Tomato Mountain

Grilled Carrots

seanshatto — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:05:00 -0400

Okay, I’m a person who loves a simple dish, and this is about as simple as it gets. Roasting carrots in the oven is one of my favorite winter activities, but it’s now getting warmer out, and we’re still seeing lots of carrots, I decided to thrown some on the grill to see how it went.

Let me say that it went well.

A few simple ingredients:
8-10 carrots
4 Tbs olive oil
Teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of pepper, more to taste

From there, you can get fancy and do them honey glazed, with balsamic, or with browned butter vinaigrette, but personally, I like them just with the salt and pepper. It’s a great idea to grill up some onions while you’re at it because they go wonderfully together.

Don’t peel the carrots (ever!); just coat them generously with olive oil (a basting brush works great), salt and pepper, then put them on the grill at medium heat. You DO want char on the carrots, but you DON’T want to just burn the outsides to a crisp before the insides turn tender and extra-sweet. I give them a quarter-turn every 4-6 minutes or so, basting with more olive oil, and they turn out great. Just keep an eye on them to maintain a nice, level char.

I’ve heard tell of people putting these in hot dog buns, which sounds like fun. I don’t have any buns, but I grabbed some spicy mustard and grilled onions. Lunchtime!

One of my favorite ways to eat Asian greens is with hummus. You...

seanshatto — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:38:24 -0400

One of my favorite ways to eat Asian greens is with hummus. You can use all sorts of things for the fillings (egg salad, for example), but the process is simple: just fill the concave side of the leaf with hummus, roll it, flip up the stem and munch!

Soup & Bread!

seanshatto — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:21:00 -0400

Well, that was fun!

Here’s the recipe I ended up going with for the soup, adapted from Food.com

1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb of carrots, cut into 1” pieces
1 inch of fresh ginger root, grated
1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes (to taste)
3 cups homemade veggie stock
1 1/2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter
1 tablespoon sungold preserves (teaspoon of honey would also work)
1/3 cup coconut milk (almond, soy or dairy would also work)

Garnish:

1/2 cup coconut milk

1/2 cup soymilk (or almond, rice, dairy, etc.)

a big chunk (1.5 to 2 inches, really) of peeled ginger, chopped roughly (the blender will do the rest)

1 tsp hot chili flakes or fresh hot peppers

1/2 tsp salt

Juice from 1 full lime

Run the blender until the ginger chunks are gone, then refrigerate for 10-30 minutes, which makes the whole mixture nice and tangy!

1) In a large heavy saucepan cook onion, celery, and garlic in oil over moderately low heat for 4-6 minutes, stirring, until onion is softened.

2) Add carrots, ginger, red pepper flakes, and broth and simmer, covered, until carrots are very tender, about 45 minutes.

3) While that’s simmering, add garnish ingredients to a blender and puree until the ginger is mixed in. Put the mixture in your fridge until the end of your prep time, and the cream will come out tasting nice and tangy!

4) Stir in remaining ingredients into the soup. With a blender or immersion blender, puree mixture in batches (use caution when blending hot liquids).

5) Return soup to pan and heat over low heat until hot, being careful not to let boil.

6) Serve soup drizzled decoratively with cream mixture.

Soup and Bread!

seanshatto — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:05:00 -0400

Soup and Bread! :

Sean here. I’ll be making some version of this for Soup and Bread tonight! It’s Szechuan Carrot Soup, and it’ll be at the Hideout, 5:30pm.

Recipe: Salad with Radishes and Squash (From Julie and Jack)

seanshatto — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 18:03:31 -0500

We made a delicious salad with the greens, watermelon radishes and winter squash last night. The recipe was easy – peel and cut the radishes and squash into bite size cubes, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast at 375 for about 30 minutes under tender. Add about ½ cup of walnuts to the roasting pan for the last 5 minutes. Toss the greens with some olive oil (or other healthy oil such as sesame or grapeseed) and vinegar (any kind that you like, we used white wine), throw in some fresh herbs if you have them (we used cilantro). Let the vegetables and nuts cool for about 5 minutes and then toss them with the greens.

from CSA members Julie and Jack

seanshatto: How we do dinner. I helped with the crust, even!...

seanshatto — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 09:47:25 -0400

seanshatto:

How we do dinner. I helped with the crust, even! #overcomingfear (Taken with Instagram)

Here’s the really easy recipe for the crust:

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/quick-and-easy-pizza-crust/

We topped it with sauteed fennel, chopped olives, sage, and, on the non-vegan side, brie.

