Farmers Market Concoction 2011

When you have awesome produce, but no inspiration for what to do with it, and the following day you're leaving town for two weeks, what do you do?  Cut it up, cook it, toss it in a bowl with some stuff and chow down.  If you keep it simple, you can't really go wrong, because vegetables are delicious.  This year's concoction went as follows:

1 bunch swiss chard, chopped and sauteed with garlic and onionsin grapeseed oil

2 ears corn, roasted over the stove flame, and kernels cut off

3 heirloom tomatoes, chopped

Basil stolen from neighbors alley since I killed mine.

Toss all of this with the thickest balsamic vinegar you can get your hands on, salt and pepper and enjoy!

Raw Tacos

If you are not familiar with Charlie Trotter, he is a genius, and one of his mottoes is "food doesn't have to be rich to taste good."  Instead of relying on butter, salt and cream, he takes the time to lift and support the natural flavours of the vegetables.  Charlie wrote an amazing book of impossible recipes simply titled RAW.  So when I ate at his restaurant in Chicago several years ago, I could have ordered the vegetable menu, one of two printed choices, but my friend dared me to ask for a raw menu.  I knew that for it to be truly raw, it had to be vegetarian, so I wasn't worried.  It was and is the best meal I've ever had.  If you are in Chicago, have money to burn, and want to spend 4-5 hours eating, then this is the place for you. 

More recently I had a delicious meal at St. Louis' first and only raw restaurant, Puravegan.  You really do feel a lot better after eating food like this.  It makes you wonder why you ever bother with the stuff that makes you want to lie down after you eat it.

So anyway, I totally ripped off this idea from a really great blog my friend alerted me to called My New Roots.  I'll let you get the recipe from her, but I made of few changes of course.  I forgot to buy cashews, so I used tahini in place of the cashew cream.  I used kale instead of cabbage as taco "shells."  I included zucchini and corn in the salsa.  And I was worried (unnecessarily) about not being full enough, so I also made a few with sprouted grain tortillas.  We both agree that the kale leaves were better than the tortillas for this particular taco filling.  And unlike so many raw dishes, this didn't take too long to put together.

Red Salad

My cousin in law always talks about her green soup, where anything green is a possible ingredient.  So I thought I'd apply that method to a salad with all red ingredients.  Ends up tasting like cole slaw no matter what you do, but that's a good thing.  This incarnation included red cabbage, red onions, red bell peppers, radishes, red beets - all shredded or julienned, and tomatoes in a red wine vinaigrette.  What other colors is this possible with I wonder?  Orange perhaps?  But I bet that would just end up tasting like baby food.

Big Salad

This is a favorite at our house and we eat it once a week.  I don't really like to plan it out too much.  I just throw everything salad-y in and it is always good.  The tofu is nice for it's texture but it's certainly not necessary with the chick peas and nuts covering the protein requirement.   Here are the ingredients:

Baked tofu (see shitake stir fry for recipe,) chick peas, crushed almonds, green onions from the garden, avocado, grape tomatoes, sliced carrots, shredded radish, fresh herbs from the garden, sliced red onion, thin sliced beets, julienne red bell pepper, cucumber half moons (not pictured,) bleu cheese (not pictured,) and your favorite dressing - mine is a simple vinaigrette made of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.   Toss all of this with the greens of your choice!  Sadly, my romaine lettuce has already bolted thanks to the heat.  So I used some leftover napa cabbage and spinach for the base of this salad.  Cabbage is more nutritious than lettuce any way, plus it is crunchier, so I highly recommend this for your next big salad!  These are all pretty sturdy ingredients, so go ahead and dress the whole thing, and throw the rest in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.  It will be different, but I quite like my veggies marinated over night. 

Side note, I ended up not using the beets in the salad when I got the idea to make beet crisps.  They were delicious, but I will wait to tell you all about it in a different post.

Pasta with Shitakes and Smoked Tomato Sauce

I still adore the basic preparation of Shitake pasta I posted back in May, but I wanted to try something a little different.  However, I had no plan, so I just started digging around the kitchen, hoping for inspiration to hit.

 Last summer was so hot that only the cherry tomatoes made it to maturity.  Fortunately though, this particular plant was a workhorse, producing twice as many tomatoes as we could eat.  I absolutely love my stovetop smoker, and tomatoes are my favorite thing to smoke in it, so every time there were excess tomatoes, into the smoker they went.  And every time there were excess smoked tomatoes, into the freezer they went!  Even though I recently moved everything from the old freezer to the new, I had forgotten I still had a container of smoked tomatoes. 


While waiting for the tomatoes to thaw, cook your favorite noodles, roast some garlic, and saute the shitakes until they start to get a little dry.  Once the tomatoes are thawed, puree them with the garlic, a fair amount of salt, and a little olive oil.  Heat the sauce in a saucepan, then plate the noodles, mushrooms, and sauce.  Or maybe the mushrooms on top, I haven't decided which is better.  I served this with some broccolini that I baked with a little oil and garlic for 20 mins at 350. 

