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Rustic Fries – in the Oven!

30 Sep

These made a great accompaniment to our Lemon-Thyme Roast Chicken. We were fortunate to have purple potatoes from our CSA – talk about gorgeous! But this will work with regular potatoes as well.

Oven-Roasted Rustic Fries

6 medium red potatoes cut into thick, rustic spears (peeling is unnecessary)

2 Tbs vegetable oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Soak potatoes in a large bowl of cold water for 30 minutes (to remove some of the starches)

Pat dry (you want them fairly dry).

Preheat oven to 425°F. Toss potatoes with oil on baking sheet and spread in a single layer. Roast for 45 minutes, turning 2 or 3 times, until crisp and golden. Finish with 3-5 minutes under the broiler for greater crispness.  Season with salt and pepper if desired.

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Packing the Oven: Roasted Eggplant Cubes, and Onions and Peppers

24 Sep

Here are the last two recipes for my oven-packing roasting-mania session that resulted in a couple of days’ worth of meals as I used the vegetables in several different ways. Vegetarians and vegans will enjoy the deeper flavor roasting gives to vegetables. Environmentally-conscious cooks will like the energy saving of packing the oven. And busy folks will be very pleased; once the chopping is done, the time-consuming work is over!

These are not really recipes on their own, but something great to have on hand to assemble quick meals. They also extend the life of vegetables you have too many of but don’t want to lose!

These two were especially good in my take-to-work wrap. I just slapped some hummus on a wrap, laid out some roasted vegetables, a few strips of sundried tomatoes and some of the roasted tomatoes I told you about a couple of days ago. Delicious!

Continue reading →

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Roasted Pattypan Squash (yes, you can eat the rind)

22 Sep

These summer squashes — with their tam o’ shanter shape and luscious colors — look more pretty than edible, but they are really tasty, so have no mercy, grab them off that fall centerpiece and cook ’em up while they are fresh and tender!

This is a really basic recipe for roasting that I used recently when packing the oven with four different veggie dishes. You can boil pattypans, stuff them (Click here for a gorgeous and simple stuffed pattypan recipe!) , even grill them (brush with lemon and mint, yum, yum), but this will do the job if you just want to get the job done simply.

I do recommend scooping the seeds if there are a lot of them and you have the time.

Roasted Pattypan Squash

2 medium pattypan squash (about 1.5 lbs), quartered, seeds removed if desired

2 -3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs dried oregano

1 Tbs dried thyme

Salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450°F. Spread oil over all surfaces of squash. Then sprinkle with herbs, salt and pepper. Cook for 20-25 minutes, or until tender.

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Roasted Plum Tomatoes with Garlic and Basil

21 Sep

As the weather cools, I am turning the oven on more and more (the big oven). Packing the oven uses less energy and is a great way to use up an abundance of garden vegetables. Roast everything one evening and have veggies for side dishes, quick pastas, lunchtime wraps, and whatever else you can think of for the next three or four days!

On this occasion I packed the oven with tomatoes, eggplant, onions and peppers, and pattypan squash in separate  dishes…all at 450° for approximately 30 minutes. It was quite a production, but more on those recipes later!

Today’s installment is yet another delicious way to get the most from the end-of-season tomatoes and basil. This method turns little plums into savory-sweet disks that dress up any dish they are around. They marry well with pizza, feta, mozzarella, hummus, olives…anything Mediterranean.

Roasted Tomatoes with Garlic and Basil

24 plum tomatoes (or as many as will fit on your rimmed baking sheet and increase other ingredients accordingly), halved, with core and seeds scooped out

3-4 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs balsamic vinegar

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp kosher salt

½ tsp black pepper

1 Tbs fresh basil leaves, chopped

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Place tomatoes on rimmed baking sheet. In a bowl, whisk remaining ingredients (except basil) together until blended. Stir in basil and drizzle over tomatoes, allowing oil to also seep under. Cook for 20-25 minutes, until tomatoes begin to caramelize. Serve atop toast, in a wrap or just eat right off the baking sheet!

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We Be Yammin’: Seasoned Yam/Sweet Potato Oven Fries

18 Sep

Leandro recently fell in love with some oven fried sweet potato waffle fries we had at our friend Pam’s house.

