Tangled Branches: Satiated

riveting tales of how we sustain ourselves

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Serendipitous Reading: Tomatoes

Looking over the bookshelf this morning for fresh inspiration for cooking tomatoes, I picked up instead Cornbread Nation 1, where I opened (at random, I swear) to the piece titled "Summer Feeding Frenzy". This is excerpted out of order, but it sums up my feelings better:

There is an unwritten rule of summer: You cannot throw away fresh tomatoes - any fresh vegetable, really - nor can you allow them to go to waste.
...
Tom invited my husband and me for dinner recently, warning that everything he served would have tomatoes in it because the tomato plants in his backyard were bursting. "I've had tomato sandwiches every day for lunch," he said gleefully. Red orbs perched on the windowsill and by the sink. A bowl of a dozen or so round things wrapped in newspaper sat nearby. "Storm knocked down the Celebrity," he said, referring to one of the varieties. "So I picked these up." He used some in a fried green tomato sandwich, which he described in lip-smacking detail.

That was written in the year 2000, but the author, Debbie Moose, is still writing about tomatoes.

For today's lunch, we're going to take a break from BLTs and have Potatoes and Onions with Tomatoes, more-or-less based on a recipe in Curried Favors by Maya Kaimal (page 8 in the pdf file of excerpts from the publisher). With leftover fish from last night's Fish Tacos.

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posted by Entangled at 8:36 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

BLT of the Day


Tomato: Persimmon
Bacon: Niman Ranch
Bread: Costco store-baked Whole Grain and Mini-Baguette (more like a mini-boule). Ran out of whole-grain bread and had to make up the deficit with the baguette.
Lettuce: Store-bought Romaine hearts
Mayonnaise: Hellman's mixed with Boetje's Mustard and Hall's Honey

Results: Persimmon tomatoes make perfect sandwich slices, Niman Ranch is my current favorite bacon, and the mayo-mustard-honey makes a great BLT sauce. Good sandwich!

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posted by Entangled at 12:02 PM 0 comments

Friday, August 29, 2008

Pasta with Uncooked Tomato Sauce

Long ago, I used to make pasta tossed with diced fresh tomatoes, minced garlic, chopped fresh basil and diced fresh mozzarella, but eventually forgot all about it. But twice in the last week I read about a similar dish, so decided to revisit the concept. Basically you cut up good fresh ripe tomatoes, toss them with some seasonings and let them sit while you cook the pasta. Combine tomatoes and pasta. Eat.

I used 2 large tomatoes (Piriform and Persimmon) and several smaller ones (Striped Roman and Black Prince). I cut them into chunks by slicing 1/2 inch thick and then cutting along a solid wall (so the pieces don't fall apart readily). Striped Roman, and to some extent Piriform, are basically all solid, so they can be diced. Chopped finely 1 small yellow onion and a small part of a leftover red onion (I would have used more if I had them). Minced 2 ripe red Czechoslovakian Black hot peppers and 1 large clove of garlic (really large, I would have used 2 if they were smaller) and 1 large sprig of curly parsley. Basil would be an obvious choice for seasoning here, but we're getting just a bit tired of tomatoes and basil - seems impossible, I know. The bronze fennel is going to seed in the garden. I gathered one of the semi-ripe (just starting to turn brown) seed heads and snapped off the seeds from just one section of florets (about 1/8 to 1/4 of a teaspoon of seeds). Mixed everything into a large bowl and added salt and olive oil to taste. It needs a heavy hand with the salt - I could have used more.

Now cook whatever pasta you have on hand. I can never remember the names of pasta shapes, but I used some thin linguini type stuff. After cooking and draining the pasta, I tossed it with a little olive oil and salt and pepper, but on reflection I wished I had spooned in a bit of the juice from the tomato mixture instead. We just served ourselves, buffet-style. A portion of pasta with the tomato mixture ladled on top. On the side we had crusty bread spread thickly with goat cheese. Fast, fresh and delicious.

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posted by Entangled at 9:19 AM 0 comments

BLT of the Day

Yesterday's lunch BLT.

Bread: Whole Grain store-baked from Costco, sliced very diagonally to get large enough slices to fit the tomato
Bacon: Edwards'
Tomato: Mortgage Lifter
Mayonnaise: Trader Joe's Organic Mayonnaise mixed with minced Serrano peppers and garlic, and a splash of lime juice
Lettuce: None, substituted Thai basil leaves

The verdict: Tasty, but the chile/garlic/lime mayonnaise pushed the flavor too far away from the classic BLT. I do think that mayo mixture would make an admirable tuna salad though.

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posted by Entangled at 7:49 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Ants on a Tree

Today's NY Times has an article about the renaming of Chinese dishes so as not to frighten the Olympic visitors. "Ants Climbing up a Tree" should now be called "Sauteed Vermicelli with Spicy Minced Pork". But, um, isn't vermicelli literally "little worms" in Italian? Is that less scary?

