Crave Wednesday: Marinated Heirloom Tomatoes with Mustard and Dill

Last Monday I realized it was May.  May sneaks up on you, doesn't it?  I also realized that Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, happened to fall on a Friday this year.  Which seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

I texted Thatboy - "What do you think about having people over for Cinco de Mayo Friday night?"   He thought it sounded like a great idea, so I texted some friends to see if they were available.  As luck would have it, the J's were available!  Well, 3/4 of the Js.  Since Mr. J was going to be out of town, Thatboy decided he should make himself scarce, so he didn't end up stuck in a house with 2 women and 4 boys.

On Friday, I threw up some flags for some festive, easy "decorations" and set the table.  One of the amazing things about me is that I have just about every color of paper plate and napkin there is.  Which I used to my advantage.  I also picked up some Cascaron - confetti filled eggs for the boys,

One of the perks of living in Southern California is that we have no shortage of amazing Mexican food.  I went easy and picked up tacos, rice and beans.  I threw together some guacamole and margaritas and we were good to go.

Our local bakery also was celebrating Cinco de Mayo with these colorful "pinata cupcakes."  In general, I hate the idea of the pinata - there's always the one kid who doesn't know how to do it and the other kids are pretty much stomping each other on the head to get at the candy.  But pinata cupcakes - filled with sprinkles, I can definitely get behind.  While the boys ate those, Mrs. J and I had churro cupcakes.

I'd love to blame the sugar in the cupcakes for the craziness that was going on in my house, but really, that's just what happens with four boys.  In an attempt to calm them down, we sat them down for some yoga in their pajamas.  While it worked NOT AT ALL, it did result in some pretty cute pictures.

Eventually the J's packed up and went home and I got my boys tucked into bed, right as Thatboy returned home from his night out.   The entire evening was a burst of color, from the flags, to the confetti - which covered my floor, to the sprinkle filled cupcakes.  The main meal, however, was a little lacking in color.  My fault.  It's easy enough to get vibrant color in food - if not in the main course, then in sides.

I don't know if it's a current trend, but I'm noticing vegetables come in a whole host of different colors than they did when I was a kid.  And I'm taking advantage of it!  Purple carrots, green cauliflower, purple potatoes - I love adding color to my meals.  If the idea of that sounds a little scary to you, lets talk about an entry level rainbow - the tomato.  Thatboy loves heirloom tomatoes, and I love that they come in so many colors - reds, oranges, yellows, greens... Toss them together and you have a vibrant and colorful salad that rivals anything that came out of those eggs.  Or cupcakes.

Marinated Heirloom Tomatoes with Mustard and Dill (From Cooking Light)

1 Tbsp chopped dill

2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

2 tsp grated lemon rind

1 tsp fresh lemon juice

2 lbs heirloom tomatoes cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

1. Combine dill, mustard, lemon rind, and lemon juice in a large bowl.
2.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.
3. Add tomato slices, tossing gently to coat.  Let stand 15 minutes.

Baked Tomato and Tapenade Galette

I bought a pineapple 2 weeks ago.  Despite the fact that it is far from pineapple season.  And it was amazing.  It's what got Thatbaby hooked on pineapple.

So I pressed my luck again and got a watermelon this past week.  It was not the same experience.  While both kids happily munched on slices, Thatboy and I were unimpressed by the lack of any sort of flavor.  But not unsurprised.  You just can't get good watermelon in March.

I should know better.  I used to be so good about eating in season.  And for the most part I still do.  But there are those times where I throw caution to the wind and buy what I want.  Like the plums and nectarines that came home with me over the past few weeks.

Are you sensing a trend that my impulse purchases seem to revolve around fruit?  Because they do.  And I mean the broad definition of fruit, the one that includes tomatoes.  I hate myself for buying tomatoes in the winter, because they are not a year-round fruit.  But at the same time, I love tomatoes, so it's hard not to pick some up every week at the store.

Paired with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar, these winter tomatoes still shine.  Balsamic is great for bringing out sweetness that way.  The puff pastry isn't given a chance to rise. making these galettes a flaky tart, as opposed to an overly doughy pizza.  In reality, this really is a summer recipe.  Light and crisp, they'd make the perfect picnic staple.  Especially with summer tomatoes.

