Every year of eating tomatoes (only three years now), I seem to learn something new about them.
This summer I have a new obsession thanks to the cookbook Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, by Francis Mallmann: charred tomatoes. Several of Mallmann’s listed appetizers call for burning the featured vegetable (cherry tomatoes or carrots) or cheese and then platting the singed goodness on bread or a salad. With a slightly skeptical mind I tested it out on a hot cast iron skillet with halved cherry tomatoes, and now I can’t stop eating my tomatoes this way.
Charred or burnt tomatoes with cheese on bread has become my breakfast and after work snack in this glorious time of bountiful tomatoes. And since this is a weekend, you can guess what I’m eating three times a day…
Charred tomatoes and cheese on bread
Preheat a cast iron skillet on med-high heat. You’ll want the surface to be hot: judge by being able to hold your hand above the surface of the skillet for no more than 2 seconds.
Slice a small handful of cherry tomatoes in half, or cut 1/4 inch slices off of a large tomato. Sprinkle a pinch of salt over the cut sides.
Assemble 1 oz of cheese (any type will work) in small thumb sized chunks and 2 small slices of bread to be close to your hot skillet.
Place the cut tomatoes, cut side down on the hot skillet. Make sure to obey Francis Mallmann’s 1st commandment of food making contact with a heated surface “Don’t Touch”.
After 1 minute, place the cheese chunks down on the skillet in the space remaining around the tomato slices. Place the pieces of bread along side to toast lightly.
Leave the cheese and tomatoes on the hot skillet for approximately 4 minutes at which time they will be burnt on the cooking surface.
Place the toasted bread slices on a plate, and with a nice sharp edged metal spatula, scrape/lift the charred tomato slices and cheese on to the bread, burnt side up (so it won’t get all steamy soggy).
Allow to cool slightly and dust with another slight sprinkle of salt and enjoy.
These jalapeños have been sitting in my refrigerator a week now. It’s a shame to ignore them as I have- so I threw in the towel today. Well sort of. My current storage experiment: submerging them in rice and tucking them into the freezer, with the future plan to cook up the scented rice.
I’m excited to see how long it takes the rice to suck up some of that pepper power.
More ideas for making use of jalapeños
- Candied jalapeños, make use of these directions for making candied fruit. Instead of using oranges, submerge jalapeño slices in the sugar solution instead.
- Jalapeño jelly, which is so good mixed with cream cheese, or used as a bed for fresh fried hush puppies.
- Cream of jalapeño soup, which would be excellent served in a small glass with diced cucumber and topped with croutons. I wonder how this soup would do as a chilled soup?
- Pickled jalapeños, with a whole smattering of other good veggies: Chiogga beets, carrots, onions, and a side kick of limes
- Jalapeño vinegar, peppers with garlic in a glass jar with hot vinegar poured on top: quick and easy! You know this is going to be excellent drizzled on steak.
- Jalapeño brown butter ice cream, a special technique resulting in chewy rich spicy ice cream. Yes I said chewy.
- Jalapeño hot sauce, a handful of peppers blurred into spicy shakable oblivion that can live in your cupboard. Excellent.
With the height of summer’s ripe-wave, I find myself often failing to keep up with the super juicy berries in my kitchen.
When its too darn hot outside, do I want to fire up the stove top to turn these fruity gems into jam? No.
To deal with over-ripening fruit super quick, my answer is to make popsicles. It’s a great answer for when your fruit is a ticking time bomb, developing a pool of juice love at the bottom of its storage container.
And when made with a judicious hand, these treats are perfectly allowable as guilt-free breakfast treats, (I say typing one handed with a cantaloupe black pepper pop). I like to think of them as summer’s answer to homemade poptarts, but even better.
Summer fruit popsicles
You don’t really need to be told how to make popsicles, but here’s a break down to help stir up your creative juices.
- First step: is to clear a bit of space in the freezer.
A two-birds-with-one-stone approach to this process is to find some frozen fruit from last season you need to clear out and make this the target of your popsicle fixation.
- Second step: is to build the body of your pop up with your target fruit.
Either stick your fruit in a blender (melons) or mash them up with a fork or potato masher (strawberries) to get a good sludge going.
- Third step: consider your options for popsicle body additions. Do you want these to be no-nonsense popsicles, or adventurous, creamy, chunky, caffeinated popsicles?
- salt: I always add a touch of salt when making my popsicles. It helps get the juices flowing and always makes them taste even better.
- extra sweetness: honey, agave nectar, rice syrup, jam, maple syrup, molasses, dissolved sugar (white granulated, brown, or palm).
- chocolate: if I want chocolatey popsicles I like to mix up 2 Tbs of cocoa powder with ~2 Tbs boiling water. Add enough additional water to make this into a pudding like consistency.
