You Say Tomato, I Say Yes!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Do any of you grow tomatoes?

Should the tomatoes be ready now?

We planted them, just as we usually do, not as many as in previous years, but whatever. And we usually plant Sun Golds, which are those little orange cherry tomatoes, which are so sweet and so delicious and I adore them. And grew like mad.

But we couldn’t find them this year, and I reminded myself that everything doesn’t have to be exactly the same every year, so go with the flow.


So we got another kind, I forget the name, and I have to say this is a different experience.

First of all, this plant, this particular plant, was never happy. It is in a perfect tomato place, many plants have thrived here before, but this one, I could tell from moment one, was not enthusiastic.

It produced two little tomatoes, bigger than a cherry tomato but not as big as a big tomato, and they were growing nicely, even as the leaves were giving up the ghost.

They tried to grow, but yeah, they were not happy. See all the yellow leaves? And it had just the right amount of water and sun.

It tried, it really did, but I could hear the death rattle. I picked one of the tomatoes, the redder one, while it was still too green, after the rabbits got the other one. 

We put it on the windowsill to ripen, and here it is. Next to a peach. You can see the size. ::shaking head:: It did the best it could.

As for our other tomatoes, they look like Roma tomatoes, that Italian tomato shape. They are still super tiny. Should they be so super tiny still?

Even the grocery store, Whole Foods, does not have those fabulous tomatoes that I long for every year.   Why? Even the heirlooms are not tasty.

One of my favorite things in the world is tomato toast. It is toast, with tomatoes on it. No mayonnaise, no butter, no anything. Just toast and tomatoes. The tomato juice sinks into the toast, and it is ambrosial.

But the better the tomato, the better the tomato toast, and so far we are at 80% good.

What’s your tomato situation, Reds and Readers? Are you as fond of them as I am?

((PS: AND THE WINNER of HER PERFECT LIFE IN gulp, mass markeet paperback is : DEE! Email me your address at hank@hankphillippiryan.com)

Only In The Summer!

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: For those of you broiling in other parts of the US, you’ll be surprised to hear we’ve been having a cold summer in Maine so far. Yes, there was the infernal heat dome last week, and we’ve managed a few days when the temperatures have gotten into the 80s, but otherwise it’s hardly been the kind of weather that inspires lingering over icy drinks on the deck or patio or grilling for guests.

 

Which is why I was delighted the other day when it hit the perfect point of heat (i.e. “Yay, it’s summer,” instead of “65 and drizzling” or “Satan’s bowels.”) It finally felt right to have my first Pimms cup of the summer. To me, it’s the quintessential seasonal drink - I mean, the bottle’s not going anywhere, but I don’t touch it between September and May.

 

There are a lot of foods tied to the calendar and the weather because, well, that’s when they taste best. Strawberries, corn on the cob, home-grown tomatoes. But there are other foods and beverages we could have at any point of the year but… we don’t.

 

An example for me: the grilled hamburger. I like hamburgers! I’ll occasionally order one in a restaurant (there are some great grass-fed-beef places in Portland; hit me up for recommendations if you’re traveling here.) But the ONLY time I make them at home is between June and August, outdoors, and it has to be hot enough that I’m a little uncomfortable standing over the grill (I have the old-fashioned, charcoal briquette kind.) 

 

Or potato salad. I literally make the exact same potato salad summer and winter, but the former gets a mustard-mayo dressing and hard-boiled eggs and the latter gets a bacon-vinegar dressing and no eggs. Why one and not the other? I don’t know! I could serve the vinaigrette cold and the mayo warm, but after 40 years of making this (and more years eating - these recipes come from my mother) they remain strictly, rigorously separated by the time of year and the temperature outside.

 

How about you, Reds? What are your “strictly-seasonal-although-they-don’t-have-to-be” drinks and dinners?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: My favorite seasonal dish is a salad main dish. A corn and basil and Fetah cheese salad. Corn (fresh, boiled and cut off the cob (NOT frozen or canned))  with season’s best cut up tomatoes, a generous handful (or two) of chopped fresh basil, and plenty of crumbled fetah cheese — dressed with a vinaigrette (⅔ olive oil, ⅓ a good balsamic vinegar, S&P). 

 

I confess, messing with the charcoal grill holds no allure for me these days. Though my favorite summer thing used to be a whole turkey roasted over coals. You season the bird as if you were roasting it in the oven. No stuffing. Get a full load of coals hot and push them to the edges so you can put the turkey on a rack with coals NOT directly under it. Let it roast with the lid down. Baste  occasionally with olive oil or butter.

Takes about what it takes to roast it in the oven (use a meat thermometer to test for doneness) and it tastes smokey and sensational and can be eaten hot or warm or cold. 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, tomatoes! I cannot wait, CANNOT WAIT! For the good summer tomatoes. A tomato sandwich with white toast and mayo and arugula and tomatoes and crazy salt and I am transported. So delicious.

