tomatoes – Page 2 – Stephfood CLONE

Caprese Salad – A Summer Classic

Caprese salad is one of those things I take for granted. I think of this the way some people think of an iceberg salad – simple, fresh and super quick to make. I almost didn’t want to post this, because I figure everyone already makes Caprese salad. This post is for the folks who have never tried this delicious salad, or had it at a restaurant once and thought it must be more complicated than it looks (it isn’t).

The basic recipe contains very few ingredients: tomatoes; bocconcini or buffalo mozzarella; fresh basil and is dressed with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and sometimes (but not always) balsamic vinegar. This is a perfect salad for the summer, and a great break from leafy greens.

Wee tomatoes growing in my balcony garden. So darn cute!

The star of the Caprese salad is the tomato. You really need to have the freshest, tastiest tomatoes that have no mealiness to them (so, really, beefsteak tomatoes are kind of out). I like to use Campari tomatoes (like the ones shown below), romas, cherry or grape tomatoes from the local farmers’ market… but my favourite new thing is to use tomatoes out of my own garden. This is the first time I’ve grown tomatoes, and I giggle every time I pick a tomato off of my plant. Nice.

There are many variations on this salad, but this follows the most basic set of steps. One really important thing to remember is that the slices of tomato should be a similar shape and size to that of the cheese. This can result in a salad made up of layered rows of ingredients, or a toss of chopped ingredients. It’s really up to you. I generally like the layered look. I really like the look of big slices of tomato layered with big slices of cheese — but that can be harder to eat, so I usually get the smaller balls of bocconcini to pair with cherry or grape tomatoes.

Campari tomatoes, still on the vine.

Recipe after the jump!

Continue reading Caprese Salad – A Summer Classic

Greeky Eggs

I’m not a breakfast-making chick. When I wake up, I usually grab one of two things: a breakfast pita topped with almond or peanut butter; or a bowl of yogurt and granola. J does a little better on weekends, often making us some delicious waffles.

I wanted to make something special for once, so I pulled out an old copy of LCBO Food & Drink magazine, and made Baked Eggs with Feta and Dill.

This was a simple – but fun – dish to make. I got to use my cute little white ramekins, which rarely see the light of day. It looks and tastes more sophisticated than it actually was to make.

While this would be great at any time of year, I think this is one of those dishes that are best appreciated in the Spring and Summer. The light and fresh vegetable flavours are a perfect way to start the day. This would also be great as a part of a larger brunch spread, with some chilled white wine or mimosas (Darn! I knew I forgot something!).

The recipe can be found on the LCBO website: Baked Eggs with Feta and Dill. I always look forward to the seasonal Food & Drink magazines, both for the recipes and the fantastic photos. It’s like a food blog in paper form… what will they think of next!? (hahaha)

Deep South Spiced Rice & Beans

Deep South Spiced Rice & Beans (p.137, Classic Vegetarian Recipes) – Being “mostly vegetarian”, I try to find recipes that include legumes of some kind. This sounded like a good dish to try, as it incorporates beans and some fresh veggies. It’s a good one for the spring, because it isn’t heavy and saucey.

This is another dish I found in one of my old, dusty cookbooks. It’s a pretty good one, but really not that much unlike things I make on my own. I actually substituted black beans for the suggested kidney beans, because that’s what I had on hand.

I love the colourful peppers in this dish. I think it’s true that the more colour in a dish, the more you want to eat it. I know I eat some things that look pretty rough – some stews and things that have a mushy brown thing going on – but I do love to add colour with veggies and herbs.

What does this dish have that I don’t usually add? Cajun spice. Until recently, I didn’t really think about Cajun spice. Then I had to make some in a pinch because the jar I thought I had was gone… Then I came across dish after dish calling for the vague “Cajun spice” (come ON people, just tell us what spices to use!). Now armed with “my own blend” and some in my spice drawer, I am prepared for such recipes.

