Tomato How To's

How to grow tomatoes:

Buy them*.
Plant them.

Ignore them.

Harvest them by the bushel.

Done it twice now.  So I'm kind of an authority.

Note:  Does not work for any other living thing.  Especially basil plants and those cute little flower pots from Trader Joe's.  For them, Sharon = Death.

How to eat tomatoes:

Straight up is good.  Really good.

Or, you can make the big ones into tomato jam.

Recipe from Fine Cooking, modified not at all.

The jam is fresh and sweet and tart, a little spicy, and perfectly tomato-y.  Don't be tempted to add onions or garlic or herbs or fancy vinegar.  Let it be, and it'll taste exactly like summer. Amazing on burgers.  Like, ridiculous.  

You might attempt Gazpacho.  I did.

This recipe, a riff on one from Alton Brown, needs more work.  The flavors were spot on, but the texture was a little too much like salsa.  I should have followed along with this great video, from Judy of Two Broads Abroad, or tried making this recipe from Serious Eats.  Next summer!

With full confidence, I can recommend that you make the baby ones into warm tomato vinaigrette.

Tangy, bright and wonderful, I made this last year and it's now in permanent rotation.  The very simple recipe is over at Bon Appetit. Ladle it over roasted potatoes, grilled fish, a steak, or a frittata at breakfast.  Or be like me and slather it on top of fresh focaccia bread.

I insist you try this salad/salsa number with feta cheese and mint. (Recipe follows)

Despite the onset of September, there's no sign of summer slowing down around here. Instead, it seems to be getting hotter, if such a thing is possible. That means there are still a few juicy, ripe tomatoes to be had**.

Find them.
Eat them.
Enjoy!


Don't forget, you can always check out the Recipe Box for even more tomato ideas.

Bacon Jam, A Fable

fa·ble/ˈfābəl/

Noun:

A short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral.

Bacon Jam, A Fable

Once upon a time, there was a middle aged Encino housewife Toad who got a mysterious jar in the mail from her friend, Tracy Frog. Toad was very excited about this jar because it had the magic word, "Bacon", written on it.  Toad was right to be excited, because inside the jar was the most amazing treat in the whole wide world:  Bacon Jam.

But Toad was selfish, and did not share the Bacon Jam with any of the other animals in the swamp.  She did not even share the Bacon Jam with Mr. Toad.  She saved it all for herself, hidden in the way back of her fridge.

Then one day, when she went to get just a bit to put onto on her fried egg sandwich, the little jar was gone!  The helpful hedgehog that kept Toad's house clean had thrown it out by mistake.  Toad was  furious.  But the fridge was a lot cleaner and hedgehogs can be prickly, so she held her tongue and bided her time.

Soon enough, Toad went to visit Frog.  Because she was a kind and generous hostess, Frog took Toad to the Skillet Diner, where that astonishing little jar had come from in the first place*, and treated her to lunch.  Naturally, Toad ordered "The Burger" with Bacon Jam, arugula and creamy bleu cheese, and when it came she almost died with happiness, the burger was so delicious.  Instead of offering to split the heavenly burger with her friend Frog, Toad was selfish and gobbled up most of it all by herself.  In fact,  she only gave Frog one tiny little bite. To be polite.

Months passed, but Toad never forgot about the marvelous Bacon Jam.  While she and her colleague Badger were on a business trip in Frog's neck of the woods, she began scheming to herself.  Toad made a sly plan to take Badger to Skillet Diner.  She planned to have The Burger, and to convince Badger to order one of his own, so she would not have to share even a tiny little bite of her meltingly scrumptious Bacon Jam.

Seeing right through her plan, Badger, being a kind, wise, and generous guest, ordered the Ultimate Grilled Cheese with Bacon Jam, because he could see in Toad's greedy little eyes exactly how much she wanted to try that, too.  And when the food came, he let her have the first bite, piping hot and crispy, dripping with cheese and that incredible Bacon Jam.

Toad was profoundly moved, and more than a little ashamed of herself.  She cut her burger in half, and passed one half over to Badger.  Grinning, they each took a bite of the other's dish.  Closing their eyes, they groaned and mumbled with their mouths full:  "Oh. My. GOD.  This stuff is so GOOD!!"

Then they BOTH almost died with happiness.

The End.

The moral of the story is:

Never keep the wonders of Bacon Jam all to yourself.  But if you do, make sure you get to it before the housekeeper does.** 

Instead, I'm just making a batch of scones and watching it on TiVo

If Mom were around, she'd be all over this wedding.  Constantly reminding me of my British heritage and childhood connection to the lovebirds across the pond.   The dress, the cake, whether Oprah is going, the carriage, the Queen's hat:  all would be subjects for her in-depth analysis and running commentary.    Should they have children right away?  Is a normal home life possible in a castle?  What lessons could they learn from Al and Tipper?  Will she wind up like Diana, the victim of those awful media people?   Is a tiara appropriate when children are being hurled into tornadoes in Alabama?  She'd be tuned in while seeming to sleep, lying on the couch, enjoying the wall-to-wall coverage and waiting to share tidbits with my sister on the phone, and with me as I tried to get the kids out the door in the morning*.

