Tomatoes

It's peak tomato season! Go out to the farmers market or farm stand and buy them and eat them before tomato season ends! With a little mozzarella, basil, balsamic, and olive oil you can have the most amazing salad. I <3 p="" tomatoes="">

And these are from our garden, which did really well this year! We had tomoatoes, snap peas, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, strawberries, eggplant, and more hot peppers than ever. Keep an eye out for a Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce - coming to the blog soon and it's incredible. 

Tomato, Watermelon, and Feta Salad

I had tomatoes and watermelon and thought they would make a great, light summer salad with a little feta to add saltiness and some dukkah for some extra flavor. This was super refreshing and light and would be perfect for a hot weather lunch.

Ingredients:

Ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced

watermelon, rind removed and thinly sliced

red wine vinegar

balsamic reduction

olive oil

salt

feta

dukkah*

Tomato Sandwich

I was irrationally excited for my lunch today - a tomato sandwich. It sounds simple (because it is - only four ingredients: bread, tomatoes, mayonnaise, and salt) but it's heavenly. I know there are some crazy non-tomato-eaters out there (both of my brothers-in-law), but for everyone else this sandwich is the best thing to eat in the height of summer tomato season. Instead of a traditional sandwich, I made these like a tartine. Mayo on both slices of bread, topped with tomatoes, and sprinkled with salt. It was a little easier to eat this way because with a traditional tomato sandwich the tomatoes often slide out. I tried two ways here. One with grape/cherry tomatoes first topped with slices of bigger tomato, and one with bigger tomato slices topped with cherry/grape tomatoes. The first version was slightly less messy to eat. I want to eat this every day until October. 

Spicy Tomato Soup

This is a nice and cheap soup, and really easy. Great novice soup recipe (I'm looking at you, Alice!) I love Barbara Lynch and saw the recipe on Food52 and had to try it. Yum! It's very simple but really nice, especially with a gooey grilled cheese.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 big tsp red pepper flakes (or more or less, depending how spicy you want it)

1 1/2 cups water

2 28oz cans whole tomatoes with their juices

salt and pepper

big handfull of basil

Tomatoes Gratin

I saw a recipe from Ina Garten and thought it sounded easy and like a great side. I modified it a bit to make little miniature ramekins. They were tart and sweet and the crispy bread crumbs were a great contrast. Super easy, too.

Ingredients:
2 big handfulls grape tomatoes, halved
1 piece of bread
1 clove garlic
olive oil
pinch of thyme
olive oil

Directions:
Heat oven to 400. Pulse the garlic in a food processor until finely chopped. Add piece of bread and pulse to get course crumbs. Add 2 tbsp of olive oil and pulse. Add a tsp or so of olive oil to the bottom of the ramekins along with the thyme and a big pinch of salt.

Clam, bacon, corn, and tomato summer stew

Saw this recipe on Food52 and couldn't resist - it has all the best summer ingredients. It's super tasty, pretty quick, and a crowd pleaser. Make sure to take it off the heat right when all the clams are open so they stay tender and amazing. I added some onion and some zucchini because I had it and why not. Great summer dinner! Don't be put off by "stew" - it's not like its usual thick, hearty, wintery cousin.

Serves 4-6 as a main
Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lb bacon, sliced into lardons
1 tbsp smoked sweet paprika
6 ears corn, shucked and cut from the cob
salt and pepper to taste
1 red onion, diced
1/2 lb tomatoes, cut in half
half of one lemon
3 tbsp bourbon
20 clams, scrubbed well (you don't want to eat the grit)
3 small zucchini, chopped into bite sized pieces
bread for serving
basil leaves, ripped up

Directions:
Heat up the oil in a large pot. Add the bacon and stir until the fat starts to render, then add onions. Stir until fat renders and bacon is crunchy, and onion is soft.

week 20

My tomato forest is incredible. I've been eating tomatoes non-stop and it's just the best. Look at that beautiful salad.

What I have learned: don't plant lemon tomatoes. They look cool, but they taste like nothing and aren't very meaty. Do plant Japanese Black Trifele - delicious, rich, sweet, and tart.

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!

Vegetable Garden Week 7

Back out to Long Island this weekend to check on the garden! It's doing really well! The Swiss Chard is sprouting well, the beets are really happy. Brussels Sprouts too. Lots of good greens! I'm excited that I don't have to thin the beets until the leaves are about 4-5 inches high, then I can eat the baby beet greens in salad. Perfect! The peas are almost a foot high and are really hanging on to the string. Hopefully, by June we'll have tons of snap peas to snack on. And since we planted them earlier this year, they're much further along than this time last year - so we'll get peas earlier, yay!