- liquid: water, juice, dairy, coconut milk, coffee, tea, vinegar.
- dairy: keifer, yogurt, sour cream, milk, half and half, cottage cheese, custard or pudding.
- toothsome bits: more fruit left whole or chunky, cocoa nibs, coffee grounds, bits of nuts, cookie crumbs, soaked cake cubes, vanilla bean specks.
- spices and flavors: cinnamon, peppers (black pepper or chili), saffron, curry, cilantro, nutmeg, vanilla, mint, lemon, fresh garden herbs.
- Fourth step: pour your popsicle concoction into the mold of your choice.
My favorite is my 1/2 cup Food Cuber.
- Fifth step: stick consideration.
Add your popsicle sticks immediately if your mold is designed for such, or just pop them into your popsicles about 1 hour after freezing.
The popsicle sticks can be many things: spoons, cinnamon sticks, flat skewers (I use wide flat bamboo skewers cut down to an appropriate size- as seen on amazon or your local cooking supply stores), chopsticks, or good ole clean recycled popsicle sticks.
- Sixth step: finishing touches to fancy-up your popsicles.
Homemade magic shell is divine on strawberry popsicles. White chocolate magic shell on lemon pudding popsicles? You could even sprinkle ground nuts or sprinkles onto the magic shell right before it hardens, (but then you’d have clown popsicles).
- Storage: most popsicles can just be left in their popsicle molds, in the freezer. However, if mold space is at a premium because you have more popsicles screaming to be made, just pop your finished popsicles out into an air tight container. I use either large ziplock bags or large mason jars. As flavors can sometimes migrate, its best to keep different flavors separate, unless you want that chipotle banana mocha popsicle to mingle with your mango yogurt pop.
Enjoy!
The best way to preserve foods is to take what you have in abundance, especially if it’s seemingly free. Buying lots of fruit to jam is just not as economical efficient as using what is found in your yard or neighborhood.
Being one with very little food yard, I’m guilty of buying my jamming fruits from the market. However, if I open my eyes I can see the potential fruits in my vicinity that could be creatively used:
- rose petal jam- and having one of each color is just my sort of neurosis, you too?
- lavender jam- I can imagine this being slathered on a pork roast, or used to make a nice jam soda mixer.
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dandelion jam- they are in abundance (oh my poor bitter neighbors). I wonder what this would taste like?
Do you have nontraditional plants in your yard that you harvest? Help widen my sense of vision on what is useful…
I’ve only recently come to love strawberries.
Yeah- I know how odd that is… I had some silly convictions I carried with me through childhood as a picky eater. Strawberries use to be in that category of untouchable foods -like tomatoes. But now that I’m enjoying foods in season, strawberries have revealed themselves to be the nirvana that I had always heard about.
This summer has given me practice in my favorite way to prepare my sliced strawberries. This makes strawberries taste restaurant Grandma quality good, and is better than sprinkling strawberries with sugar. Your strawberry shortcake will thank you!
For a pint of juicy strawberries with amplified flavor:
- - core, then slice 1 pint of strawberries and place into a jar or bowl.
- - sprinkle with a pinch of salt
- - in a small bowl make up a strawberry syrup by mixing 1 Tbs of strawberry jam with 1-2 Tbs of hot water. Stir till the jam is broken up and is now syrup consistency. Putting the bowl in the microwave for 10-15 seconds on High will help loosen up the jam.
- - pour this strawberry jam syrup over the sliced strawberries and allow to sit at room temperature 30 minutes before use.
Not only are these extra juiced up berries good on ice cream and cake, but they’re wonderful spooned over yogurt.
I’m in the midst of a simple bliss- enjoying a new favorite cheese.
Not only that, it’s nestled in between slices of the grainiest bread I know and melted to oblivion. Half-n-half grilled cheese style: horseradish chive havarti and pepperdew havarti.
How do you like to make your grilled cheese grown up?
Weekend Update
New favorite grilled cheese- grainy bread, horseradish chive havarti, and thin sliced pear.
What’s a meat loving girl like myself doing holding a raw “cookbook” like this?
Well, now you’re going to know my secret source for intriguing new recipes.
Delving into the world of raw recipes can seem daunting at first (it really is a whole new world of summer suited dehydrating and freezing techniques) but one is quickly rewarded in the development of a new arsenal of food preparation techniques.
And Yes, reading a raw recipe book can be a nice kick in the butt to eat more fruits and vegetables to supplement my cooked diet. However, Ani Phyo’s raw recipe books serve primarily to remind myself of how successful simple, bright wholesome flavors are.
