When it’s 82º in New York City.
Tag Archive for 'tomatoes'
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Hello, it’s me. Sick again. Yippee. It sucks really. I don’t know how mouth breathers do it. Breathing through your mouth is very unpleasant.
Anyway, I spent some time clicking away on some of my favorite food sites last night and wanted to share some things I’m craving…even though I can’t taste anything. But you go have fun. Really. It’s okay.
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Soup. More soup. We like soup. This soup. Smitten Kitchen delivers (as usual).
Post Punk Kitchen is cooking up some quinoa goodness here
I’m a sucker for poppy seeds. Tim at Lottie + Doof is too.
Matt (of Matt Bites fame) is an incredible photographer and going to his site always makes me hungry. Like, this. Hello.
Winter makes me want to eat potatoes. I’m particularly obsessed with sweet potatoes right now. Give me a sweet potato roasted in its skin, slathered with butter, and topped with a healthy grind of black pepper and a sprinkle of fleur de sel and I’m in my happy place. Gluten Free Girl has taken it up a notch, and I’m feeling happy in a whole new way.
Never met a chocolate chip cookie I didn’t like. And this one from Orangette is, um, healthy. Sort of. Not really.
More soup. Again with the soup? Yes. Again with the soup. It’s for sick people. Heidi says so. Thank you 101 Cookbooks (my online food bible).
Last and perhaps least, if you’re feeling virtuous and/or enormous, pop on over to Bon Appétit and get yourself on a cleanse for food lovers. Doesn’t sound so bad actually. There is no lemon cayenne water involved. And chocolate is still on the menu.
Yeah, that’s not the best name…it takes longer to say it than to make it. Frankly, I didn’t really know what else to call it. I didn’t want to leave out any of the three main ingredients as they really do all come together so nicely and one isn’t necessarily the star of the dish more than another (although don’t those cherry tomatoes look absolutely mouthwatering?*) And I refuse to use the word “medley” — that is reserved only for those of the musical variety and then, only those sung by Cher (Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves, Half Breed and Dark Lady being my personal favorite). But I digress.
I came up with this recipe when I was a lazy single gal. Not that all single girls are lazy; I just was. When it came to cooking, that is. Yes, cooking! What did you think I meant? Anyway. I was known, at times, to eat a yogurt for dinner or even cereal (yes, girls do this too, boys). Not always, mind you. Just some nights. Oh you know what I mean. Anyway.
One night I was feeling mildly less lazy and had some zucchini and cherry tomatoes laying around and a can of cannellini beans in the cupboard. So I tossed in a little garlic, a pinch of dried sage, a sprinkle of Parmesan and a nice big grind of black pepper, and I was golden, Pony Boy. It’s a super-easy one-pan meal, but you can also serve it as a side dish (for those really industrious types). And if you want to make it a complete protein, just serve it with rice or pasta. It’s also lovely over quinoa. And it beats cereal any old day.
Zucchini, Tomato, Cannellini Quick-Cook
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium or 2 small zucchini, cut into thin half circles (or quarters if you have a small person)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried sage (or 1 tablespoon fresh, minced)
12-15 cherry tomatoes, halved (about 1 cup)
1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
Salt
Black pepper
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated (optional)
Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add zucchini, sauté until the pieces start browning. Add garlic and sage and stir everything around a bit. Squeeze the juice out of each cherry tomato half into the pan and then toss the tomato in. Cook for another minute or two. Add the beans and cook until heated through. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with grated Parmesan.
* Courtesy of Dan‘s garden…and all gone by this time of year…so I had to use store-bought (but still local and organic!)
It’s hot people. Damn hot. Like so hot I almost don’t want to even boil pasta. But I’m going to because — dare I say it? — I’m getting tired of ordering in. Did I just say that? That’s crazy talk. NYC is my oyster when it comes to delivery. There’s really nothing we can’t get (and I mean nothing). There’s Thai, pizza, sushi, empanadas (oh yes, my porteño friends, but…no. Not yet. I’m not ready.), Chinese, Vietnamese, Cuban…all good and all things I haven’t had in a long time (i.e., while we were in Buenos Aires, with the exception of the empanadas and the pizza, which honestly can’t be compared to NY pizza, sorry). But sometimes you want to know what’s in your food, you know? Right.