Royal weddings apparently hurt worse than Mother's Day.  Note to self.

Buttermilk Scones with Spicy Roasted Strawberry Jam
I had these scones at a recent book group meeting, and I barely made it home before I was begging for the recipe via email.  They are, by a mile, the best I have ever had. And you know, since I'm British, I should know from scones.    Then, in a strangely fortuitous development, I discovered a new blog today, and right there, front and center, was this amazing recipe for roasted strawberries.  Honestly, Mom's working her tail off up there so I do wind up celebrating these occasions in style.  Thanks, Mom.

Buttermilk Scones
from The Foster's Market Cookbook, via Lisa, our gracious book club hostess.

4 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. (3 sticks) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 c. chocolate chips, dried fruit, candied ginger or nuts, optional
Zest of one lemon or one orange, optional, depending on what other stuff you may be adding
1 1/4 c., plus 2 Tbs. buttermilk
Egg wash:  1 large egg, beaten lightly with 2 Tbs. milk
Coarse sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 400.  Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking mats and set aside.

Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda together in a large bowl, or pulse to combine in a food processor.   Add the butter, and cut in with a pastry blender or two forks, if using a bowl, or pulse about 10-12 times if using the food processor.  Mixture should resemble coarse crumbs.   If using food processor, transfer to a large bowl for the next part.

Stir in any of your optional add ins at this point.

Add 1 1/4 c. of the buttermilk, and mix with a wooden spoon just until combine and the dough begins to stick together.  Add remaining buttermilk, a teaspoon at a time, if the dough seems too dry.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and roll or pat into two six inch rounds, about 1 1/2 inches thick. Cut each round in half with a sharp knife, then cut each half into three triangular wedges and place on the baking sheets. (Or, pat the whole thing out and cut with biscuit cutter, as I did)

Brush the tops with egg wash, and sprinkle with a little coarse sugar.

Bake for 30-35 minutes (if you made wedges) or 20-25 minutes (if you made smaller circles), until golden brown and firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

Roasted Strawberry Jam
In perusing the blogs that were nominated as favorites this year by Saveur Magazine, I discovered Eat The Love, and stopped short when I saw this recipe.  Lo and behold, I had exactly two pounds of fresh strawberries just sitting in my fridge.   How does she do that?  The original recipe keeps the strawberries whole with their sauce, and suggests spooning over ice cream or right into your mouth.  I chose to puree mine into a delectable spread for the scones.  Either way, this is truly fit for a king.**

2 lbs. fresh strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced into 1 inch (or smaller) pieces
1 vanilla bean
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar (can use lemon juice or another acid of your choice)
2 Tbs. red wine (use a big bold one...I used a glorious red dessert wine)
1/2 tsp. fresh, finely ground mixed peppercorns
1 1/2 inch cinnamon stick.

Preheat oven to 275.

Place strawberries into a medium mixing bowl.  Split the vanilla bean with a sharp knife, and carefully scrape the seeds into the bowl with the strawberries and stir.  Toss the bean into the bowl, too, along with the remaining ingredients.

Stir one more time, then turn out onto a rimmed baking sheet, scraping well to get all of those luscious juices, and making sure to spread the strawberries out into one even layer.

Roast in the oven for 2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes or so to keep the strawberries and juices from sticking.  The strawberries are done when they are softened, darkly colored, and a little dry on top, and juices have thickened.

You can cool, store and use as is, or, transfer the entire pan contents to a blender or food processor.   Process/blend for a minute or two, until smooth.  Taste it...the balsamic and the wine combined with the intense strawberry flavor and the spice from the cinnamon, vanilla and peppercorn are so rich and complex that you may find yourself wanting to have a steak dinner to go with it.  Scones will do in a pinch.

* We would have had a laugh about this photo.  And Mom would have LOVED the dress.

** God, I hate that I even wrote that down.  But I may never get another chance for that trite food descriptor to be so very apt!

Everything's better as butter

When you own a house in LA, chances are it comes with fruit trees.   We've got lemons, oranges, and, due to my margarita/gin & tonic/mojito habit, a newly planted lime tree at our place.   We also have a peach tree.  The first year we lived here, the peach tree didn't do much.    Last year, as June rolled around, we noticed the branches were sprouting lots of little fuzzy nuggets.   Each week, they grew a little bigger, a little rosier, and my mind began imagining the cobblers, the pies, the slices with cinnamon for breakfast.   If you bake...heck, if you eat, you know that a ripe, fresh peach is like nature's ultimate foodie gift.