For the sauce, we basically just cut tomatoes in half and throw them in a pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Cook them until they’re basically sauce - no need to blend. It was ridiculously good because the tomatoes are so good.

The salad is beautiful because of the yellow peppers, tomatoes, and sprouts.

It was too delicious.

Purslane salad (with panzanelle option)

seanshatto — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 13:29:00 -0400

With any purslane that you might have left over (if you successfully kept it wrapped with a damp paper towel, it’s probably still good!), I recommend making a salad with it.

Ingredients:

2 cups purslane, chopped
About a cup of chopped tomatoes
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, vegenaise or miracle whip (or other oil of your choice — this one was made with vegenaise.)
Maybe a teaspoon of vinegar (red wine or rice would be best)
A small onion or half of a larger one, minced
One clove of garlic, or more to taste
A little bit of basil, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
For panzanelle, add chunks of toasted bread at the end.

First, roughly chop the purslane, discarding the large stems, but keeping skinnier parts of the stems in the mix.

Next, dice some tomatoes. This can be any of the tomatoes that you might have around… the jucier, the better.

Chop the onion, garlic, basil and anything else you might want to add. Add the oil or vegenaise (which is what I used) and vinegar, then give it a few good swirls.

This salad is great on its own, but I highly recommend trying it with chunks of toasted bread to make a panzanelle.

I found that this keeps great in the fridge for up to a week. As it sits, the liquids coalesce in the bottom of the storage dish, and it’s a real good idea to dunk a slice of bread in there and let it soak up the flavor.

This is me tumbling from this fancy pants phone.

seanshatto — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:03:16 -0500

This is me tumbling from this fancy pants phone.

Spicy mushroom miso soup

seanshatto — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:40:00 -0500

The time has probably come for me to consider investing in a new camera, as this EXTREMELY DELICIOUS DISH is not particularly well-photographed.

All that aside, let’s talk about what’s in it.

About 2 cups of vegetable broth (I’m using stuff I made a few weeks ago with some dregs of the fall season that has been stored in my freezer).

A cup of water

About a teaspoon of miso (I actually used a tablespoon, which made this dish a little bit of a salt bomb on my system)

A similar amount of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce if you’re not a convert to Bragg’s yet. It’s seriously way tastier and healthier.)

A ton of shredded ginger (about the size of a human thumb’s worth of ginger) (sorry, that’s gross)

5-6 cloves roasted garlic (I happened to have some that I roasted up for a totally sweet event thrown by Graze Magazine last night; use 1-2 cloves minced raw garlic if you’d rather, but do it based on your taste)

1 tablespoon of hot chili paste (I still have some Danger Sauce that I forgot to blog about in September. It’s literally just a bunch of fresh hot peppers packed into a food processor with just enough oil to let them blend. They’ve been keeping magnificently in the fridge. Anyway, do this based on taste as well, but don’t be stingy if you are trying to destroy the cold that has recently taken hold of you a week before your big vacation.)

A tablespoon of something sweet (I have a jar of Sungold tomato preserves that I dropped and which popped open [sorry, Robin] a number of weeks ago, so those work great. You could also use a sweet chili sauce like Mae Ploy, honey or agave nectar.)

About a dozen crimini mushrooms (preferably acquired from River Valley. Sliced somewhat thin.)

About a fourth of a normal package of angel hair pasta (I had a bunch around from last night!)

A good spray of lime juice (to taste)

First, if you haven’t already boiled the pasta, do it!

