ossobuco wrote:Oh, slice, add a little salt perhaps, and eat...
Yes, I can cope with that!
Quote:If they are ripe from my garden, my favorite way is to eat them sliced on good toasted hearth bread with some mayo and perhaps a smidge of salt.
As I mentioned earlier, I've never done the mayonnaise thing with tomatoes. It seems a very US thing. Do you make your own, osso, or use store-bought?
Quote:Also like giant bruschetta - take a ciabatta type loaf of italian bread - or foccaccia if you have it - slice lengthwise so you have two flat pieces instead of one whole loaf. Chop the tomatoes and drain the juices and put in dish. Slice up a few cloves of garlic, and tear a bunch of fresh basil leaves, and mix with tomatoes. Salt and pepper if you like - I don't always do that. Pile onto bread. Dribble some good olive oil over the whole thing. Broil..... Take out or off when edges of bread are a little burn-y. Provision self with paper towels or a bib.
Delicious! (I'm getting hungry!)
Quote:Out of season I use canned diced tomatoes for this.
It works with canned tomatoes?
Interesting!
Yes, it does, quite well - I like the diced ones, easy to drain, and I dice them up a tad more.
I've made my own mayo several times, but it doesn't work so well when it's foggy or rainy... for me, anyway, and I live in fogville presently. But it is certainly delicious...
Fresh Tomato Sauces Fast
The secrets to these quick, flavorful sauces are cherry tomatoes and a shallow pan
by Domenica Marchetti
It's summer, and colorful, flavor-packed tiny tomatoes are in the garden and at the farmers' market. Use them to make a quick, fresh, flavorful sauce. All you need is a wide, shallow sauté pan, says author Domenica Marchetti, of Alexandria, Virginia. Start by infusing a little olive oil with a bit of garlic, add a few salty, spicy aromatic ingredients like olives or capers if you like, then add the tomatoes and cook them until thick and saucy, about 15 to 20 minutes. Finish with a few fresh herbs, and you've got a custom sauce to drape over pasta or even grilled meat or fish. Recipes vary from Fresh Tomato & Basil Sauce to Tomato Sauce alla Siciliana.
http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/pages/fc_073_034.asp
There are tomato sauces & tomato sauces .... so many variations! Is there a particular one (or two!) that you absolutely SWEAR by? I'm very partial to a roasted version I found in one of Anna Thomas' vego books years ago. With much garlic! Fantastic!
mmmmmm....summer tomatoes - I've got some odd genetically manipulated tomato-lookalikes at present!
Some good bread, some of that spreadable fetta, tomatoes sliced on top, a little pepper (some salt if the quack isn't looking!) , perhaps some basil, olive oil.
A great snack - and was quite acceptable as a first course at one of the margo cookups!
Quote:All you need is a wide, shallow sauté pan, says author Domenica Marchetti, of Alexandria, Virginia. Start by infusing a little olive oil with a bit of garlic, add a few salty, spicy aromatic ingredients like olives or capers if you like, then add the tomatoes and cook them until thick and saucy, about 15 to 20 minutes. Finish with a few fresh herbs, and you've got a custom sauce to drape over pasta or even grilled meat or fish.
If "
author Domenica Marchetti, of Alexandria, Virginia" told you to jump off a cliff - would you
DO THAT TOO!!
Y'know - the moment I start to sound like my own mother in an argument - I know I'm already half-way to winning...........
There there dearie - step away from the abyss.....
dlowan wrote:..step aawy from the abyss.....
<hysterically> "Don't come any closer!!! It' s OREGANO AND BASIL!!!! Not parsley and basil! Never PARSLEY!! Ha, Ha!
Basil, d'ya hear me!!
BASIL!!"
INFUSING olive oil with garlic and capers?
Er, otherwise that sound pretty similar to my always varied a little bit tomato sauces.
I saute the garlic by itself in oil a bit first, not browning it (sometimes recommended by others, sometimes mentioned in serious warning tones), and then add whatever is lying around, no, no, usually good canned crushed tomatoes, amount depending on my mood, or real tomatoes of the seasonal type if I am so lucky to have them, or, sometimes, imported cherry tomatoes, which are a real risk around here as they are sometimes sweet and sometimes blanks. If the herb in question is basil I don't add it until the end.
There is a simple sauce made at a local restaurant here that I keep trying to reproduce and never quite match. It involves olive oil, shallots, white wine, and cherry tomatoes, and eventually is tossed quickly through drained piping hot fettucine. Even my near misses taste good, just not exactly the same. Might be the particular wine..
Are cherry tomatoes superior in taste? I generally use them in salads. I'd have imagined that their skins would be a problem in a sauce. But maybe others know something I don't know?
ossobuco wrote:INFUSING olive oil with garlic and capers?
Er, otherwise that sound pretty similar to my always varied a little bit tomato sauces.
That recipe seems to be getting quite a reaction!
I put in in as an example of a fairly straight-forward sauce, hoping for variations from others.
I meant well, I really did! :wink:
Basil sounds yummy on fresh tomatoes, I'll have to try it. I like buttered toast piled high with tomato slices, sprinkled w/ salt and pepper.
I don't grow tomatoes any more - one hugely overwhelming harvest stopped that - and I can't seem to just put in one plant - so I buy nice fat tomatoes at one of the nearby markets now.
I think the simplest approaches to tommytoes are the best ...
thick buttered rye toast, a stack of sliced tomatoes, lots of freshly ground black pepper, a lil dill and a smoosh of mayo
cracked wheat bread, some very old cheddar (preferably 3 - 7 years), sliced tomatoes, lotsa black pepper - under the broiler til the tomatoes start oozing - then a lil lil bit of salt
thick sliced tomatoes, slices of fresh mozzarella, dill, salt, pepper, a very very lil bit of olive oil - my favourite salad, I think
gazpacho mmmmmmmmm
chunked up, seeded and drained tomatoes, cucumber chunks, cucumber dill dressing - I love this combo on baked potatoes
Yes, msolga, tomato skins can be tough on cooked cherry tomatoes - I just add them sliced in half at the end, basically to warm up in the sauce; that type of sauce is called salsa fresca (I think) - not cooked down. Well, actually, the shallots and oil and wine are cooked down, but tomatoes and basil go in at the end.
And on cherry tomatoes being better, I don't know about that. Romas are most often used for sauces, higher amount of pulp per tomato I think. But for that shallot cherry tomato recipe, they work well, presuming they are nice and sweet, which cherry tomatoes often are.
I have some tomatoes in my kitchen now which seem to be a hybrid of cherry tomatoes (or pear tomatoes) and romas...
this is my first box of them so I am not sure how representative they are, but they are sort of, er, stiff, and not too flavorful..
Emeril's Romanitas, they're called. Well, I will say this, they last well on the counter.