Pretty soon, I felt like the wicked witch in the Hansel and Gretel story.  The branches were chock full, almost mockingly loaded down.  Every day I went out to the yard, ready for my feast, and every day those peaches were hard as rocks.   I gritted my teeth and waited.   It had to be soon.

I think we might have gone away for the weekend.  Or maybe it did happen overnight.  All I know is I came out one morning and every single peach on that tree was gone.  It had been stripped bare.   Frantic, I searched under every leaf, on every branch of that now completely green tree.  Nothing!

Seething, I made a casual remark to the gardening crew.   Something along the lines of, "Did you happen to harvest several bushels of peaches for me last time you were here?"   They had not.

It was the f***ing squirrels.   They had some kind of inherent "ripeness radar" in those cute little heads of theirs, and it had gone off while I was asleep at the switch.   The fluffy-tailed thieves put the word out and had a big old peach eating hoe down.  They invited the whole family, their long lost cousins, and the guys down the block, too.   I'm sure it was the equivalent of a squirrel tweeting: "open season @#sharon's peach tree 1 nite only pass it on."   Damn them!

So you can imagine how I greeted the appearance of the precious fuzzy nuggets this year.   No way those furry little losers were going near my peaches.  I patrolled the perimeter.   Consulted experts*.   Made obscene, threatening gestures when one of those sneaky buggers crossed my path.  This was war.   And I was going to win.  

Saturday came.   I began my rounds.   The peaches were gorgeous.   The tree was almost groaning under their weight, leaning heavily on the support stakes we'd put up.    Just the sight of all that bounty made my heart beat faster. 

Then I heard it.   A scamper.  Rustling in the branches to my left.   The thud of hastily dropped fruit hitting the earth.   Quick as a wink four bushy tails flew off the tree and onto the nearby fence, where the advance raiding party proceeded to turn and chatter their tiny teeth at me. 

"GET AWAY FROM MY PEACHES YOU, YOU, YOU...NUT JOBS!!!"  I yelled, waving my arms and stamping my feet like a crazy person.   From inside the house, my husband and children, at first alarmed and then hysterical with laughter, began doing imitation "Mommy hates the squirrels" dance moves.

My method might be comical**, but it was effective.  I was alone with the tree.  I reached up, and sure enough, the nearest peach was warm from the sun, perfectly ripe and ready for the picking.  It dropped easily into my hand.   The skin was soft, the color a brilliant blend of red and pink and orange.    I brushed it off gently, closed my eyes and opened my mouth to take a bite of my luscious, marvelous prize.

Yech! Blah! Ugh! Crap!  It was AWFUL!!!  I couldn't spit the stuff out fast enough.  Utterly flavorless, mushy white flesh, oozing horrid juice all over the place.  Worse still, now there was a bitter aftertaste, without the wonderful rich tart-sweet tang I'd been fantasizing about all summer.    This was an absolutely horrible, horrible peach.  I threw it down in disgust, and picked up another one.   Ew!  This was even worse than the first one.    This stupid tree produced the worst excuse for peaches I'd ever eaten in my life!

More chattering from up on the fence.   These little jerks were clearly laughing at me, too***! Well, I would show them!   No matter how vile this fruit was, it was still my fruit.   I proceeded to pick a huge bucket of the things, motivated by pure, venomous, malevolent spite****.

My husband:  Honey, why is there a pile of bad peaches on the counter in the kitchen?
Me: Because I'm going to make something with them. 
My husband:  Uh huh.  What can you make out of bad peaches?
Me:  Alcohol or butter.   I'm online trying to decide which way to go with this batch.
My husband:  OK, well, you're the expert.
Me:  I'm going to go with butter.  It's a shame to waste good vodka on these things.
My husband:  I couldn't agree more.

I peel the peaches.  I slice the peaches.  I crush the peaches with a potato masher.  It looks like someone threw up in the bowl.

My son:  Mom, it looks like someone threw up in there.   You know that, right?
Me:  It'll be fine, trust me.
My son:  I'm just saying!

I get out the food processor.   I put the slimy, mashed up bad peaches in and puree them into a smooth, barf-colored liquid. 

My daughter:  Mom, what is that?  It looks like barf.
Me:  It's peach butter.  Just not yet.
My daughter:  Seems more like peach vomit to me.

I add lemon juice, lemon zest, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, apricot nectar, almond extract and brown sugar.   Now it looks like dirt is getting mixed into the vomit.    No one bothers speaking to me about this.   I load the whole mess into the crock pot, set it on high, and walk away.

My husband, a few hours later:  What smells good? Is it the peach vomit?
Me:  Yes, but it's not peach vomit.  It's peach butter.

My son, a few hours after that:   Hey! The peach vomit looks less like fresh puke now.   The color is more like old puke.
Me:  It's peach butter.  And the correct phrase for that color is golden brown.
My son:  Call it what you want, Mom.  It's still not even close to appetizing.  You know that, right?

