Category Archives: Tomatoes

Fruit, Tomatoes

Strawberry and Tomato Salad with Maple Syrup

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Annie is mad about tomatoes. The tomato bug bit her several years back, and each year we have grown more and more tomato plants in our backyard. She got into growing heirloom tomatoes, ones which have been around for a long time and are now becoming popular again. She trades seeds with other enthusiasts and even starts her own plants from seed in the middle of Winter!

During the Summer, we are literally swimming in a crimson tide of tomatoes.


Cherry tomato plants, especially, are some of the best producers in our garden. The challenge then is to figure out how to use all these ‘maters before they go bad. Needless to say, most of the dishes that Annie makes that call for tomatoes use fruits grown right in our own backyard.

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Italian, Tomatoes

Gazpacho

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So I was standing there, chopping veggies to make chopped salad (see previous example here), and wondering what to do with all that reserved tomato juice I had saved from the salad plus the lomi lomi salmon. Suddenly, a word popped into my noggin: Gazpacho! Oooh, I hadn’t had *that* in a while.

I like tomato-based soups, and gazpacho is one of my favorite variations of tomato soup, with that spark of spicyness from the raw garlic. A chilled soup would go along great with the chopped salad. So I went over to Epicurious and found this recipe

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Gazpacho-239209

It’s a pretty simple recipe, but one ingredient that was new to me was smoked Spanish paprika. And what do you know, we actually happened to have a package of that, that we purchased at the Penzey’s Spices store in Houston!

This was one of the best gazpachos I’ve made. It’s not too spicy, as I held back on the pepper and the raw garlic. That smoked Spanish paprika made the dish, I thought. Our friend raved about it, saying it was better than the one he had tasted in Italy that got him hooked on gazpacho in the first place.

This recipe is a keeper. I’m gonna make it again soon (of course, using only Annie’s homegrown tomatoes)!

Aloha, Nate

Italian, Pasta, Pork, Tomatoes, Vegetables

Linguine w/ Pancetta, shallots, zucchini, and homegrown cherry tomatoes

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Pasta has been one of my comfort foods going back to small kid time when we used to add bottled Ragu sauce to ground beef and ladle it on a big bowl of spaghetti, then top it with torn up Kraft American cheese slices. The ingredients have significantly improved in the House of Annie (as demonstrated by her recent Linguine alla carbonara). This time, she decided to kick things up a notch.

Instead of the regular bacon, Annie used pancetta. She also used shallots instead of onions. The cherry tomatoes were picked fresh from the garden, as was the basil chiffonade

How do you “kick up” your pasta?

Aloha, Nate

Mexican, Poultry, Tomatoes, Vegetables

Musgovian Salad

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I’m one of those people that doesn’t like to have leftover stuff sitting and getting old in the fridge and freezer. So every so often I go in there, look at what’s available, and try to figure out how to make a dish with what I’ve got. I call this type of cooking “Musgovian” for “must-go”.

Here’s a Musgovian salad consisting of rotisserie chicken, romaine lettuce, napa cabbage, celery, green onions, cilantro, blanched beans, steamed corn, tomatoes and avocado. Dressing was made with lime juice, honey, garlic, olive oil, s&p.
 

I think it leans Mexican, but whatever it was, it was good!

Aloha, Nate