Baked Tomato and Tapenade Galette

1 1/3 cups goat cheese, chopped

 1/3 cup heavy cream

2 Tbsp chopped basil

1 sheet of puff pastry, cut into 6 inch rounds

4 Tbsp sun-dried tomato paste

8 plum tomatoes

4 Tbsp olive oil

4 Tbsp chopped thyme

4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

1. Heat the goat cheese in a small saucepan.
2. Mix in the cream and remove from the heat.
3. Add in the chopped basil and some freshly ground pepper.
4. Preheat the oven to 350.  Place the puff pastry rounds between 2 sheets of wax paper and place on a baking sheet.  Lay another baking sheet on top and bake for 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.  
5. Turn oven to a low temperature.  Divide the sundried tomato paste between the pastry rounds.
6. Spoon a small amount of the goat cheese mixture into the center of each round.
7. Slice the plum tomatoes thinly and arrange on top.
8. Drizzle the rounds with olive oil
9. Season with salt and pepper and put in the oven to warm for 3-4 minutes.
10. Sprinkle with thyme.
11. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and serve.

Tomato Aspic take 2

I know, one look at this aspic and you're already wondering what on earth I've been smoking.  Because this aspic may very well be the least appetizing thing you've seen all day.

It's lacking the smooth glossy finish of the aspics you've come to know and love over the past week.  Instead it is one blobby mass.  It's the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree of aspics.  Or better yet - this is the Sloth of aspics.

What does that mean?  This aspic may be ugly, but it's got a lot of heart.  Heart is the secret ingredient in any good cook's repertoire.  And this homely little dish is special because it's made from scratch.  Unlike the other tomato aspics which use tomato juice or canned tomatoes, this uses fresh tomatoes I cut up myself.

It's not as instantly pleasing as yesterday's aspic.  It's simpler and more complicated at the same time and deserving of its very own post.  Because a mother loves all her children equally - even the ugly ones.

Fresh Tomato Aspic (From the Fannie Farmer Cookbook)s

2 lb ripe tomatoes, chopped

1 envelope gelatin

1 tsp grated onion

1/4 cup minced celery and leaves

salt

up to 1 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1. Boil the tomatoes with 3/4 cup water over medium high heat, stirring often, for 15 minutes.
2. Dissolve the gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water. 
3. Puree the tomatoes and then return the puree to the pan.  
4. Add the onion and celery.
5. Add salt to taste and sugar and lemon.  Cook 5 minutes, stirring briskly.
6. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin.
7. Pour into 1 qt. bowl and chill until firm.

This will be better in the summer

I can't believe it's only Thursday.  It's been such a loooong week for me.  And Thursday means it's not over yet. 

I think part of the issue is that I am definitely fighting off some form of illness.  My original plan was to stay in bed all day, but I got called in to cover a deposition so into work I went.  I did leave right after the depo was over, but then I ended up running errands so I didn't get home that much earlier.

Luckily, Thatboy decided tonight would be a good night to pick up a pizza for dinner.  Which is a nice temporary reprieve when you're under the weather.  All I had to do was throw together a salad.  This is as basic a salad as you can get - tomatoes, spinach, and red onion.  In the summer this salad will sing in a much richer key but it still works when you're so stuffed up you can't taste anything.

The basic salad is highlighted by a tangy horseradish vinaigrette which couldn't be easier to make.  If you're new to making salad dressings, they're nothing to fear - mix an oil and a vinegar and then just start playing.  Often I'll use a juice of some kind, but this salad called for something a little more interesting, a little more sinus clearing.

And now I'm off to bed with the hopes that tomorrow no one will notice me napping on my desk!

Red Onion and Spinach Salad

2 cups of spinach leaves

2 tomatoes, sliced

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

salt and pepper

2 Tbsp olive oil

3/4 Tbsp red wine vinegar

1/2 Tbsp horseradish

1. Arrange spinach on plates and places sliced tomatoes and onions over.
2. Sprinkle salt over the entire plate.
3. Whisk together oil, vinegar, and horseradish in a small bowl.  Salt and pepper to taste.
4. Pour dressing over the spinach, onion, and tomato

That's a SPI-cy tomato

Raise your hand if you've missed my chipotle posts.  You know, the ones where I use way too many peppers and make a meal that is far too hot for a normal person to consume?