Quartet of Bruschetta

While in Montalcino last month, we had a very unexpectedly enjoyable lunch at a little wine store that you wouldn't even expect served food.  We had riboletta, bruschetta and a cheese plate, and it was one of the best meals we had in Italy.  So that's what inspired this little plate. 

 

Two are recreations and two are my own inventions.  Clockwise they are: 1) mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and seasoned with thyme and sea salt 2) white beans and garlic seasoned with rosemary 3) chopped green olives, tomatoes and gorgonzola 4) artichokes with parmesan and little bit of mayonaise.  

Tomato and Barley Risotto

I recently discovered an extremely elegant vegetarian blog called The New Vegetarian on the The Guardian website.  And I'm always on the lookout for an alternative risotto like the cauliflower one I had at this amazing New York restaurant.  So while browsing through all of Yotam's beautiful recipes, I found this one, and it was going to make a perfect 5th course at my upcoming dinner party.  However, I really only used the recipe for inspiration, as I left out the sugar, feta and coriander, and added spinach and delicata squash.  And I only used 12 cloves of garlic, not TWO WHOLE HEADS like the recipe calls for.  Is he crazy?  I would have to stay in solitary confinement for a week.

Stuffed Tomato and Delicata Squash

Simple to make Sunday dinner. I wanted to make "Baked eggs in Tomatoes" but the husband is weird about eggs, so I swapped out the egg for a rice and mushroom mixture. I chose those because that's what I had in the fridge. You could stuff it with anything though. The delicata squash only appears for a few weeks every fall, so every year I mess with the recipe a little more. Serve these separately or together with a salad (frisee and arugala shown here.)

For the tomato:
Sautee mixed mushrooms with diced onion and garlic, mix with a little parmesan and cooked brown rice and set aside.
Cut off top and hollow out the tomato of all liquid and seeds. Then sprinkle the inside with salt.
Stuff tomato tightly with rice and mushrooms and place on oiled baking sheet.

For the squash:
Halfway mash some white beans with some finely chopped spinach and ricotta cheese. You could mix in an egg, but it's not essential.
Halve the squash and scrape out seeds. Pack in the bean mixture and top with panko breadcrumbs. Place on baking sheet.

Bake either or both at 400 degrees until tops are brown.

raw veg salad

Inspired by a perfect "fatoosh" salad at The Vine, my favorite local Middle Eastern eatery, I went to the Tower Grove Farmers Market this morning and bought the ingredients for this simple salad. All local and all delicious. It's easy, and you can put in basically anything. Just dice it all up!

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes

1 small red onion

1 zucchini

2 ears corn

1 lemon (juice of)

1 handful parsley

1 handful basil

salt and pepper to taste

Half Dried Tomatoes

I had an overabundance of super-ripe tomatoes, so I decided to try the "half-dried" preparation that I had in Spain. I'm pretty sure that's a loose translation, but it works. Halve tomatoes and place cut side up in a baking pan. Sprinkle with lots of garlic, herbs, olive oil and salt. Bake for 2 hours at 300 degrees F. Yummy to toss into stuff at the last minute, instead of sauce on pizza, a sandwich with fresh mozzerella. Intense tomato flavour.

Vegetable and Ricotta-Stuffed Collard Rolls with Tomato Sauce

12 large collard leaves, washed well, an 8 ounce container of whole-milk ricotta, 1/4 pound whole-milk mozzarella, cut into 1/4-inch dice, 1 large egg beaten lightly, 1 red bell pepper chopped, 1 can or equivalent white beans rinsed and drained, tomato sauce..............Boil whole collards for 10 mins and then plunge into ice water until filling is ready.  Mix all remaining ingredients together to form a consistent mixture.  Trim collard stem 1/3 of the way up from the bottom, thereby getting rid of the thickest part.  Place two heaping tablespoons of filling at the top of the leaf and roll up tucking in sides as you go.  Place collard parcels in a bed of tomato sauce in a baking dish, and bake for 45 mins at 375 degrees.  Serve with tomato sauce scooped on top, on a bed of whatever you want.  Brown rice shown here.

Cannellini Cannelloni

Lightly oil the bottom and sides of baking dish.  Next, lay down a thin layer of tomato sauce.  Place uncooked cannelloni shells (that have been stuffed with: 1 can rinsed cannellini beans, 1 egg beaten, sauteed onions and garlic, lots of chopped herbs)  in tight rows until you have filled the entire dish.  Pour enough tomato sauce to completely cover canneloni over the top and bake covered at 350 for one hour, adding parmesan cheese at the half hour mark.

Charred Tomato Gazpacho

2 big tomatoes, 1 cucumber, 1 green chile, 1 jalapeno, 1/2 vidalia onion, 1 red bell pepper, 2 cloves garlic, 1/4 cup fresh pineapple juice, lime.

completely blacken tomatoes in cast iron skillet.  you can do the same with the other ingredients, or keep them raw.  puree the lot in a blender to desired consistency.  garnish with green olives and cilantro (shown) or avocado (not shown.)

green tomatoes in late october

quadrigeminal tomato salad

i stole this idea from my brother.  i grew the red one. the others were acquired elsewhere.  in front you see wedges of fresh ricotta.  all sitting in a pool of evoo and balsamic vinegar, with a light sprinkling of sea salt.