Start off the soup by adding the broth to your big soup-makin’ wok or whatever you have. Add the miso and Bragg’s/soy sauce, then cut it with the water to get the saltiness right. Add most of the ginger, chili paste and sweet thing. Stir it around to get it nice and tasty (two or three or four minutes), then add the mushrooms. Let it simmer for about 2 or 3 minutes, then add the cooked pasta. Let simmer for another 5 minutes or so - try the mushrooms to make sure they are ridiculously tasty. They will be very mushroomy. Spray liberally with lime juice and add the last of the ginger for a funky fresh taste.

Get some chopsticks to pull out the noodles and pour some of the broth into the bowl. This would be good with some cubed tofu and minced scallions and crushed peanuts, but my main goal here was a delicious spiciness delivery system, and it worked.

This definitely makes enough to serve two people, but I’m sick and I’m cranky and I want more spicy food, so I’m probably going to go back for more right about now.

- Sean

Radish chips, buttery beets, spiced greens and polenta

seanshatto — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:32:31 -0500

Not so much “chips” as “somewhat roasted,” these little discs were fantastic. Just slice them thin (a mandolin makes that easier), toss them in oil, salt and pepper (any any herbs you’d might like) and roast them for around 10-15 minutes at around 400.

Served with some cooked tatsoi, (vegan) butter-braised beets and home-made soft polenta (not eggs, though that’s how they look in the pictures.

It was a good autumnal treat.

What to do with green tomatoes - From Doug

seanshatto — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:37:00 -0400

Thanks, Doug, for the ideas!

In Bogotá, Colombia, where I lived a long time ago, there were fast food chicken spit roasting places all over (Coco Rico etc). They had awesome crispy succulent little chickens of course, but they served them with two even better sides:

Little potatoes like the ones in this week’s box boiled and then dipped in a bowl of saturated salt solution so when you pull them out the salt crystallizes all over the skin of the potato like a crunchy spiderweb…

and green tomato relish/salad:
Hard crispy green tomato and about half as much harsh white onion diced into roughly 1/2 cm cubes, salt, lemon or lime juice, lots of strong fresh chopped cilantro, and a few thin rings of Ají peppers (tiny 1 cm chilies like a concentrated Thai pepper). There isn’t much spicy food in the Colombian diet but this sauce is one good example. Let it sit for 15 minutes and all the harsh bitter spicy flavors have melded into something wonderfully refreshing, especially with a nice piece of chicken… It looks like chunks of vegetable in a little water when it’s finished. Too harsh? Add more lemon and salt.

You can also stir fry green tomatoes like bitter melon with Chinese fermented black beans, chili, soy, ginger and garlic, sometimes a little stock or thickening cornstarch, or make a curry as with karela (the prickly bitter melon).

And then there are kosher pickled green tomatoes (go easy on the vinegar if you use it)…

Got to go make dinner; I’m hungry.

Dried hot peppers

seanshatto — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:46:28 -0400

If you’re still looking to use those hot peppers, dehydrating them is the best way to make them last all winter. Turn your oven to its lowest possible setting, and place the peppers across the racks (as opposed to on a pan) for 4-8 hours. You can even turn the oven off, and the trapped heat will still help speed the process along. They may need to remain in there for a couple of days to get fully dehydrated - you can tell they’re done when they’re totally hollow.

Then you can run them through a food processor (I actually use one of those coffee grinders with the blade in the top) to turn them into crumbles that can be sprinkled on your food to give it some bite. It took about half those peppers to turn into one spice container’s worth of spice.

The newest addition the Tomato Mountain...

seanshatto — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:43:00 -0400

The newest addition the Tomato Mountain family.

tomatoallergy:

Today I had roasted pepper, tomato, and mesculin bruschetta lunch with Sean and this not-yet-decidedly-named creature.

Tomato Basil Pasta

seanshatto — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:10:06 -0400

From Eileen, last week… Thanks for the submission!

With this week’s box brimming with basil and tomatoes it became obvious that we needed to make “Linguini alla Cecca” from Nora Ephron’s wonderful book Heartburn (page 100). This is a hot pasta with a cold basil and tomato sauce, and it has been a summer staple at our house ever since I read Nora Ephron’s book back in 1996. It has to be made in the summer, when tomatoes are fresh.