Her latest book Ani’s Raw Food Desserts: 85 Easy, Delectable Sweets and Treats contains a wide range of raw recipes. From classic coconut oil based chocolates, nut based scones, dairy and tofu free “cream” concoctions, to simple unrecipes of Fleur de Sel Kissed Watermelon and apples dusted with fresh rosemary; Ani Phyo presents ample opportunities to enjoy your summer fruits in a new way.
New tricks I learned: using cacao powder, pairing mesquite flour with chocolate, and playing up agave syrups. Reading through Ani’s Raw Food Desserts shook up my conservative approach to using this sweetner. Now I can’t wait to toss fresh lavender blossoms in agave syrup, or to create a whole bottle of cinnamon nutmeg seasoned syrup for yogurt drizzles.
Featured below is one of the new recipes from Ani’s Raw Food Desserts: Sesame Snap Cookies. These speckled fruit patties are bombs of flavor: tart apricot with crunchy pistachios and sesame seeds that pop in the teeth, and they’re super easy to make with the use of a food processor. I think these will be my new super quick breakfast to grab out the door, when I’m not imagining them covered with chocolate, that is.
Sesame Snap Cookies
From the book Ani’s Raw Food Desserts by Ani Phyo. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright (c) 2009. Find out more at www.dacapopresscookbooks.com.
Makes 10 cookies
- 1 cup dried apricots
- 1/2 cup shelled pistachios
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract or lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon agave syrup
Place the apricots in the food processor and process into a paste. Add the pistachios, sesame seeds, lemon extract, and agave syrup and process to mix well.
Scoop the dough by 1 1/2 teaspoons onto a sheet tray lines with parchment and flatten into cookies.
Will keep for a week in the fridge or for several weeks in the freezer (thaw before eating).
Variations:
If you love herbs, try adding 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme or tarragon to the dough. Or add 1/2 teaspoon minced fresh ginger for zing.
You might be like me. Someone who can’t leave what’s good enough alone. Coffee is one of those things for me. Rarely can I drink it plain black, and rarely plain warm. Want to teach your coffee to jump through hoops? Here are some ideas.
- Salt your coffee. Either as you are grinding it, or the dairy that accompanies it. Salt enhances sweetness and cloys bitter flavors.
- Rethink the sweet. When you take your coffee sweet, consider an alternative to standard white sugar. This can be as simple as using brown sugar, a raw sugar, agave nectar, or honey instead. Or as complex as adding maple syrup, bitter caramel sauce, Nước Màu or fruit jam.
- Give the beans some friends. Next time you grind up coffee beans, consider tossing in one or all of these flavor additions: half a vanilla bean pod, some cocoa nibs, a small sliver of whole nutmeg, orange zest, a cardamom pod, a couple black peppercorns or a nub of cinnamon stick.
- Steep when you heat. Steeping aromatics in either your pre-brew coffee water or your dairy is a way to get a touch of flavor that is different from grinding flavors with the beans. This could be as simple as making your coffee with peppermint tea or lemon water, or warming your milk with sticks of cinnamon and whole cloves. Who says you have to use plain water to brew your coffee?
- Bloom your coffee grounds. As one blooms dry gelatin before use, moisten your coffee grounds to help prep them for brewing. How to: Shake out your freshly ground coffee into a mixing bowl and stir in 1-3 Tbs of water. Let sit for ~5 minutes and then scrape into your brewing apparatus. It is thought that premoistening coffee grounds results in a stronger or more flavored brew. Have you wondered about using brandy or bourbon instead of water for this step yet?
- Take your time. How about a 12 hour brew? Do those words give you caffeine withdrawal? If you add time and subtract the heat, you will have a new coffee experience in your cup. Check out the Smitten’s cold brew procedure and you’ll be looking forward to tomorrow’s coffee.
- Keep it simple. Sometimes you owe it to your taste buds to take a vacation from your habits and resort to the easiest path: straight black coffee. With the amazing amount of coffee bean varieties and roasts we have access too, there is no excuse for calling straight black coffee boring.
with much thanks to The Delicious for inspiration…
the Twitter fail whale sushi t-shirt.
Or maybe I’m just bitter as I haven’t had sushi in too long…
- metal or non-stick?
- cast iron or stainless?
- cutting board: silicon or wood?
- knife: carbon steel or stainless?
- Kitchen Aide or hand mixer?
- cooktop: gas, electric, induction?
- side-by-side, freezer on top, fridge on top?
- apron or whoops?
- mashed potatoes: by hand, ricer, or mixer?
- sandwich or wrap?
- pb & _________ ?
- pancakes: syrup or applesauce?
- cake: scratch or mix?
-
chili: beans or no?
- napkin: cloth or paper?
- BBQ: takes the whole weekend to make or take out?
- chicken: white or dark?
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ice cream: cone or dish?