So, I made this pasta. You can hardly call it cooking. It’s more in the realm of assemblage. But no matter. It’s delish. Flavorful. Light. Easy. And in terms of raising the temperature of your kitchen, it’s just a few degrees as long as you keep your face AWAY from the pot when you dump that pasta out (note to self). What’s great about the hot pasta though is that it will make the mozzarella all gooey. And then all the flavors start to meld together with the pasta and it gets really dreamy and garlicky and good.
Note: My weirdo husband doesn’t like raw tomatoes (I know, nutjob), so for him I use fresh or roasted red peppers, which are good, but not as good as the tomatoes. It’s summer for crying out loud. Summer = Tomatoes. That’s a fact, Jack.
Tomato, Olive, Mozzarella Pasta
1 lb. pasta, any kind (I like penne)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
3/4 lb. fresh mozzarella, cut into chunks
2/3 cup pitted olives (I like kalamata), halved
A big handful of fresh basil, chopped
Black pepper
Salt
Parmesan (optional)
Put the garlic and olive oil into a serving bowl. Add the tomatoes, mozzarella and olives to the bowl and stir to combine. Add the basil and salt and pepper to taste. You can do this while you’re boiling the pasta or for more flavor, do it an hour or so ahead and just let it sit. The garlic and olive oil will really start to flavor the other ingredients nicely.
Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add it to the tomato mixture. Stir to combine and let sit for a bit to let the pasta take on some of that delicious flavor.
And if you’re feeling giddy, grate some fresh Parmesan on top. What the hell…it’s summer.*
* I don’t really know what that means. Technically, if it’s summer, there’s a possibility that you’re wearing a bathing suit, so some people may think adding more cheese to a dish is a bad idea. I suppose my thinking is that summer is a time when you shouldn’t have a care in the world, you don’t wear shoes, you drink nice rosés, and you really shouldn’t worry about a little extra cheese. OK. Glad we got that settled.
I know everyone and their mother blogged about this sauce, but hey, maybe someone reading this little blog may not have seen it, so I couldn’t just keep it to myself. Tomato sauce is one of those things that yes, you can buy in a jar from Trader Joe’s for like $3.00, but then you don’t have the satisfaction of making it yourself. And you can’t personally vouch for the quality of the ingredients that went in that jar. And it’s really almost as easy as opening a jar of tomato sauce. Really. You only need to open a can of tomatoes and cut an onion in half. Oh, and cut a hunk of butter off your butter plate (this bit is rather important). So very easy. Easy peasy. As the title says.
I love this sauce with the fresh gnocchi from La Genovesa, an amazing old-school pasta shop in Palermo Soho. And I love that you can watch them roll the pasta out on their giant old machine, which is parked in the front of the shop. And they make killer ravioli (think fresh squash, spinach & ricotta, etc.). Love that too. This is the general consensus. Nothing but love, baby.
Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking
Serves 4.
28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled canned tomatoes (chopped or crushed tomatoes are okay too)
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
10-15 basil leaves torn (if you have them, no biggie if you don’t!)
Dump the tomatoes into a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Toss in the halved onion and the butter and bring the pan to a simmer over a medium-low flame and stir every so often. If you’re using whole tomatoes, smush them against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon or snip with kitchen shears once they soften up a bit. Let it simmer uncovered for 45 minutes (or about 30 minutes if your tomatoes are chopped already). Add salt to taste (careful as some tomatoes are already salted and I often end up using salted butter).
While that’s simmering away, creating a deliriously wonderful fragrance in your kitchen, boil some pasta — about a pound should do. Remove the onion*, then toss the sauce with the drained pasta, add black pepper, a few torn basil leaves and some Parmesan, if you like. Although, it really doesn’t need anything. It’s just perfect as is.
* The original recipe says to toss the onion, but that’s sacrilege in my house. Some little pieces will slither out and find their way into the sauce and they should stay there. Any extra pieces can be cooked up with some scrambled eggs or tossed into a quiche or frittata. Or you can even just eat them with a hunk of bread, standing over the stove…just please don’t throw them away. So wasteful. And really very silly.