Tomatoes-a-Plenty

Flush with tomatoes. So flush with tomatoes I had them withering in the fridge. And, no surprise, Wednesday’s CSA box had more of the same. I’ve had cherry tomatoes and plum tomatoes, and heirloom ones. SO many that making tabbouleh and other salads just isn’t enough to stem the tide.

Last night, nestled over kisir (turkish tabbouleh), haloumi, and sautéed mushrooms I contemplated my fate. I had to figure out some way to consume 7,000 pounds of tomatoes (only a slight exaggeration) or resign myself to being part of the American masses that throws away a quarter of my food. It was well past 7pm but I had it in my mind to do something.

Call it impulse. Call it meditation. Call it a need to rest my mind in light of all the things that are happening in the world right now that cause me to rage out. Whatever you call it, it involved me humming to myself while I peeled tomatoes and one and a half heads of garlic simmered at low heat in a ½ cup of olive oil 

I peeled, and peeled. No blanching because it was hot and I’m impatient. Instead, I quartered each tomato and with a thin blade started at a corner and pulled down. 45 minutes later I had a full pot. I adapted this recipe from one that a friend sent me a while ago called the four hour tomato sauce. That one calls for half a cup of oil (which I find excessively oily), canned tomatoes instead of fresh, and the water from boiled mushrooms for an extra layer of flavor (I was out of mushrooms).

I made do. 

After simmering the garlic until it was brown and tender (like me!) i poured it into the boiling and dissolving tomatoes with a few pinches of my homemade rosemary salt, and a dollop of tomato paste (maybe a teaspoon). And then I just let it simmer. 

Initially the sauce was watery and I wondered if it would ever reduce. I put it on low heat and went about my evening (namely, baking brownies) and almost forget it was there until I washed my dishes and looked over. The sauce was thicker. More of a pinkish red than the vibrant crimson the canned tomatoes produce (my tomatoes varied in color form yellow to green to red) but it tasted divine.

Into the freezer it went, ready and waiting for me to make lasagna. Maybe next week.

Dunderi from scratch

I haven’t really been in the kitchen much since my vacation. I took a cooking class in Turkey, but that was only one day, and I’ve been sick and busy since I returned. 

Sickness lost me almost an entire CSA box. Too sick to put it away it mostly rotted while still packed tightly in brown paper bags and sitting in a patch of sunlight. Warm and closely bound, the beans molded the apricots spoiled.

I salvaged the basil, and made pesto (realizing for the first time that my food processor works better than the blender). The pizza that followed was ok, but nothing dazzling; something was off and I can only blame myself. So long removed from my kitchen I seem to have lost my touch: I added too much sugar to the crust, the pesto lacked bite, the zucchini lacked salt.

Sunday, sickness testing my body for a possible return, I didn’t manage to make ,anything more than taco soup (one can of black beans, one can of pinto beans, one can of corn, one can of diced or stewed tomatoes, one can of pumpkin, and taco seasoning- ground meat optional). 

I made tortillas (also slightly off) the night before and a kohlrabi and cabbage slaw. It should have been amazing, but mostly it was just ok.

Today was the day though. I found a recipe in Tasting Table before I left for Turkey. It tantalized me from the beginning…a pasta made almost entirely of cheese. This seemingly inverse of gnocchi…light and airy to gnocchi’s density. I’d never heard of this…dunderi…but oh how I wanted to.

Fleeing from the day’s stress, discarding my working demeanor, I took to measuring out ingredients.

I never used to measure everything out, like on the cooking shows, it always seemed so wasteful, extra things to wash. But my recent spate of cooking has taught me that order before cooking makes orderly cooking –mise en place makes sense. And so I pulled down ramekins, measured out flour, separated eggs, minced rosemary. 

Everything in the proper place, I began to mix according to the recipe. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever made a more ridiculously decadent dish that wasn’t a dessert. Two cups of ricotta cheese, one cup of parmesan, six egg yolks, and a little more than a cup of flour (a bit of kosher or sea salt). 