Desperately Seeking Sumac

Crusted Tilapia and Tomato Pilaf with Asparagus

Soon, I will be off on an adventure in a strange land, eating exotic food and exploring things older than my country.

Dramatic, yes! J and I are off to Turkey, and while there I will be taking in all of the new flavours. In fact, I’ve decided to start early. I bought some sumac, which is used in some Turkish dishes, and I’m ready to explore.

What is sumac like? This sounds kind of silly, but it tasted like smokey fire roasted tomatoes and berries. Weird, no? That’s what I thought of while I was eating it. I think it’s also important to be able to smell it, which is why it’s great to top a dish with it. The smell is at the same time intoxicating and bizarre. Seriously, I can’t think of any other spice that is like this. I think I’m in love.

OK, so I don’t know what constitutes “authentic” Turkish cuisine. Most of the dishes I see include some lamb, which I’m not against trying but will not be preparing any time soon. I’m also not quite ready to make a table full of Turkish mezze. I did a little bit of digging, and found this interesting sounding dish consisting of breadcrumb coated fish and a tomato rice pilaf.

Is it Turkish? Not sure. It sounds inspired by Turkish food, at the very least. It also sounds yummy.

Finally! Fresh, in-season, Ontario asparagus!

I added some local fresh asparagus, and was ready to roll! How was it? I really liked the coating on the fish, and had lots left over (wish I had more fish to coat!). I had to cook the fish a little longer than the recipe called for, but in the end it was cooked perfectly. I thought that there was not enough sumac in the dish – the smell and taste of the sumac got a little lost in the breading. I added some extra to the bread crumb mixture, and ended up sprinkling it all over the rice pilaf.

Intrigued? You can find the recipes I used at the links below. I used tilapia instead of flathead, I used pecans instead of walnuts, I think I doubled the sumac in the coating and I cooked the fish a little longer than suggested… but yeah, really great recipes from a site that I think I will have fun exploring. Check it out!

Recipes from What You Having for Your Tea?

Continue reading Desperately Seeking Sumac

Adaptation – Seitan Tomato Bredie

Since I haven’t issued myself a month-long challenge for May, I’m taking on a couple of one-off challenges. This challenge was issued by Nupur, who writes for One Hot Stove. The goal is to find a recipe posted on another blog, and change something major about it and repost, with a link to the original blog post.

This probably isn’t a surprise, but I chose to veggify a meat dish. This dish could also be made gluten-free by using a non-wheat flour to thicken at the end (er, and by not using seitan, which is basically all wheat gluten).

I chose to make a South African Tomao Bredie (stew), which was originally posted by Asha, who writes for Fork Spoon Knife.

The reason I chose this particular recipe is because it is a South African dish that makes use of many spices that I’ve been ignoring lately. This is a very aromatic dish, featuring LOTS of ginger, allspice, cloves, cardamom and peppercorns. YUM! I’ve never tried cooking any South African dishes before, so I thought this would be a great place to start.

Also, the poster wrote about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books when describing why SHE chose the recipe… while I haven’t read the books, I really enjoyed the TV series on HBO (Miss 97%!). So… yes, I choose recipes for a combination of reasons, some that make sense and some that do not.

I suppose I need to adapt the inspiration for this dish as well, instead of just stealing the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency reference… If I try really hard, I can just imagine Wikus Van De Merwe eating this (before his run-in with the aliens) in Joburg.

Wikus Van De Merwe, from the movie District 9

This was a great dish to have on a cool fall day. Yes, I know it is the middle of May — it FEELS LIKE FALL this week! I’m trying really hard not to be angry at the weather man, filtering some of the anger into cooking. Enjoy!

Tomato Bredie

The original recipe can be found at Fork Spoon Knife.