We had this very dish last evening at Sichuan Village. Very tasty, whatever they call it, but the rendition we were served last night had too much sauce if you ask me. It was more like "Ants Swimming in Chili Sauce".

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posted by Entangled at 6:39 PM 0 comments

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Mojito Salmon and More Swiss Chard

As much as I'd like everyone to believe that I only serve freshly-prepared local sustainable organic food, that really isn't the case. So, when Mojito Salmon showed up at Trader Joe's a few months ago I eagerly put it in my shopping cart. And we liked it, but I said to the spouse "This sauce would be really easy to make. It's basically a green Mexican salsa with extra lime juice and mint added. You just have to cook some salmon in any way you like and top it with the sauce." I'd been intending to verify my theory and last evening I finally got around to it. Success!

I opened a jar of Arriba Roasted Green Salsa (we're still a few weeks away from harvesting ingredients for fresh salsa), placed about half a cup in a bowl, cut up a lime and minced some spearmint leaves and started tasting. I think I ended up with somewhere around 10 large mint leaves and the juice of about a third of a small lime to the half cup of store-bought salsa.

For the salmon, I rubbed a large fillet (enough for two people) with olive oil, ground black pepper and a small amount of soy sauce. We grilled the salmon, spooned the sauce over it, and had a nice dinner.

Other than the mint, there was one more garden component to the meal. I'm still thinning the Swiss Chard, so I sauteed some green beans, chopped onion and coarsely chopped Swiss Chard. Seasoned with salt and a couple of spoonsful of the same Arriba Salsa (minus the lime and mint).

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posted by Entangled at 8:29 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Spicing Up Swiss Chard

This post is as much for my own notes as anything else. I've been searching for ways to tame the earthy flavor of Swiss Chard. So far the most satisfactory experiments have involved one of two things - making sure the chard is not the main ingredient and sticking to spicy Asian-inspired dishes.

Last night's dish was good enough to write down for future reference.

1 clove fresh garlic
equal amount of ginger root

Chop fine in mini-chopper (or mince with a knife).

3 green onions, "onion" part sliced thinly crosswise and "leaf" part sliced thicker
2 small russet potatoes (may have been better with a more waxy, shape-holding potato), peeled and cut into approx 1/2 in dice
Swiss Chard thinnings, stems sliced thinly crosswise and leaves sliced into about 3/4 inch strips
a few small Bronze Fennel sprigs, finely chopped

Heat about a tablespoon of cooking oil on medium or medium-high heat in a large skillet. Sizzle ginger-garlic mixture briefly (try not to let it brown), then add 2 dried red chiles (broken in half) and 1/4 tsp turmeric. Sizzle that a few seconds and add potatoes, green onions, and bronze fennel. Stir until potatoes are well coated with spicy oil, add 1/4-1/2 tsp. ground cumin, 1/4-1/2 tsp. ground coriander seed, 1/2 tsp. salt and a small amount of water. Cover, turn down heat to medium-low, and cook until potatoes are almost cooked through.

Add sliced Swiss Chard, and 1/2 tsp. brown sugar, 1/4 tsp. garam masala (or cinnamon - the Bantry Bay garam masala I had on hand tastes mostly of cinnamon anyway), and a spritz of lemon juice. Let this cook until the Swiss Chard is wilted, adding more water if necessary. There should be a little liquid left in the finished dish, just enough so it's not dry.

I served this with grilled salmon topped with Green Chutney. The Green Chutney was some I made last fall (when fresh chiles and coriander/cilantro were plentiful) and put into the freezer in single-serving containers. Basically, it was a couple of green chiles, a good handful of coriander leaves, a few spearmint leaves, with lime juice and salt to taste, all chopped fine in the mini-chopper.

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posted by Entangled at 8:17 PM 0 comments

Monday, May 05, 2008

Bam! Emeril Was at the Store Again

Things have changed a little since the last time I saw Emeril at the store. Now they have handouts in the shopping baskets telling you to Act Natural! (and don't look into the camera). In case you didn't read the handout, there's a guy at the entrance telling you that Emeril is in the store today and, by the way, Act Natural! Also, they've posted a lawyerly notice telling you that by entering the store you've consented to be on television and if you think you're gonna get paid for it, you can think again (paraphrasing here). Geez, I need to start wearing better clothes and makeup when I go to the store.

So what's all this about then? The handout says Emeril will be starring in a new show called Emeril Green on a new network called Planet Green, a branch of the Discovery Channel.

Do you want to be on TV as more than just a unpaid extra? The back of the handout is printed with the exact wording from this page on the Planet Green web site. They're looking for "enthusiastic and fun people" and since you have to tell them your age and send a photo, you'd probably better be young and attractive.

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posted by Entangled at 5:02 PM 2 comments