The warm weather plants inside the wall o waters are much happier than those outside.

Vegetable Garden Week 5

The vegetable garden is really starting to look like a garden! (Though a little goofy with the wall o waters.) It's so great. We packed up the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that had been living in our apartment and headed out to Long Island Saturday morning.

The wall o waters are up, and they will really be tested this week with the temperatures suddenly plummeting! I planted all of my tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. I was able to squeeze a few of the little ones together in one wall o water, so that was nice.

Tomatoes from Union Square

My 4 Big Boys and 4 Super Sweet 100s are growing bigger every day on my windowsill, but I needed some funky heirlooms to round them out (my garden has space for 13 tomato plants! isn't it amazing??). On a Wednesday trip to Union Square I came back with 5 very cool tomato plants - 2 cherry tomato and 3 bigger. I can't wait to see the tomatoes they have because they all look so funky and cool. I didn't get any heirloom beefsteaks because I think we'll have enough with the 4 Big Boy plants. We'll certainly have tons of cherry tomatoes! Those are so great for salads and are always prolific, so I don't mind. I can make salsa, too!

Here are the cool heirlooms I bought today! (Info from rareseeds.com) I hope to have a very colorful garden!

Big:

Japanese Black Trifele - "80-90 days. Attractive tomatoes are the shape and size of a Bartlett pear with a beautiful purplish-brick color; the fruit are perfect and smooth with no cracks. The flavor is absolutely sublime, having all the richness of fine chocolate. This was our heaviest producer for 2004. The plants produced loads of fruit all summer long. It has become a favorite with many seed savers and we are glad to be able to offer such a colorful variety. It is believed to have come from Russia, so don't ask me about the name! "

Plum Lemon - "80 days. Bright canary-yellow 3” fruit looks just like a fresh lemon. The perfect tomato for marketing (along with Green Zebra, Orange Banana, and Black Prince) to chefs and other gourmets. This variety was collected by Kent Whealy, of Seed Savers Exchange, from an elderly seedsman at the Bird Market in Moscow. Delicious, sweet-taste. "

Wall O Water

Has anyone ever used these?? I just found out about them from this blog and I'm super excited about it. I hope they arrive by Friday so I can plant my tomatoes this weekend (and peppers and eggplants too). If not, I'll do it next weekend. I'm so excited to try them. You can get them on Burpee and Amazon. Hope they work. Of course, will keep you posted!

Tomato Jam

I had some burrata leftover and thought tomato jam would be a great accompaniment. After browsing the internet for recipes, I came across this recipe from Food52 that looked great. I may dial back the sugar a little next time, but otherwise it's super tasty. Nice and tart and rich and a really great companion to gooey cheese. Would also be fab on an English muffin with some butter. I had extra, so I got a ball jar and canned it. I really love canning. It's great to throw canned sauce or jam in the cabinet and have a longer shelf life than just putting it in Tupperware in the fridge, and also makes a really nice homemade present.

Makes 1 1/2 pints

Ingredients:

3 1/2 lb plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 cup cider vinegar

juice of 1 lemon

Polenta tart with goat cheese, shallots, and tomatoes

I had some fabulous polenta at L'Artusi the other night and have been craving it since. I wanted to try something new, though, and thought a tart with polenta instead of a regular pie crust could be fun. I went to the farmer's market and picked up some really good salad greens, some hot house tomatoes, some shallots, and some fresh goat cheese. It was a pretty simple dinner, and would be great for a lunch, too. Really yummy! I want to try this again when more veggies are in season. Maybe fill it thickly with roasted vegetables like asparagus, tomatoes, zucchini, etc. That would be great! The goat cheese was gooey and fab. Wish I could remember the vendor at Union Square market!

Serves 4
Ingredients:
3 small beef steak tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 cup polenta
2 cups milk
1 cup water
salt and pepper
butter
1/4 cup goat cheese (chevre style)
4 shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon creme fraiche
1/4 cup grated Pecorino or Parm

Vegetable Garden Week 20

May garden was looking a litle downtrodden last weekend with the deer and all of the hot sun, but it looked a lot better this weekend. The Swiss Chard came back and there were lots of tomatoes and a big eggplant. There are a few little jalapenos growing and some zucchini that will probably be the perfect size next week. There was a beautiful yellow brandywine tomato that still had to ripen a bit, but I picked it to ripen in the city off the vine because I was afraid it would fall off during the week. I may make more Babaganoush with my big eggplant because it was so tasty last time, although I'm tempted to grill it too because it's so fresh and sweet. We had some Swiss Chard sauteed with garlic and chorizo last night - with a drizzle of maple syrup - and some crispy fried zucchini blossoms. Also some great August corn (not from my garden, but really really fresh and tasty).