I was tempted to get a bag at the store, but since I prefer organic and I like making my own food, I figured I’d give it a go.

I found beautiful organic garnet yams at the supermarket and decided for a curry flavor, which harmonizes nicely with the sweetness of the tubers. Leandro thought the final product was a bit too strong on seasonings, but my mom and I couldn’t stop eating them. Considering the beta-carotene punch they pack, there’s nothing wrong with that!

And O.M.G. it couldn’t be easier. I may tone down the seastoning next time to please my napoleonic offspring, but for myself I would do it exactly the same way next time!

A note on sweet potatoes and yams: The orange fleshed tuber often called “yam” you see in the average American supermarket is actually a sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), unrelated to regular white potatoes and unrelated to true “yams” which originated in Africa. The name “yam” comes from one of the African words for this sweet, white-fleshed and denser tuber, “nyami.” Puerto Ricans will recognize them as ñame but I am going farther afield than I want to right now…so back to sweet potatoes. If it’s orange, it’s a sweet potato, regardless of what the supermarket wants to call it.

You could certainly increase this recipe to make a bigger batch; this amount was what fit in my toaster oven.

Seasoned Oven Fried Yams (or Sweet Potatoes)

1.5-2 lbs yams/sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into spears

Scant ¼ Cup vegetable oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp mild curry (or other spice blend of your choice: chipotle, pumpkin spice)

Pinch (scant 1/8 tsp) cayenne pepper (optional)

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Place yam spears in a bowl and add olive oil, stirring until spears are thoroughly coated. Add remaining ingredients and stir to evenly coat the spears. Lay flat on a baking sheet and cook for 30 minutes, turning once. For added crispness, do an additional broil to brown the spears for 3-4 minutes. Let sit for five minutes before serving.

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Quick Cannellini Bean Salad (great with tomatoes or on toast!)

9 Sep

Cannellini beans have come to the rescue a couple of times this week – once when I needed something to take across the street to dinner that would show off one of the tomatoes we grew in our backyard and then when we had a mom and kid playdate and I wanted a quick addition to a snack-y type table, along with hummus, veggies, crackers, grapes, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.

These little white beans are tasty right out of the can, so you are only seconds from a hearty snack when you have it in your pantry. I think I’ll be using this recipe a lot this winter to add dash and protein satisfaction to otherwise ordinary salads.

A delicious salad that makes a meal. Look at those glorious tomatoes.

Quick Cannellini Bean Salad (great with tomatoes!)

1 15oz can cannellini (white) beans, rinsed and drained

1/4 onion, peeled and minced (red onion preferred, but use what you’ve got)

1 tsp extra virgin olive oil

¼ -1/2 tsp red or white wine vinegar

¼ – ½ tsp balsamic vinegar

½ tsp oregano/Italian herbs/your favorite dried herb. Double the quantity for fresh chopped herbs.

Pinch salt

Freshly cracked black pepper

(optional, small chunks of tomato, seeded)

Place beans and minced onion in a bowl. In a separate bowl or cup, whisk together oil and vinegars (you can adjust vinegars to your personal taste). Pour over beans, add remaining ingredients. mix thoroughly and serve.

 

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Freeze! The Lazy (or clever) Cook’s Guide to Preserving Tomatoes

5 Sep

This was the year I would start preserving and canning…at least that’s what I swore when I laid down the money for a canning pot and associated equipment at Walmart a couple of months ago (Walmart being the new Woolworth’s; it is where you will find a lot of the old-fashioned domestic arts type of stuff that Woolworth’s used to carry back in the day).

Well, canning with heat didn’t happen, or at least hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look like happening any time soon. But I have still been making an effort to preserve some of the flavors of summer for the colder months in a less time-consuming and sweaty way. Regular visitors will remember a creole tomato sauce I made and froze for later, for example https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/fresh-tomato-sauce-criollo-style/.

But at this time of year, with all the vegetables we have and the time to work with them running short due to school, I had to shorten even the shortcuts. So I blanched and froze sauce tomatoes for later.