Drop 5 large tomatoes into boiling water for one full minute. Peel and seed and chop. Put into a large bowl with ½ cup of olive oil, a garlic clove sliced in two (I have to admit I increased this to 4-5 cloves.) , 1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves, salt and hot red pepper flakes. Let sit for a couple of hours, then remove the garlic. Boil one pound of linguini, drain and toss with the cold tomato mixture (I let mine sit in the refrigerator while it mixes so it’s really nice and cold). Serve immediately. This is a wonderful summer supper paired with a good crusty bread.

kitsch and kin: The sandwich to end all sandwiches

seanshatto — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:10:52 -0400

kitsch and kin: The sandwich to end all sandwiches:

full recipe at kitschandkin:

Until now, I’ve thought that bad days were basically a really solid excuse to wine and whine after work, perhaps while eating copious amounts of mac and cheese, which is totally okay if it’s homemade, because somehow the craft (not Kraft, thanks very much) of the meal cancels out the calories.

Pasta sauce: canned and un-.

seanshatto — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:14:01 -0400

This pile of tomatoes. These tomatoes. What am I going to do with these tomatoes.

I know! I’ll can some stuff!

This morning, I made a very simple tomato-basil pasta sauce.

Chris generally doesn’t peel tomatoes because a) it doesn’t make a huge difference in the final product, and b) they’re good for you anyway. After reading a post about slow-roasting tomatoes (via smitten kitchen), I decided to whip up a batch of super-simple pasta sauce.

Ingredients:
However many tomatoes you need to use up
2-4 cloves of garlic
olive oil
herbs (I used fresh basil and marjoram with dried parsley)
salt & pepper

I started by just coring and cutting the tomatoes in half. I created slivers of garlic and placed one on each upturned tomato half. I kept the tomatoes cut-side-up to let some of the extra juice evaporate - I wanted to make sure it wasn’t too soupy, and the idea of them drying out a bit didn’t bother me.

I drizzled them with olive oil and popped them in the oven at 425 degrees for about 25-ish minutes. While I was doing that I canned some peaches (side project!).

They came out looking pretty good:

After that, I just tossed them in my wok with some fresh basil and the other herbs, smooshed it around, then let it all simmer (on low) for about 15-20 minutes. The whole thing is probably supposed to be more elaborate, but I’ve got places to be!

After that, I transferred the whole works to my food processor (skipping the immersion-blender method that left my wall splattered with ketchup last week) and gave it all a good spin. It’s a little hard to get the basil to all fall apart… there’s the occasional leaf-bit in the final product, but I don’t really mind. Maybe if I had a more effective blender, this wouldn’t be a problem.

Anyway, all those tomatoes came out to about one and three-fourths pints. I processed one in the hot water thing, so it’s sealed and ready for January. The other one is expected to last no longer than 24 hours.

Here’s a picture of that eggplant Paremesean. It was...

seanshatto — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:37:48 -0400

Here’s a picture of that eggplant Paremesean. It was delicious (and will be again when I defrost the leftovers in, like, February).

Easy Eggplant Parmesean

seanshatto — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:41:00 -0400

Note: Photo is of a vegan-ified version. It included an Ener-G Egg Replacer egg and more herbed bread crumbs in place of the cheese.

from Maggie

Ingredients:

 Eggplants

 2 eggs

 2 cups flour

 2 cups bread crumbs

 Seasoning to taste

 Cooked spaghetti, rice, or sautéed greens

 Tomato sauce

 Parmesan or other Italian cheeses

You’ll need one large flat dish, three medium sized bowls or pie pans, and some baking pans or cookie sheets. First, cut up the eggplant into 1/8 to ¼ inch slices.

Salt the bottom of the large bowl and add layers of the slices and salt. Let it sit for 30 minutes to allow the salt to penetrate into the eggplant and draw out moisture. This improves the texture and taste of eggplant. Rinse the slices of eggplant of excess salt.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Set up the three medium sized bowls or pie pans in this order: flour, beaten eggs, and seasoned bread crumbs. Lightly oil the baking pan and set at the end of the eggplant assembly line. First coat a slice in flour, next dip in the egg, and then coat in bread crumbs. Set directly in the pan in a single layer. The amount of egg, flour, and bread crumbs you’ll need depends on the size of the eggplant(s) and how much you are making. One medium sized eggplant makes about three servings. Cook them at 400 for about 10-15 minutes on each side; this gets the outside nice and crispy. When done, pile a plate with spaghetti (or rice or sautéed greens), add a few slices of eggplant, pour on some sauce, and top with your favorite Italian cheeses.