My daughter, several hours later:  Hey, Mom! Can I stir the peach vomit this time?  Seems like it's almost ready!
Me:  [Sigh] Yeah, go ahead.

After leaving it to cook down through the night, in the morning I have a crock pot full of thick, deep orange, spicy-tangy-sweet, absolutely delicious peach butter.     I pull out my jars, fill them to the brim, and with a satisfying twist of the lid, my victory....over the rascally varmints, over that skanky tease of a tree, is sealed.

Later that day I go out to the yard.   I stand on the lawn and speak loudly and clearly:

"OPEN SEASON @SHARON'S PEACH TREE FOR THE REST OF THE SUMMER.  PASS IT ON!"

A symbolic reenactment of the peach tree truce.  Thank you to my dog for the loan of his squeaky squirrel.  None of the ones in the yard would pose for me.

* The experts say pie tins. Hang pie tins.
** OK, definitely comical.
*** The family was now cracking up over the many faces of horror and revulsion I was making along with with my solo performance piece, "Random furious hurling and spitting."
**** I now have an intensely personal understanding of the Bill Murray character's motivation in Caddyshack.

Making the most out of naked toast

About a week ago, I was dismayed to find I was down the last drop in the last jar of my homemade blueberry jam. I was staring at two pieces of freshly toasted cracked wheat sourdough bread, butter melting into the crunchy bits, with no hope of berry satisfaction. I nearly cried*.

But then, I remembered the message of the week from class: Think positive, act positive. You can go through life expecting the worst, finding fault, and making excuses. Or you can get up in the morning and decide to make the most of your day. Either way, you get out what you put in, so if you want results (and don't want to embarrass yourself by bawling in front of the open toaster oven), choose wisely**.

So I chose to rinse out that empty jar of jam and make some more***. It was positively delicious.


* I was already distraught about the appalling state of incivility in our nation's capital. My sister and niece had left town. My son lost his lunch box on the very first day of school. So you can see that this was pretty much the last straw.
** An important corollary is that these attitudes are extremely contagious:

• Protect yourself - Stay away from whiners and grumpy people.
• Spread the wealth - Share your jam, or failing that, be grateful out loud to someone today.

*** I made mixed berry jam using the same recipe as the blueberry jam, substituting a combo of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries this time.

Two for one

When a new cooking magazine arrives in the mail, I tend to follow a fairly well-established ritual:

1. Be very excited that it wasn't more Pottery Barn catalogs clogging up the mailbox
2. Put the magazine aside until I have some quiet time to go through it
3. Turn on the bathroom fan and settle in
4. Dog-ear the pages that have a recipe I think sounds good
5. Put dog-eared magazine in the stack of other dog-eared magazines from prior months, and vow to clip and organize the recipes on the dog-eared pages into a handy notebook so I can easily whip something up when I get inspired to try a new dish
6. Consider going online and bookmarking the online version of the dog-eared recipes (so I don't have to do all that clipping) into a handy, easily indexed, searchable, personalized online collection so I can easily whip something up when I get inspired to try a new dish
7. Check my e-mail instead
8. Get take out
9. Eagerly await next month's issue

But this month, I took a whole new approach. I actually tried the dog-eared recipes before I put them in the stack. And you know what? Some of them sucked! I consider myself a pretty good judge of what might taste good, but I am fallible. Seriously fallible. Thank god! I might have been holding onto that cheddar cheese biscuit recipe for years, feeling guilty and overwhelmed by the ever-growing stack of dog-eared pages, but now I can straighten out that corner and just move on. It's liberating, I tell you. I feel great.

And the good recipes are coming straight onto this blog. Can you say indexed, searchable, personalized and online? I thought you could.

The unqualified winner this month? The Brown Butter Raspberry Tart.

The fixer upper of the month? Blueberry Jam Sandwich Cookies. Check out the original photo of these things in the magazine. Who could resist, right? Not me. I dive in.

I start with the jam. The recipe calls for boiling the berries, butter and pectin together. I don't know about you, but when I boil something, there's usually liquid involved. Fix number 1...add some lemon juice. Presto! Amazing jam.

Onto the cookies. Make as directed. Taste dough. Not nearly lemony enough. Apply fix number 1 again...add some lemon juice. Presto! Tasty, tangy shortbread cookies.

Now, the grand finale. Assembly into the delectable cookie sandwich bite so tantalizingly shown in the glossy photos. Yep. There they are. Beautiful. I take a nibble and realize that looks aren't everything. These two things have no business being together. Jam is squishy, cookies are crunchy, and it's just a big mess.

But I have been loving that jam on bread for days, and every single lemon cookie was gone within 24 hours.



Two recipes fixed up and adapted from one in the June Issue of Bon Appetit. Voila!