Vegetable Garden Week 19

Although the deer have been chewing on some parts of my garden (the green grapes got crushed and one of the Better Boy plants got chewed on a fair amount), there were some amazing tomatoes!


This was the first of the yellow brandywine. Look how pretty and orange it is! I should have held it in the picture to show scale - it was huge and probably weighed almost 2 pounds.


Look how gorgeous the slices look - so meaty! We made the most amazing BLTs with these. Crispy bacon, good baby lettuces, and a thick slice of tomato that took up the whole width of the sandwich. It was sweet and tart and juicy. I could have eaten 5 of them.


Here are some other goodies from the garden. Some amazingly pungent basil, a delicious red tomato, and some zucchini blossoms just begging to be fried.


Here is the better boy tomato all sliced up. We ate it with some heirlooms and beef steaks from the farm stand and we were happy to know that the homegrown tomato definitely tastes better and is worth all the work! (The farmstand tomatoes were good too, just not quite as sweet or flavorful.)

Tomatoes!

I was in Michigan last weekend, but Jamie stopped by my garden and there was our first red tomato - and several green grapes. I knew the juicy Better Boy tomato would be good, but I'd almost forgotten how good. Summer tomatoes, especially home grown, are so flavorful, tart, sweet, tender...I could go on. Also, another difference between home grown tomatoes and store bought is that there is so much more meat in homegrown - not as much gooey seed stuff. Dressed with a little salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, and Balsamic vinegar, these tomatoes are pretty much summer on a plate. Serve them up after some steak and corn - perfect.

Vegetable Garden Week 16

Attack of the monster zucchini! I picked all of the zucchinis last week on 6 days later, look what I found bursting out all over the garden. 10 zucchinis, several of which were enormous. The big one in the foreground had to be 6 pounds. My mom says those are zucchini bread zucchinis (recipe to follow). Now I'm thinking up and researching all sorts of recipes to use this plethora of courgettes.


Also ripe and happy this week were my little green grape tomatoes! Look at this beautiful plate of them. They make an excellent salad. They're colorful, sweet, and juicy. If there are tons next weekend, I'm going to try a salsa. Below, I just sliced them and tossed them with very thinly sliced Vidalia onion, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and a little julienned basil. It's so summery and fresh.

Everything else in the garden was pretty happy. The rest of the tomato plants are covered in green tomatoes, and the yellow brandywine has a few big green tomatoes that I suspect will be turning yellow very soon. I can't wait to try them! There are three pretty good size eggplants but I'm letting them get a little bigger this time. More next week - hopefully the zucchini will be a more manageable bunch!

Garden Vegetable Pasta

After picking an eggplant, some zucchini, and some basil from my garden I came back to the city to make a summery dinner. I did go out and buy some tomatoes and garlic (my tomatoes aren't ready just yet). I also used rachette pasta because I knew Jamie would like it, but use anything you've got at home. This is great and summery and is a good way to use your veggies - or those you pick up at the farm stand!

Ingredients:
3 small zucchini
1 small eggplant
3 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp (or more to taste) red pepper flakes
4 plum tomatoes, cut into cubes
1 tsp tomato paste
2 tbsp water
Basil

Directions:
Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic. Cut the eggplant into 1/2 inch cubes and add to the pan. Saute until they start to soften.

Saganaki (Greek Fried Cheese)

Just back from an amazing trip to Greece! I have a house in the Cyclades (my family does) and I went for a week with a few friends. Even though the kitchen is rustic - no electricity, the fridge runs on gas, etc - it is my favorite place to cook. I love to cook up a simple lunch of tzatziki, pita, and saganaki which is always a huge hit after sitting on the beach and swimming in the beautiful, salty, Aegean Sea. Saganaki is essentially the Greek version of mozzarella sticks. Usually at a restaurant, they serve it as one big square, but I prefer cutting it into little squares to make it easier to snack on and share and it's great for groups. After lightly flowering the cheese, you quickly fry it up and cover the cooked cheese with a generous dose of fresh lemon juice. The big, red, ripe tomatoes and the acid of the lemon juice cut through the heaviness of the cheese and make the most delicious lunch! Served with a cold bowl of tzatziki and some toasted pitas (and a nice, icy Mythos) it's the perfect meal for a hot, sunny summer day.

Ingredients:

1 package of Kolios cheese (a Greek semi-hard cows milk cheese)