I also love sungold tiny tomatoes cut in half with a tiny slice of mozzarella and topped with fresh pesto.

Or–tomatoes again–capresed with exquisite balsamic drizzle and mozzarella.

Hamburgers cooked outside–yes! We have briquets, too, it is SO much better. 

And salmon grilled outside too, with grilled corn. 

Now I am absolutely drooling.

And you know–I always forget about watermelon. But it is so yummy!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  Summer to me means the farmers market. All that local produce, especially ripe peaches, plums, apricots. Oh, and strawberries. I am not married to a barbecue expert so we only use it if the kids come over but I do love barbecued chicken and shrimp. But a special treat is to pack a sandwich and fruit and take my lunch to a local beach. 

 

LUCY BURDETTE: What the others said–fresh corn on the cob from our favorite local farmer (I never buy grocery store corn out of season), fresh tomatoes, and blueberries. Later in the summer, the Connecticut peaches come in and I buy bushels of them. Here’s one more: a root beer float with sweet cream ice cream from Ashley’s. Oh yum, glad the grandkids will be here so I have a good excuse for that!

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This past week we’ve gone from “Oh, yay, I can grill,” to “Oh my God, somebody shoot me if I have to go back outside and it’s still ninety degrees at eight o’clock. That said, I will still grill. I make fabulous burgers with grass fed local beef from our town butcher shop. They also sell the most scrumptious chewy, dark molasses buns from a local bakery.  Tomatoes, however, in spite of the abundance at the farmer’s market, have been disappointing. 

 

But peaches and blueberries are in season here and they have been fabulous. The one thing that absolutely says SUMMER, though? Watermelon! I cart a quarter melon home from the market every Saturday!

JENN McKINLAY: Cherries and peaches mean summer to me. I recently found the absolute best cobbler recipe I have ever had so there’s been a lot of cobbler kicking off this summer season! It’s so hot here in AZ that we try to avoid using the oven and do most of the cooking outside (by we I mean the Hub), so it’s a lot of grilling or crockpotting until the temperatures drop. 

JULIA: What are your fave seasonal foods, dear readers? And are there any, like potato salad and Pimms, you ONLY have during the summertime?

 

 

Sunday Recipe: Summer Cherry Tomato and Zucchini Tart

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Readers, you're in for another delicious treat as our friend Celia Wakefield presents the best possible way to eat all those zucchini and tomatoes overflowing your garden and filling up the farmers' market. I got to have this at a luncheon following a home Eucharist led by the Reverend Canon Eleanor Prior, who only looked a little bit taken aback when we started peppering her condensed sermon with comments and questions. 

With or without an accompanying religious celebration, this savory tart will put the essence of September on your palate. 

 

 

Good morning my dear Reds and readers. I love it when Julia’s turn comes around and she asks me for a recipe to share. I wanted to check up on how long I have been writing for JRW on Julia’s page, but went down the site search engine rabbit hole and realized this was a task to put down. How am I? Happy to say much, much better over this time last year. My beloved, who will attain his 95 birthday this month, is so much improved in his health, though at his age there is concern on long term issues. Still enough of that, all is well right now. 

 

What have I been cooking, same old, same old, same boring! I needed a brain jolt, which I got a couple of weeks ago when Sam Shifton, NYT cooking head honcho, chef, and bottle washer wrote about no recipe recipes. I only read the Cooking section emails as I have refused on principle to pay for a second subscription. Plus one can get plenty of ideas from reading the articles, not to mention that Sam (or his crew when not washing up after him), usually adds in a non cooking article which just cries out to be read, and I have not been disappointed there yet.This gave me a new lease on my cooking life which added to having some real  activities to look forward to, in addition to enlarging our social circle of two, would involve bringing food.

 

The first outing was to an annual barbecue for the St. Luke’s volunteers who work at the Preble Street Soup Kitchen in Portland. St. Luke’s is the Episcopal cathedral in Maine which both the Hugo-Vidal and Wakefield families attend, when not sheltering from the plague. There is no more soup kitchen work per see, that’s now in our past life, but they do still need volunteers so St. Lukes is still involved. However our hosts brines, marinades and smokes briskets, pork and chicken each year and invites us to feast at their lakeside camp. We bring the rest. Today’s recipe was my offering and more on that later.

 

 

I’m not sure if there is a corner of the world that hasn’t experienced some topsy turvy weather this year. We certainly have up in our NE corner. August usually arrives with beautiful sunny days, hot enough to be outside in comfort after the swelter of July. Not this year. We have had swelter day after day. We retreated indoors to our Heat Pump providing dry, cool air, which does defeat the outdoor point of summer. But it was time to think up non heat generating food and as there is plenty of zucchini and tomatoes on the farm stands that gave me the idea of todays recipe for a Zucchini, Cherry tomato tart. I made it as finger food for the barbecue and cut it into bite sized pieces. It was most successful.

