Currently viewing the tag: "tomatoes"
The profile of this dish can easily be changed by altering the spices. Go with thyme, marjoram and fennel seed for a French flare-you could even add some lavender- or use oregano or sage for a more Italian turn. Use some Moroccan spices and go North African/Mid-East. Curry will take you to India, and you can add hot chili for an incendiary approach or use fennel seed with a sweet curry for mild but fragrant. Use this for topping fish, boneless chicken breasts or cubed chicken chunks, or cut cauliflower into large pieces and roast them after oiling and seasoning. You could serve at room temp or cold as part of a mezze or thali lunch. It would also do well with cooked chickpeas or kidney beans heated up in it. This is the iteration for roast cauliflower, or for topping fish or even shrimp.
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While good all summer long, this salad is brilliant with end of summer tomatoes and squash. Here the quickles are made with oregano, but you can use whatever herbs you have to hand. If you have chervil, or marjoram, or thyme, so be it. Use the herbs in the dressing to link to the squash. Feel free to gussy up the salad with a little crumbled goat’s milk cheese and pine nuts.
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…and maybe other things too, if you wish. You could add chard and chard stems, or just stems if you have them left over from another dish. Olives, artichoke hearts, beans, mushrooms…Serve with avocado chunks, labne (I use it instead of sour cream), some fiery hot sauce and slabs of toast.
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A very simple sauce. That means you need good tomatoes, and it is very important to cook the garlic slowly so it will caramelize, not burn. Mexican, or Korintje, cinnamon will give a lovely floral flavor, and the recipe is written with this in mind. If you use another type, start with less as they will provide more of a red-hots candy flavor which can easily overwhelm the dish. Use this sauce anywhere from delicate pastas to fish, chicken, or goat, or on vegetables such as escarole or greens, or with a mélange of summer vegetables a lá ratatouille.
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Here is a salad with nice textural contrasts that is light but very satisfying. The beans can be done a day or two ahead of time. Making extra beans allows you to use them for other things such as a smashed paste as a dip for chips or crackers, part of a vegetable braise, or an accompaniment to sausages.
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This can be used as a sauce or a glaze, depending on far you choose to reduce it. Leaving it wet and slightly chunky yields a nice quick sauce for most major proteins, pastas, and summer squash. Pureed and strained is excellent for things like broiled salmon, pork chops, or a sauté of corn and peppers. Cook down the pureé for a glaze for things like this dish. Depending on how intense or thick you like it, thin with a little water or pasta cooking water. Cooked down enough you can use it as a syrup for something dessert-y.
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Use this slightly sweet concoction as a sauce when cooked a little loose, or reduce it further and use it to glaze something, like Romanesco or cauliflower, fish, or pasta. For this dish to be successful, the tomatoes must be ripe and flavorful. If they are not, find another recipe to use.
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You can also do this dish with cauliflower, or even with thick carrots roll cut into 1-inch chunks. As far as seasoning goes, you could run anywhere from herbs such as thyme, and marjoram or use lovage (tastes sort of like a cross between flat parsley and the leaves of the center of a celery head), to spices with a Mid-East or Indian bent. Think garlic and cinnamon, or cumin and coriander, or curry. This iteration runs towards the European with marjoram and lovage.
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This is a great way to get more vegetables into your life, and this dish is great for breakfast or for dinner. Cooking the eggs so the yolk is still runny provides a silky sauce for the earthy kale, and runny yolks contain lecithin, which helps counter the effects of cholesterol in the body. If you wish, you could add bits of prosciutto or mushrooms to the kale, or scatter the ramekins with some cheese a few minutes before they come out of the oven.
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This is pretty much just what it says, a typical pico de gallo salsa, but made with summer squash rather than cucumbers, and scallions stand in for white or yellow onions, and mild sweet Gypsy peppers replace the typical jalapeño. Basil and lemon replace the cilantro and lime, making this an “alternate dimension” salsa fresca. If you like it hot, add a spicy chili or two or scatter some pizza-house chili flakes in.
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Use this as is for a side dish, or cook some pasta such as orecchiette, cavatelli, or casarecce (or whatever) and use this as a sauce. Don’t forget to add 4-6 ounces of the pasta water to the dish to help form the sauce. It may seem odd to use salami here, but it is not uncommon in Italy, and the right salami can bring a lot of flavor to a dish. The Toscano called for here is typically flavorful and fairly easy to find. For this dish, larger fat grains are good, and a fine deep flavor with some spice is good.
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This week we finished planting all the winter squashes and pumpkins. We’re doing more delicatas this year since we ran out too early last year. All told there are 12 varieties of squash and pumpkins planted–delicata, carnival, spaghetti, Blue Ballet hubbard, orange and green kabocha, butternut, Marina di Chioggia, and blue kuri squashes.
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Modern American cuisine smacks into traditional Mediterranean. This salad was inspired by a Salade Niçoise, but is much, much simpler. You want to use good quality tuna for this-at least use albacore if you can’t find any European tuna packed in olive oil. Also, If you have beans you have cooked yourself the dish will be better for them, but the recipe simply calls for pantry staple canned white beans. Rinse them really well.
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Light supper, vegetable centric breakfast, call it what you will. This is a flavorful dish that is good for you, and it is easy if you are using peppers that were grilled the day before. For the eggs, it is best if the yolks are runny, as they make a “sauce” for the vegetables when you poke the yolk and it runs out over everything.
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The smaller size of the ingredients of this salad give it a lightness and ensures you can get all the flavors in one bite, giving a sum that is more than the parts alone. Make this with or without the lettuce as you choose. It adds a welcome crunch, and slightly bitter and sweet flavor of the lettuce acts as a bridge between the zucchini and tomatoes.
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A paean to late lasting summer bounty. Although the salad is like a lot of the Moroccan inspired ones posted before, this could be combined with lettuce if you wanted. It could also be piled onto toasted flat breads or grilled slabs of some crusty sturdy bread like a ciabatta or the like.
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Eggs in Hell, or Purgatory sometimes, are eggs poached in tomato sauce that can be mild of flaming hot. I think the name comes from the look-little islands of sunny yellow and white in a sea of lava-like tomato. The smell will be anything but brimstone-like as long as the eggs are fresh. This makes a great breakfast (some say the name is derived because it is thought to be a hangover curative) or light dinner. Use a spoon to scoop the eggs and sauce onto thick slices of grilled rustic bread. The “Spanish Style” comes from the use of pimenton and padrons.
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This dish uses vanilla paste for a twist on an old favorite along with the nectarine, but it is worth having a jar of the paste around as it makes a great “secret ingredient” to have around. Try it as part of a rub for pork tenderloin with a coffee sauce, or use it with shellfish such as shrimp, scallops, and lobster.
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Pistou is the French equivalent of pesto, but has no nuts or cheese. The cheese is added either to the soup or scattered over the soup at the end. This soup is only inspired and is not a true pistou, just in case any Provençal are reading this.
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Like so many things French, you can find more than one “vrais” (real, true) recipe for soupe au pistou, and the basil paste that gives it its name. Some have tomatoes, some not. A few have cheese. Most do not. None have nuts. That I have seen so far. Since I first learned pistou without tomatoes, that iteration will be v.1.
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