I like to make a lot of eggplant parmesan in the summer and freeze it for the rest of the year. When doing this, cook the eggplant in the oven for only 5-10 minutes on each side. Place the eggplants on the cookie sheet in the freezer until frozen and then throw them in a freezer bag. When reheating, put the frozen slices in the oven and cook for about 10-15 minutes on each side. It tastes wonderfully fresh! I get the best compliments from guests about this simple dish all year long!

Simple and quick home fries

seanshatto — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:52:00 -0400

I titled this recipe as “home fries” because I’m not convinced of the marketability of the term ”foodpile.” Though, really, it’s foodpile. A delicious, simple foodpile.

Preparing elaborate, fancy foods is great and all, but I want breakfast and I want it now and I am out of cereal and there is all this good food at my house that should use. Things like

2 medium-sized potatoes
1 onion
1 medium-sized tomato
salt, pepper and a dash of cumin

I’ll do the actual steps of the recipe in bold to hopefully make it make sense. I’ve seen other people do this, so why not give it a shot?

This recipe starts with cutting up and boiling some potatoes - I cut the medium-sized potatoes into six pieces - big enough to be meaty to bite into, small enough to prevent the centers from being undercooked. I feel like I boil them for about 15-20 minutes, but I’m not really sure. Test them with a fork - they should yield to the fork easily, but not quite be falling apart.

During potato season (now until the foreseeable future), I just boil as many potatoes as I can fit into my pan and store them in my fridge for later fry-ups or moments of mashed-potato urges. I don’t know what to say about how this affects the nutritional value, but the taters taste good for about 5 day this way.

When the potatoes are almost done boiling, start up with some butter (I use Earth Balance, which is vegan and so delicious that my mom converted [to using EB, not to veganism]), perhaps a tablespoon, in a medium-hot pan. Coarsely chop up one of those delicious onions that you have sitting around (yes, use the whole thing even if it’s just for you) and toss with the butter until coated. Put the heat somewhat low so they can take their time and slightly kinda caramelize, maybe 5-7 minutes.

Once the onions are droopy and delicious-looking, toss in about two potatoes’ worth of cut & boiled potatoes and stir around to get them a little bit oily. Add a dash of salt & a good palmful of black pepper to the mix and stir it around. Let it sit for a moment while you walk over to your refrigerator or counter and grab a tomato.

The way I cook with a tomato is messy, but totally worth it. What I do is cut out the little stem-bit and then walk over to the stove and then smash the tomato in my fists and tear it up into the food. I smash it like an egg with an edible shell. This is fun because (a) it’s fun, and (b) it really gets all the tomato’s juices out and flowing, which then gets hot in the pan, and then your potatoes end up being cooked in tomato juice. You could probably also do this by cutting the tomato into slices and then smashing it around with a spoon in the pan, but then you don’t get purpose (a) out of using the tomato.

Let this cook for maybe 3-5 minutes. The liquid does evaporate and/or get sucked into the potatoes, so this depends on how dry you’d like the final product to be. I’m using the tomato here instead of using ketchup, so I like mine to remain pretty juicy.

So, take that juicy foodpile and slosh it into a little dish, top it with a dash of cumin, and eat! If you have already-boiled potatoes around, this dish is ready to eat in under 10 minutes.

kitsch and kin: Stuffed cabbage rolls

seanshatto — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 02:51:51 -0400

kitsch and kin: Stuffed cabbage rolls:

kitschandkin:

This unfamiliar friend is thinly sliced eggplant. Be patient. It gets better.

Well, friends, it’s been a long time. I’d blame it on a slow, summer haze, but in fact I’ve been moving at a fast clip since about June. I’ve been busy losing my camera and then finding it again, busy traveling to…