All you have to do is

1) take your farm fresh, ripe tomatoes, wash and core the stem area (you don’t have to go all the way down; just take a cone out),

2) throw them in boiling water for a minute (until they start to split)– 30 seconds for smaller tomatoes — and then

3) plunge them in ice water for about five minutes for large tomatoes and a couple of minutes for small.

Et voila! Freezer-ready tomatoes. Some people peel them at that point; I sometimes do and sometimes don’t. You will have to do it when you thaw them later, as the skins get chewy in the freezer. Some people don’t even blanch them, but I do like to set the flavor and freshness and I think blanching does that pretty well. Anyway, once they are cool, all you have to do is

4) put them in a freezer bag (quartering them is optional), squeeze out the air, seal and label them. Stick them in the freezer and they will keep 6-8 months and will be suitable for sauces and soups (not salads, as the texture will get mushy over time.

Right now I have a few pounds of San Marzanos, a pound of plum tomatoes and about four pounds of whatever yellow tomatoes it is that I am getting from the farm. I am going to be soooooo, sooooo, sooooo happy to make fresh sauce or minestrone with them in the dark days of February when my arms are about to fall off from shoveling snow!

Recommended tomatoes are Roma, Brandywine and plums, as they make great sauce!

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Broccoli Rabe with Toasted Walnuts and Raisins (Spicy option!)

4 Sep

There is a certain complication to being a food writer. People assume you know a whole lot more about food than you actually do or that you have a recipe file in your head with complete access to what-to-do with every ingredient in nano-seconds.

So some unusual vegetable comes up at CSA distribution and folks want to know what to do with it, like, right now, as I am trying to divide 3/4 lb of string beans in my head and talk to Allison and keep track of my four-year-old fireball, who has to go potty. Now.

Uh…em…of course: I don’t effen know! Rachael and Martha and Alton have legions of minions to make them look all-knowing. Me? Nada…

So this time it was Steve (known as Farmer Steve around here) who got me with the broccoli rabe while a handful of other CSA members cocked an ear. Bus-ted.

I haven’t cooked with this stuff in a while (and not regularly since I lived in Italy back in the days of the Empire) and gave my stock answer: “When in doubt, saute in garlic” and went home to investigate.

So I found a few recipes, including the following one that I adapted from Giada De Laurentiis (who is a dead ringer for my dear friend Gabrielle Paese – there, I’ve said it publicly). Giada uses pine nuts, but, in addition to having a staff, she has a budget and I don’t, so I use walnuts — a less expensive alternative.

Interesting thing I learned from my investigations is that the “broccoli rabe” we get at Restoration Farm is more like “rapini” because it’s all leaves and none of those little heads. Either way, we’re talking about a bitter, zesty green that my friend, Marianne, finds too chewy, but that I actually love for that reason. The fun of this recipe is that the raisins the raisins provide sweet bursts.

So this one’s for you, Farmer Steve!

Broccoli Rabe with Walnuts and Raisins

IMPORTANT – this is a recipe for a small amount of broccoli rabe, which, like so many leafy greens, cooks down to nothing in no time. My recommendation? Triple or quadruple this recipe in order to have a nice fat side serving for four people – only increasing the oil, garlic and red pepper by two.

1 bunch broccoli rabe (about 12-14 oz) cleaned and stems trimmed

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

Pinch (1/8 tsp) hot red pepper flakes

1/4 Cup raisins

Salt to taste

1/4 cup roasted walnuts*, broken up

Have a bowl of ice water ready And be ready to reserve ½ cup of the cooking liquid. Place broccoli rabe in a pot of boiling water for 2-3 minutes until bright green and slightly wilted. Reserve ½ cup cooking liquid. Drain and put greens in ice bath to stop cooking.

Meanwhile, in a large sauté pan, heat olive oil until fragrant and liquid and add garlic. Cook for 1 minute and add pinch of pepper flakes. Add broccoli rabe and stir to coat. Add raisin and reserved cooking liquid and cook at medium until broccoli is fairly tender and raisins are plumped up (5-10 minutes), stirring occasionally. Add salt to taste and walnuts and serve.

*To toast walnuts, simply toss them into a hot pan and stir until they are fragrant and warm, but not burned. Cool while you prepare the rest of the dish.