Marinade Ingredients:

1 inch chunk of ginger, minced
2 tsp all spice powder
1/4 tsp salt

Stew Ingredients:

1 lb seitan, cut into 1″ cubes (I used this recipe)
1 tsp oil
4-5 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick, or 1/2 tsp ground
4-5 cracked black peppercorns
1 medium onions, diced
1 inch chunk of ginger, minced
2-3 cardamom pods
6 medium tomatoes, diced, divided (4 for the stew, 2 for garnish)
1 jalapeno, diced (although I don’t think the dish needs it… the ginger offers enough heat)
1 cup vegetable stock
salt, pepper as needed
3 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour

Aromatic Rice Ingredients:

2 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick, or 1/2 tsp ground
4 cloves
4 cracked peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups basmati rice
3C water

Preparation:

THE NIGHT BEFORE: Coat the seitan pieces evenly with the marinade.Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Heat the oil in a deep sauté pan on med-high heat. Toast the cloves, cinnamon, whole peppercorns in the oil until you can smell the spices.
Add the onions and sauté until browned.
Add the seitan, ginger and cardamom and brown the seitan a little bit. Turn the heat down to medium, cover and let simmer for 5-7 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, jalapeno, stock, salt and pepper and stir well. Simmer for five more minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the potatoes and simmer until they are cooked through, about 10-15 minutes.
While the stew is simmering, prepare the rice:
1. In a medium pot, heat up 1 tsp of oil. Add the spices, and cook until you start to smell them.
2. Add the rice and salt, stir thoroughly, and let it toast a little bit (but be careful not to let it burn!)
3. Add the water, let it come to a boil and reduce to med-low heat. Cover immediately and cook until the rice absorbs all of the water. Fluff with a fork when done.
About 10 minutes into the simmering, add the green pepper.
When the stew is cooked through, melt the butter in a small pan and add the flour to it. Cook for a minute and then add the roux to the stew to thicken.
Once the potatoes are cooked, heat up a small pan on med-low heat to prepare a roux. Melt the butter, and add the flour, stirring constantly until it forms a thin paste. Cook for about a minute.
Add the roux to the stew to thicken. Make sure it all gets incorporated into the stew, leaving no clumps.
Serve over hot aromatic rice and top with some fresh diced tomato. I also added some chopped green onion and diced avocado… not sure if it’s especially authentic, but it added some nice colour and I wanted to use up an avocado.

Leeky Pasta

This dish was inspired by something I had at a restaurant many years ago. I had never had rosemary or leeks in a pasta like this. While often considered ‘fall’ flavours, the combination of the woody rosemary and leeks with the fresh tomatoes and light olive oil sauce is really interesting. Topping it off is some crumbled chèvre that melts into the hot pasta. This dish is best when you can get fresh local tomatoes.

This is an olive oil sauce, the flavour of which is balanced with salt. This is more salt than I usually add to a dish, but it is actually important.

Since I usually make this dish from the top of my head, I decided to try to flesh out an actual recipe. I laugh at myself, because I actually bought too few tomatoes for the dish. Had I figured out a recipe years ago, I would have known how much to get. I also had a hard time guesstimating how much pasta to make. I found this neat page, on the Barilla website, to help you figure out how much pasta to cook (based on a 2oz serving size). In the end, I just estimated based on the amount in the package – I used half of a 900g package, so it’s just about a pound of dried pasta (or a 6-inch bunch, when you measure the circumference).

This recipe will feed 4-6.

Ingredients:

1LB Fettuccine or Linguine
3-5 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp chopped shallot or onion
1 Tbsp chopped fresh garlic (appx 1-2 cloves)
1 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped (plus some for garnish, optional)
2-3 cup chopped mushrooms
appx 3 tbsp white wine
1 medium leek, green part separated from white, halved and thinly sliced crosswise
1LB cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
appx 4 Tbsp chèvre (goat cheese)
1 Tbsp sea salt
pepper, to taste

Preparation:

Cook pasta in a large pot. Drain, toss with 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and keep hot (this is important).
In the meantime, heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a deep sauté pan, or large sauce pan. Sauté shallot/onion until translucent, for approximately 1 minute.
Add garlic, rosemary, and mushrooms. Sauté until mushrooms reduce in size and begin to brown.
Add the white part of the leek, and saute for another minute or two. Add a couple of tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, if it’s looking dry.
Add the tomatoes, and about 1/2 of the green part of the leeks.
Add the rest of the olive oil, the salt and stir.
Add the pasta and toss.
Serve hot, topping each plate with some crumbled chèvre, freshly ground black pepper, and some of the green leek.

Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I opted to make a variation on the first recipe given. I usually don’t eat meat, so this dish posed quite a challenge for me. I think there were three or four different kinds of meat in the recipe… I replaced all of the meat with shrimps and seitan, the broth with a vegetable/shrimp broth. Since this likely changed the flavour quite a bit, I’ve jokingly labelled my variation of the recipe (New) Brunswick Stew. Any Canadians reading this will get the New Brunswick/seafood reference… right? (I’m sure there is nothing specifically New Brunswick about it. I just wanted a cute title).

I started by making a broth, which I based on one I got from a Seafood Gumbo recipe I plan to try eventually. I also had to make some seitan, a vegetarian meat substitute made with wheat gluten (sorry, GF folks!). Both of these things added to the cooking time, since I had to make them from scratch.

Next, I fried up some chile peppers. I got some fun dried chiles called Chilhuacle Negro that have a medium heat (5/10). I’m pretty new to chiles, so I didn’t want to get any that were too hot. That said, I should have kept some of the seeds in for a little more heat. This was where the excitement starts – the smell of the peppers and the oil in the pan are heavenly!

Chilhuacle Negro

Here is what the stew looked like in the early stages – the seitan is still in large chunks (to be sliced into thin strips in a later stage). While the broth started off looking quite red (from the chile peppers and the smoked paprika), it mellowed into a nice warm golden colour by the end.

(New) Brunswick Stew – in progress

Here is the final product, and the shot that everyone on Daring Cooks seems to be doing – the standing spoon shot. This came from the original recipe. To describe the texture of the finished stew, they said that Brunswick stew is not done properly “until the paddle stands up in the middle.”. Everyone has been doing their version of this shot, so I felt obliged to do the same. It was a hearty hearty stew, but the broth was not too thick and gloopy.

(New) Brunswick Stew – Standing Spoon

In the end, the stew turned out great! It was a bit of a challenge deciding what to use instead of meat, but I think the seitan worked wonderfully! This is definitely something I wouldn’t have known to seek out, and there’s no doubt I’ll be making this again.

Recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

Seitan Paprikash

“Could it be…SATAN?”

I think I just dated myself with that quote. Today’s pieced-together recipe features a vegetarian meat-substitute favourite, seitan (sounds kinda like ‘satan’).

I’ve been a little obsessed with paprika lately, so a Seitan Paprikash sounded yummy. I looked at a few different recipes and cobbled one together that sounded good.

Seitan is kind of a strange ingredient, with about a million ways to make it. I started this one by making a dough with gluten flour, water and some seasoning. I had to stretch it and let it rise and stretch it and rip it some more in an attempt to give it some kind of texture. Then it was simmered in a flavourful broth, and suddenly I had ‘meat’. I suppose it’s most like a ‘chicken’ because it was lightly flavoured, but it stood in place of pork pretty well in this dish.

I actually added some spinach to this, because I had some. Shhhhh!

This dish was quick and easy to make, and was a nice change from the usual pasta. The creamy sauce went really well with the seitan. Since this dish is lacking in veggies (in that you might actually end up with a forkful that does not contain a vegetable), we also had some asparagus and a bit of avocado salad. Mmmmmmm.

Side note: I can’t wait for asparagus to be in season here. I’m getting SO JEALOUS reading other peoples’ blogs about the fresh local asparagus they’re able to get!!! Grrr!

Recipe after the jump! Continue reading Seitan Paprikash

Malfatti with Red Sauce

I think I cheated by picking a recipe from the same cookbook as last time, La Cucina Italiana. It wasn’t planned – I actually chose three different recipes from three different cookbooks. This just happens to be the first of the three that I made.