Well my friends, if that describes you, then you are in for a treat!  I used the very last of my chipotles in a tomato soup.  Because I love tomato soup.  And it has been especially cold, rainy, and gross here (as my stuffy, congested, runny nose can attest to.  How can a nose be stuffy and runny at the same time you ask?  Well, if you figure out the answer, I'd be dying to hear it.) so soup is the perfect warm you up meal.

Except this soup?  This soup is more than a warm you up meal.  It's a burn you up from the inside meal.  The original calls for 2 chipotles in adobo, but I'm warning you, just use one.  This soup was so spicy that I ended up having to stir some cream into it.  And then serve it with a big chunk of bread to chew between spoonfuls.

We were definitely warmer.  And I'm sharing the recipe because I think it has a lot of potential if it wasn't so spicy.  The ginger and cumin give it an unexpected flavor and the smokiness of the chipotle is the perfect pairing with tomatoes.

And for those of us who aren't experiencing the abnormal heat wave, this is the perfect way to round out the winter.

 Spicy Tomato Soup (adapted from Oishii)

2 cans of Muir Glen fire roasted diced tomatoes with green chiles
1 large onion, coarsely chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped
1 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, chopped
2 tsp. finely chopped peeled fresh ginger

3 TBS. olive oil
1/2 tsp. ground cumin

2 1/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 TBS. sugar
2 tsp. salt

1. Heat oil in a pot over medium heat. Cook onion, garlic, chipotle, and ginger until onion is translucent, about 8 minutes.
2. Add cumin and cook, stirring, 1 minute.
3. Stir in tomatoes, broth, sugar, and salt and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, 20 minutes.
4. Cool soup slightly and blend in a blender until smooth.
5. Pour back into bowl and reheat before serving.

Pop - what a happy sound

I have a disgusting habit.

I'm a popper.

I love biting into cherry tomatoes so that they pop open in my mouth.

Because of this, I love cherry tomatoes.  I put them on all our salads.  Thatboy isn't as big of a fan.  Partly because he doesn't like tomatoes.  Partly because he's not a popper.

But as we know, I can either be very sweet to my husband, or a total wench.  This is a wench time.  A salad in which the cherry tomatoes are the star.  Everything else is merely a supporting character.

Alright, to be honest, if you had to pick a star of this salad, it would probably be the green beans.  But green beans are skinny and boring.  Not nearly as sexy as the plump, juicy, tomato.  That beauty's got curves.

Fresh green beans, crisp celery, sour olives and juicy tomatoes.  You can pick your favorite -in reality, they're all winners.

Green Bean and Cherry Tomato Salad

1 Tbsp white vinegar

salt

pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

2 cups balanced green beans

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup kalamata olives

1/2 cup celery cut into 1 inch pieces

1/4 cup chopped green onions

1/2 Tbsp dried dill

1 Tbsp chopped parsley

1. In a small bowl, combine the vinegar with 1/4 tsp salt and let sit for a minute or two, until the salt dissolves.  Whisk in the pepper and olive oil.
2. Trim the green beans and cut them into 1 inch pieces.
3. Toss the green beans with the tomatoes, olives, green onions, and celery.
4. Pour the dressing over all the veggies and season with salt, dill, and parsley.

How You Like Them Tomatoes

There are certain dishes I seek out when I travel - usually specialties of the location that are hard to find elsewhere. Or hard to find authentic elsewhere (I may or may not be speaking specifically about bagels).

One thing that's hard to find outside of the south are true honest to goodness southern specialties.  Things like fried okra and fried green tomatoes (are you noticing a trend here - no one does fried food like the south.)

For some reason the south has a way of dealing with vegetables that the rest of the country finds...undesirable.  Okra doesn't seem to have a large fan base, and green tomatoes?  Well just google and you'll find a million sites on how to ripen them.  As though they serve no real good use on their own.