 

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Two-fer Tuesday: Chickpea and Tahini II and Balsamic Dressing for Tomatoes

30 Aug

 

Sometimes it just takes a little change to make a big difference in flavor. Here are two quickie recipes — one a salad and one a dressing for those crazy seasonal tomatoes that you no longer know what to do with  — that are variations on stuff I do regularly, but with a new ingredient that updates it, keeps it from getting stale.

In the chickpea and tahini salad, I add ginger and soy sauce to my basic tahini dressing for a slightly Asian flavor. For the dressing, I use balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar as well as a dash of agave nectar; a little sweetness harmonizes with sweet seasonal tomatoes, but also mellows out their acidity.

These can be done in a flash and will complement any summer meal or be a light dinner in themselves with some crusty bread.

Chickpea and Tahini Salad II

1 Tbs lemon juice

1 Tbs tahini

1 tsp soy sauce

1 28oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbs red onion (a quarter of a medium red onion), sliced thin

1 Tbs cilantro

1 tsp grated ginger

Mix or whisk lemon juice, tahini and soy sauce together in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix well.

Balsamic dressing for tomatoes

1-2 Tbs Balsamic vinegar (I prefer less)

8 Tbs olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

½ tsp agave nectar

Salt to taste (start with a pinch – 1/8 tsp and work from there)

Whisk all ingredients in a bowl and pour over tomatoes in whatever quantity you like. Sliced red onion goes very well. You can serve with mozzarella and basil as a caprese salad, or over pasta for a summer buffet dish, hot or cold. Dip crusty bread into the liquid….

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Fresh Tomato Sauce – Criollo-Style!

27 Aug

We anticipate a lot of flooding from Hurricane Irene, but the inundation I have been dealing with is far more pleasant: tomatoes. At Restoration Farm pick-up on Thursday, Farmer Dan’s dad, Daniel Holmes, heard I intended to make sauce and came up with four generous pounds of “seconds”: tomatoes that were harvested but don’t look pretty enough for distribution; a little bruised, maybe split, over-ripe – glorious grabbing for a peasant-hearted person. I was eager to take them, then of course got home and thought…oh s**t, I have to do these like, now, or what’s  the point?

And then I wasn’t sure how well my food mill would work – it seems to be missing a piece  – but I was in NO MOOD to blanch, peel and seed all these smaller tomatoes before cooking, so I went for it, just quartered them and dumped them in the pot. Luckily for me, I was able to rig the food mill to work, but if you are wondering what to get me for my birthday…(an egg timer would be equally welcome)

So, here is a very simple recipe for tomato sauce that tastes just like what my grandmother and her sisters used to make, often cooked with chopped eggplant or chicken thighs on the bone…I am not quite sure what I am going to do with my quart of sauce – it is in the freezer where it will keep for a few months, but I suspect that I will soon be misting up with nostalgia for my abuela over a bowl of eggplant and this sauce over rice.

If you are looking for an Italian style sauce, substitute the sofrito with a couple of sprigs of fresh basil (I may actually be doing that this afternoon with another batch while we still have electricity ) and add julienned basil at the end of cooking.

This sauce can be made anytime, substituting tomatoes from a can, but it is at its most fresh, light and charming when you take advantage of really ripe tomatoes.

This is pasta sauce the way my grandmother used to make it

Fresh Tomato Sauce – Criollo-Style

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

4 lbs ripe tomatoes, quartered if you have a food mill, peeled, seeded and diced if you don’t

¼-1/2 tsp sugar

4 Tbs homemade or prepared sofrito or two ice cubes worth if you have frozen (https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/sofrito-for-freezing-puerto-rican-mirepoix/)

Coarse salt, to taste (you’ll be adding it by the half teaspoon)

In a heavy-bottomed 3-quart saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat and add the garlic. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, 1-2 minutes. Do not allow to burn.

Add the tomatoes, sugar, sofrito and ½ tsp salt and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low (a gentle simmer) and cook, stirring often until thickened. I simmer at least 30 minutes, but juicier tomatoes take longer.  Taste and add salt, as desired.

If using a food mill, use the medium blade. The peeled and seeded tomatoes will break up on their own, but you can run through the blender for a smoother texture.

Makes about 1 quart.

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