 

Let’s make it again. My cousins were visiting Maine from Vermont. We invited them to lunch and I wanted something easy so that I spent the time with them, not with the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what the weather would produce, but the tart plus antipasti from our Portland Italian store, Mucicci’s gave me necessary freedom with all food prepped for service in advance. Our trip through the summer social circle concluded with more friends for whom I made a seafood salad of mussels, shrimp, tiny potatoes and shucked corn.The salad was a great success, but a request for the dressing from one of the guests left me searching for the original recipe which I adopted for our meal. As I cook without recipes, creating some accuracy on amounts was needed, and here is part of my reply to the request.

 

Dressing, Well my recipe measurements are always a bit vague, however here is the recipe from which I worked!  

https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mediterranean-potato-salad-with-shrimp-feta

I used at least a 1/4 C of olive oil, about a Tbsp lemon (half a large lemon), 1 tsp Dijon mustard approx, 1Tblsp frozen basil which had been prepped for pesto, 3-4 cloves baked garlic, (I bake several garlic heads in foil with olive oil at a time and store in the fridge), good squeeze of TJ'c Balsamic glaze instead of the sugar. (You can get Balsamic glaze in WhF too). I hope this helps.

I used tiny potatoes which I boiled, an ear of shucked fresh corn, about 2 C tiny frozen shrimp, which I cooked in vermouth and water with parsley and 5 Spice powder, and of course the mussels.

 

My guests came with six pounds of mussels which we cooked with vermouth plus seasonings, let them cool and mixed them with more dressing into the potatoes, corn and shrimp. There’s no photo as it really was a one color dish with some freshly chopped parsley on top. The vermouth is an old Julia Child trick. In Mastering the Art .  .  She wrote that is no white wine was opened or available use vermouth instead. And it works.

 

 

 

 

But back to my original tart recipe, having written the back story already. I know that tart conjures up baking, but for once I bought my tart pastry ready made. I won’t bore you to death with how I am not THAT baker, but I can make pastry however it was the 90+degree week and way too hot to make pastry so I bought frozen pastry shells and defrosted one. A rectangle is easier to work with for finger food and the pastry allowed me to remold and roll out to a rectangle. Once rolled it went into a foil lined pan. Then I pricked the rectangle all over, covered it with parchment paper, (foil works too), and sprinkled it with metal pastry weights. Into the oven for ten minutes, remove paper and weights, being careful not to burn oneself. Sigh! Return to the oven for five minutes plus just to finish. Buy or make some bread crumbs. I choose to make mine but Panko will work well.

 

This can all be done in advance. Next step is the assembly and the baking. I chose small zucchini and cherry tomatoes of different colors for contrast. I found a tip for grating Mozzarella on Google. Put the ball in the freezer for about twenty minutes plus and it grates just fine. Because this is a no recipe tart, be ready to eyeball your tart as you assemble as the quantities are approximate

 

Summer Zucchini & Cherry Tomato Tart

 

INGREDIENTS

 

Packet of short crust pastry (the sort already in ready-made pie pans works well)

1 baking sheet at least 9”x13” for the pie tin pastry. 

Line your pan with foil for easy removal, and spray lightly with oil spray. A pan or baking tin with a small lip works well, but this can be made free form too. As we are using zucchini cut into lengths, a square or rectangle works best.

 

2 small zucchinis, cut into thin slices lengthwise

Green box of cherry tomatoes, mixed colors if possible

1 Cup grated Mozzarella ball

Cup of fresh toasted breadcrumbs or Panko crumbs

3/4 - 1 Cup Parmesan / Pecorino Romano grated cheese

 

Method:

You have 2 choices for pastry:

 

1)    Make a shortcrust pastry using1 3/4 cups Flour, 1 stick + 1Tblsp unsalted butter, 1 egg yolk,

    1/2 tsp salt, 2-4 Tblsp water to mix into dough*. I make pastry in the food processor.

2)    Buy frozen shortcrust pastry, defrost 1 pie pan if already rolled

    Fold pastry in four, and reroll into a rectangle or square to fit the pan.

3)    Chill the pastry until ready to blind bake it.

4)    Heat oven to 350 degreesF, cover pastry with parchment or wax paper and add pie weights

5)    Bake for 10 minutes, 

6)    Remove paper and weights, and bake another 5-10 until pastry is firm but not colored.

7)    Cool pastry until ready to assemble

Assembly

    Cover pastry with a thin layer of breadcrumbs. These keep the pastry from getting soggy as it bakes.

    Set the zucchini slices on the breadcrumbs in a single layer

    Cover zucchini with a layer of grated mozzarella 

    Cut cherry tomatoes in half across and add to the tart,

    Sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheeses

 

Bake in a 350 degreeF oven for 30-40 minutes, rotating once.

 

Serve warm or at room temperature. The leftovers are great, but heat in the oven. Nuking doesn’t improve pastry.

My pastry recipe is the one I have been making since I received these Robert Carrier Cookery Cards for my Twenty first birthday, and that’s a long time ago!

ENJOY!