This is a ricotta-based dumpling dish called ‘Malfatti’. The malfatti get pressed into small eggs, using spoons.

Shaping the malfatti into “quenelles” using two spoons.

Unlike other European dumplings I’ve had, these were light and not as dense as I expected. They were, however, filling. Four malfatti were enough for me!! The sauce was a bit of a departure for me – my sauces are usually a bit of a ‘kitchen sink’ concoction where I add a mix of herbs and spices, as many veggies as I can fit, and whatever else I have in the fridge. This sauce was simple, red pepper and tomato being the main ingredients, with oregano and s&p as the only seasoning. I think I showed great restraint by not adding in sautéed mushrooms, chili pepper, or any other herbs. (I did add a few fresh chives to my dish, but I don’t think that counts!!)

A few grilled scallops and shrimps rounded out the meal. They were a good addition, because they are also lightly flavoured. We considered having rainbow trout, but I think that would have been a little too much alongside the malfatti.

This was a tasty dish, good to make whenever you have a little bit of extra time. It takes a little more preparation than your average pasta meal, but the extra effort is definitely worth it!

Recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Malfatti with Red Sauce

Greeky Pt2 – Eggplant Bundles

This is the first installment of my ‘Cookbook Diving’ series, where I dig up recipes from my lonely little cookbooks. I have a number of cookbooks that I rarely use, especially now that it’s so easy to find recipes on the internet. I thought it was about time I start finding some tasty treasures on my own bookshelf, so here we go!

Earlier, I posted about our Greek themed meal featuring my first attempt at Spanakopita. Since we couldn’t make an entire meal out of spinach pie, I thought I should dig around for some other treats. I decided to make eggplant bundles, stuffed with tomato, herbs and cheese. This recipe is actually from an Italian cookbook, but since many of the ingredients cross over with Greek cuisine, I thought I could modify it to make it work with our meal. I did the obvious, and simply replaced the herbs and the type of cheese used, since they wouldn’t change the basic structure of the dish.

This pic gives you a bit of a peek inside at the tomato… sneaky little food!

These were very simple to make, but some of them didn’t want to stay together when I flipped them on the baking sheet. No worries! It’s pretty easy to just stuff it all back together. I modified the original recipe to coat the bundles with the leftover butter/herb/spinach juice from the spanakopita, which worked really well and added some extra flavour. There was also a sun-dried tomato dressing that was meant to be drizzled on top of the bundles when served, but I just left that off. I don’t think it was missing anything.

After a little bit of digging, I found something new in one of my dusty cookbooks. I wonder what other hidden gems I’ve been sitting on!

Broiled Eggplant Bundles – Greek Style

Serves 4, Modified from an Italian recipe in the book La Cucina Italiana edited by Gabriella Rossi

2 large, long eggplants
1/4 lb feta cheese
2 plum tomatoes
8 sprigs of parsley and/or dill
2 tbsp dried oregano
2 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper

Preparation:

Remove the stalks from the eggplants and cut them lengthwise into thin slices — the aim is to get 16 slices in total (about 1/4 inch thick). Ignore the first & last slices.
Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil an cook the eggplant for a couple of minutes, or until just softened. Drain the sliced eggplant and pat dry using a clean towel. Set aside.
Mash the cheese a little, so there aren’t any big chunks.
Cut each tomato into 8 slices, ignoring the first & last slices.
Take two eggplant slices and place on a baking shet, forming a cross. Place a slice of tomato in the centre of the cross, season with salt & pepper, then add a sprig of parsley and/or dill, followed by a dollop of cheese, a sprinkle of oregano, a slice of tomato and more salt & pepper.
Fold the ends ofthe eggplant slices around the cheese and tomato filling to make a neat bundle. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients to make 8 bundles. Chill the bundles for about 20 minutes.
Preheat the broiler. Brush the bundles with oilive oil and cook for about 5 minutes on each side, or until golden. Serve hot.