Homemade Garganelli with Fresh Garden Tomato Sauce

So another fabulous shower gift (that probably only I would register for) was a gnocchi board. (Thanks, Alice!) While I'm super excited to make gnocchi, I wanted to try garganelli. It's a time consuming, penne style pasta that really appealed to me. I was waiting for Jamie to come home Sunday afternoon, so I thought I would take advantage of my fresh tomatoes and time to spare and try it. Yum! Any fresh pasta is great, but these are really pretty noodles. Certainly a treat. In contrast, the tomato sauce is one of the easiest sauces - feel free to make it with any other regular old pasta. This is also not a traditional garganelli sauce, but it's summer, it's what I had, and it's delicious.

Fresh Garden Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
1 small bowls worth of super ripe, fresh tomatoes
1/4 cup good olive oil
1-2 tsp salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced

Mozza's Pane Pomodoro with Burrata, Prosciutto, Pickled Shallots, and Tomato Vinaigrette

My friend Siobhan gave me this great cookbook for a recent wedding shower (thanks Al, Kara, and Nat for throwing it! And Sha for this great book!) and all of the pictures and recipes looked amazing. Yesterday I flipped through to try to find a good tomato recipe to use up some of my wonderful garden tomatoes from this week. I settled on this one because it sounded so tasty. It takes a lot of little things, but it's worth it! Also, the tomato vinaigrette is amaaaaazing. I just tastes like concentrated tomato. It's the best. And you can't go wrong with burrata. Yum yum. Can't wait to make some more for lunch!

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as an appetizer

For the Shallots
Ingredients:
1/2 pound shallots
1 cup red wine vinegar (she calls for champagne vinegar but I didn't have any)
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Week 19

The garden is great! It's putting out tomatoes like crazy. They are beautiful and colorful and tart and sweet and just amazing. I had my first purple carrot, a cucumber, some great herbs (used for the clams)... Everything looks fab. I had pounds of tomatoes and have been thinking of new ways to use them. (Pane pomodoro coming up next...)

The first basket of tomatoes (the top one was the second)

Grilled Clams with Herb Butter

These are incredible, and so easy! I made them as a little hors d'oeuvres for a BBQ this past weekend, but I think they were the star. I am looking forward to being back out in Southampton (with a grill) again next weekend so I can make them again! My friend Alice doesn't cook, so to gauge difficulty levels - she said even she could do this. Very simple and so, so tasty!

Ingredients:
A big handful of fresh herbs (I used basil, dill, tarragon, parsley, chives, and thyme from my garden)
1 tsp lemon zest
1/2 stick of butter, softened
big pinch of salt and pepper
2 dozen clams

Directions:
Finely chop up the herbs. Mash into the butter with lemon zest, salt, and pepper. Form into a log on a piece of Saran wrap and put in the fridge for an hour or more so it hardens. (Probably fine to do it right before and not refrigerate too.)

Veggies Week 18 and Caprese Salad with Cucumbers

I forgot to take a picture of the whole garden, but that's what I pulled out! We have SO many tomatoes! Only the smaller ones are ripe so far, but there are green tomatoes all over. The little black cherries are absolutely amazing, and all the others are delish too. Tart and sweet and acidic...yum! We had to do a lot of work staking the cages and tying string around to make sure the tomatoes were supported. (Some of them were lilting or even falling over after all the rain last week - too heavy with all those tomatoes!)

We also had the most delicious salad, sort of like a caprese. Sliced tomatoes, really thinly sliced fresh cucumber, lots of chopped basil, thinly sliced mozzarella, salt, balsamic, and olive oil. It's so great! I'd never had cucumbers in that combination, but they add an extra freshness and crunch. We ate it two days in a row. I love summer!

Plum-Blackberry Streusel Pie

Last night I was home alone, so I felt like baking would be a fun activity. I've also been wanting to try my beautiful new Emile Henry pie dish that my sisters-in-law-to-be gave me as a shower present. (Thanks, guys!) This Plum-Blackberry Streusel Pie sounded great, so I braved the heat (not as bad as earlier this week), turned on my oven, and baked. What a pretty pie!

Ingredients:

4 large, pitted and quartered

2 cups blackberries

1 1/2 cups sugar, divided

3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

3/4 teaspoon salt, divided

1 frozen pie crust (I used one from Trader Joe's)

1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

Directions:

Put a foil-lined large baking sheet in lower third of oven and preheat oven to 375°F.

Toss plums and blackberries with 1 cup sugar, tapioca, cornstarch, zest, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a large bowl.

Rose Sangria

Yum! This heat wave called for rose, and my friend Lara's coming over so I thought sangria would be a bit more festive. I found a recipe on food52 for rose sangria and pretty much followed it, leaving out a few things and adding a few. It's so refreshing and the white peaches and cucumber add a great flavor.

Mix:
1 bottle dry rose
1/4 hot house cucumber, thinly sliced
1/2 lemon, thinly sliced
2 white peaches, sliced
Hand full of basil leaves, ripped up
1/4 cup triple sec

Let it chill in the fridge for an hour and enjoy!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Greece

Greece was SO much fun. I had the best, best time. To excuse my break in blogging, please find some fun pictures below! Hope everyone else has some great summer travels in the works...

 Cliff jumping

 Dinner at Drakos Fish Taverna in Ios

 4th of July fun

Week 17

When I got out to Southampton last Friday, I was happy to see my garden had exploded! I guess all that hot weather really helped. The tomatoes are like 6 1/2 feet high! It's like a forest. Everything is looking healthy and happy, and we even had our first tomatoes! The black cherries, mini orange, and striped tigerella had a few that were ready. So delicious.

Here it is from the side. See how tall those tomatoes are? It's crazy!

This is one of the big Japanese Trifeles. There are like 10 more on the bush.