like the idea of using them green to make pickles [recipe], and it’s also a great way to use the last of the dill, garlic, and hot peppers!
6. Tomato, Basil, and Brie Spread.  Being a total cheesehound, the very idea of brie mixed with anything makes me swoon.  If I can get my hands on the new brie from Green Valley Dairy, so much the better.  The spread [recipe] smeared on a baguette from Metropolitan?  Yes, please!
7. Roasted Tomato Hummus.  Aside from the glut of tomatoes in my house right now, I also have the dregs of the roasted garlic I made recently from my first ever batch of garlic.  What better way to use them both than to make hummus [recipe]?  Mmmmmmm mmmm!
8. Baked Stuffed Tomatoes with Goat Cheese Fondue.  There are several excellent ideas for using too many tomatoes in this NY Times article, but go directly to #2 on the list.  Holy crap.  Using the stellar goat cheese from Shellbark Hollow Farm, this little slice of cheese lover heaven would be awesome!  I might need to make this tonight.  Or I might need to eat lunch before I chew off my own hand.
9. Garlicky Tomato Tart.  As a rule, I’m not a fan of deliberately low fat cooking.  There’s something to be said for eating well, but just not going overboard, you know.  That said, the Garlicky Tomato Tart [recipe] from Cooking Light is pretty excellent.  It’s comfort food around my house.
10. Oven dried tomato oil.  I’m a big fan of anything that involves sun-dried tomatoes, but I’m a little squicked out about the idea of leaving food outside to dry.  Oven-drying tomatoes [recipe] works great and there’s less possibility of animals wreaking havoc with them.  And oil with sun-dried tomatoes seems like such a useful thing to have around the house!

There you go!  Ten things to do with tomatoes that you maybe haven’t made this Summer!  Go forth and eat more locally grown tomatoes!