But their firm tartness holds up perfectly for cooking - especially for frying where they won't turn to mush at high heat.  As much as I love fried green tomatoes, I opted for something a little healthier with this batch.  It's not too far off from the tomato rice we had earlier in the week, but without the rice (or apples).  Something about curry really works well with tomato.  It might be my new favorite pairing. 

Curried Green Tomatoes

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp finely chopped onion

3/4 tsp curry powder

cayenne pepper

2 green tomatoes, chopped

salt and pepper

1. Melt the butter in a skillet and add the onion.  Cook until onion is translucent.
2. Stir in the curry powder.
3. Stir in the tomatoes and add cayenne pepper to taste.  Cook for 3-4 minutes.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

What you should do with winter tomatoes

I know.  Eventually I'll get over this tomato obsession.  I always do.  Just don't expect it to happen anytime soon.  Instead I'll find ways to make them work and make me happy.

Joanne suggested roasting the tomatoes - I haven't tried that, but it's only February.  So what do you do with firm tomatoes with no flavor?  You stuff them!  That unripe exterior perfectly holds the filling, which is so full of flavor you won't even notice that the tomato is missing it.  It becomes a blank, flavorless canvas on which to paint.

And like any good artist, I paint with lots of colors.  Which is also another excuse to use spinach - you know I love that stuff, and unlike tomatoes, spinach is delicious in the winter.

Stuffed Tomatoes

2 large tomatoes

salt

1/4 cup breadcrumbs

1 tsp chopped basil

1 Tbsp chopped onion

1/2 cup cooked spinach

1/8 cup sliced water chestnuts

3/4 Tbsp olive oil

pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400.  Coat a baking pan with just enough oil so the tomatoes won't stick.  Cut a slice from the top of each tomato and scoop out the pulp- making sure to leave enough of shell so the tomatoes don't fall apart.
2. Sprinkle the insides of the tomatoes with salt, invert them and let them drain for 15 minutes.
3. Squeeze the juice out of the pulp and chop it finely. 
4. Combine the pulp with breadcrumbs, basil, onion, spinach,and water chestnuts.
5. Add the oil and salt and pepper to taste.
6. Fill the tomatoes, place in baking pan and bake for 20 minutes.

AVM: The Terrible Tomato Story

Oh HEY! Do any of you remember when I was reading Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and making all the recipes in the book? And then all of a sudden. I just....stopped. Well it was because of the tomato. That pesky pesky tomato. A food I normally adore that has become my nemesis in the past year.

See, the next recipes called for sun dried tomatoes. And when I got to the chapter, it was January. And January is not really a very good time for sun drying tomatoes. So I decided to wait till the summer. And during the summer, put my little tomatoes out on our deck and I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Months went by. Nothing. Thatboy decided that even if they DID dry, there was no way he was touching those things.

I spoke to my boss at the time and told her about my tomatoes. "You cut them in half, and put them on your deck and they didn't dry?" She asked.

*Silence* "Cut them in half?" I asked.

She laughed for a VERY long time and informed me that in order for my little plan to work, I needed to cut the tomatoes in half. And I didn't. But by now, summer was over and cold weather was setting in. So I kind of shelved that idea.

And then January rolled around again. And I made it my New Years Resolution to finish what I had started. Sun or no sun, those tomatoes were getting dried! So I decided to oven dry my tomatoes instead of sun drying. It took much less time, maybe because I cut them in half this time. They came out PERFECTLY!

And those recipes that required their use? Definitely some of the best in the book.

Sundried Tomato Pesto (recipe available at animalvegetablemiracle.com)
- I'm not a huge sun dried tomato fan. In fact, you could go as far as to say I don't really like them. But this pesto is amazing fantastic. I crave it. I think I might very well dream about it. I love it spread on a piece of toast. I toss it with our pasta. And the other night I even tossed some roasted potatoes in it which was delicious (and so was the tossing bowl which I may or may not have licked)

Antipasta Tomatoes (recipe can be found at animalvegetablemiracle.com)
- I didn't love these as much as the pesto, but I already expressed my dis-love of sun dried tomato. I've been using these to dress up chicken salad, tossed with pasta, or as a lovely addition to bruschetta.