At last I have replenished our stores of fresh food: eggplant, green beans, snow peas, sweet potatoes, red peppers, basil, scallions, cauliflower, plums. I had wanted to get some carrot juice, too, to use in a recipe for golden rice, but was put off by both the expense and the heavy glass bottles. Maybe another time.
Now of course I am all fired up to cook a lot of tasty savory vegetable things, but tonight we are going to a potluck, and I have been assigned dessert. So good old faithful plum cake it is. I can never quite get over how insanely easy it is to make. It hardly even counts as cooking. Pilafs and roasted vegetables and braising and simmering will have to wait for tomorrow.
As you can maybe tell from the above, I am getting antsy for autumn. It's still pretty darn warm here, and I know that come January I will regret ever objecting to warmth, but right now I have a serious craving for crisp, windy sweater weather and its attendant foods. Hot drinks! Apples! Thick stews! Bubbling cheesy baked things! But no, the moment still really belongs to cold beer and sunscreen. But at least it also belongs to late tomatoes, so tomorrow I will go to the farmer's market and buy some and eat salad after salad after salad. And if it should happen to get chilly after all, we can always roast them and make S.'s delicious roast tomato pasta sauce. It takes a while, but very little work, and it's worth the wait. You could easily make it the evening before and reheat it the next night.
S. made it for me one of my late-evening seminar nights and I couldn't stop exclaiming about how delicious it was. "But no, when I say this tastes wonderful, I mean it tastes really really wonderful!" But then, of course, I never wrote it up, because I am lazy and selfish. I hope you still have time to gather up some end-of-season tomatoes and give it a try.
SPAGHETTI AND ROASTED TOMATOES
2.5 - 3 pounds tomatoes (four or five sizable, very ripe ones)
1 large onion
4 large cloves garlic
12 pitted black olives
about 2 T. fruity olive oil
several leaves of fresh basil
pepper
salt
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Skin the tomatoes via the "cut an X in the bottom and drop it in boiling water" method. Chop the tomatoes into half-inch pieces. Chop the onion fine. Chop the garlic very fine -- S. used our favored technique of mincing it, then adding salt and crushing it with the knife blade to make a paste. Throw the garlic, onion, tomatoes, and olive oil into a baking dish and put it in the oven. Every half hour or so, give it a poke. After an hour, roughly chop the olives and add them and several turns of pepper from the grinder. After about an hour and a half, add the basil. You'll want to roast the tomatoes for around two hours, until most of the liquid has cooked off. Serve over pasta with some fresh mozzarella.
Quoth S.: "The only change I might make next time (if there is a next time; tomato season is winding down) is to use capers instead of the olives."
Now of course I am all fired up to cook a lot of tasty savory vegetable things, but tonight we are going to a potluck, and I have been assigned dessert. So good old faithful plum cake it is. I can never quite get over how insanely easy it is to make. It hardly even counts as cooking. Pilafs and roasted vegetables and braising and simmering will have to wait for tomorrow.
As you can maybe tell from the above, I am getting antsy for autumn. It's still pretty darn warm here, and I know that come January I will regret ever objecting to warmth, but right now I have a serious craving for crisp, windy sweater weather and its attendant foods. Hot drinks! Apples! Thick stews! Bubbling cheesy baked things! But no, the moment still really belongs to cold beer and sunscreen. But at least it also belongs to late tomatoes, so tomorrow I will go to the farmer's market and buy some and eat salad after salad after salad. And if it should happen to get chilly after all, we can always roast them and make S.'s delicious roast tomato pasta sauce. It takes a while, but very little work, and it's worth the wait. You could easily make it the evening before and reheat it the next night.
S. made it for me one of my late-evening seminar nights and I couldn't stop exclaiming about how delicious it was. "But no, when I say this tastes wonderful, I mean it tastes really really wonderful!" But then, of course, I never wrote it up, because I am lazy and selfish. I hope you still have time to gather up some end-of-season tomatoes and give it a try.
SPAGHETTI AND ROASTED TOMATOES
2.5 - 3 pounds tomatoes (four or five sizable, very ripe ones)
1 large onion
4 large cloves garlic
12 pitted black olives
about 2 T. fruity olive oil
several leaves of fresh basil
pepper
salt
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Skin the tomatoes via the "cut an X in the bottom and drop it in boiling water" method. Chop the tomatoes into half-inch pieces. Chop the onion fine. Chop the garlic very fine -- S. used our favored technique of mincing it, then adding salt and crushing it with the knife blade to make a paste. Throw the garlic, onion, tomatoes, and olive oil into a baking dish and put it in the oven. Every half hour or so, give it a poke. After an hour, roughly chop the olives and add them and several turns of pepper from the grinder. After about an hour and a half, add the basil. You'll want to roast the tomatoes for around two hours, until most of the liquid has cooked off. Serve over pasta with some fresh mozzarella.
Quoth S.: "The only change I might make next time (if there is a next time; tomato season is winding down) is to use capers instead of the olives."