The recipe calls for nutmeg but I hate nutmeg as I hate few things and the idea of fresh fragrant rosemary called to me and so I minced it as fine as I could and sprinkled that in with the other ingredients. 

Rolling it out was a learning experience – one I’ll improve at next time, having learned what the dough does in a huge pot of boiling salted water. The little dumplings expand in the water, their edges, if not definitely rolled fluff out wildly like my hair. Holding their shape firmly or waving free in the boiling currents of the water, they float to the surface when they are ready to be fished out and drained. 

The final step is a half cup of butter melted and browned slowly on the stove top. Two teaspoons of lemon and a little zest and salt. Drop the hot dumplings in and coat. 

I fancied mine up a tad. I lightly pan-fried some eggplants, diced fresh heirloom tomatoes, sautéed some kohlrabi greens, and grated parmesan on top (as if the cup inside the pasta wasn’t enough).

Delicious.

The whole thing is light and airy, not particularly cheesy.

Dinner disapointment

simple miso dressing

Every culinary project can’t be a success. Then I might get cocky. 

Recent meals have been, if not a crapshoot, at least lopsided. The soba noodle dish when I couldn’t find the right seaweed so I just bought nori to garnish – not understanding until way too late that the soaking of the seaweed with the dried shitake mushrooms infused them with salt while they were being reconstituted. That dish fell flat for lack of an entire layer of flavor that no amount of soy sauce or salt could remedy.

miso soup

It was disappointing. All the more so because I have a cabinet full of soba noodles (not even the real kind because they are mixed with wheat flour). Of course, before that little fiasco, I made some kind of miso veggie that I can’t even recall now. The only thing I remember is how nasty it was and how I was stuck with a tub of miso.

But with every disaster I learn something new. That miso has been useful in making a miso dressing that I will find any excuse to make. So simple: miso, white wine vinegar, honey, fresh grated ginger, lime juice, and sesame seeds. Viola. I love that stuff. And it was born out of the miso I thought I detested. Well, I was able to follow the recipe I was given during my sushi making class. I did experiment with miso soup though. After the miraculous 8-course wild dinner I took part in a few weeks earlier I made friends with three couples who took me in as their seventh. One of them talked about the simplicity of making miso soup. 

I went home and tried it the next day. Some miso, water, dried shitake mushrooms, fresh ginger, joi choy, green onions – topped off with an egg. Once I figured out how easy it is I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes I’ll throw in some soba noodles for variety. Whatever veggies are in the fridge. Miso has become one of my favorite mistakes.

rolled our roti

Tonight’s disaster doesn’t have enough distance for me to think fondly of what I have learned. Well, beyond what I already knew but chose to ignore- half the recipe when I’m unsure of the outcome. 

Of course I ignored that nagging feeling and scooped out and sifted 5 cups of flour for dhal puri roti. It rang out to me as wrong but I ignored it on the off chance that it turned out like I saw it in my nostalgic brain. My college roommate was from Trinidad and every semester she would bring her dad’s homemade hotsauce and roti. We’d freeze the roti and ration it all year long. In my mind it is the most amazing of breads and I’ve never been able to replicate it.

Unfortunately, that is still the case.

Five cups of flour, some ground dhal, jeera, and oil later and all I really have are some exotified flour tortillas. And as far as my tortillas go, these aren’t even great. My ingenuity was masterful. No griddle (or tawah) at my disposal – and even my cast iron skillet too small- I turned the skillet upside down and cooked the roti on the bottom. 

tawah  innovation

Then there was the curry. I don’t make curry much since Peace Corps. It was such a staple of my world at the time. Curried lentils were my every day dinner, like peanut butter was lunch most days, and boiled eggs breakfast. Diversity was not my friend. So when I returned stateside I didn’t buy curry. Going out to eat and I wouldn’t order curry. Even now I tend to shy away from brown curries (what I was accustomed to working with) and lean toward green or red, sometimes the occasional yellow. 

Today my shrimp curry was as unsatisfying as the roti. Not so much bad as not so much good. Too watery, I added cornstarch to thicken the gravy, and when that didn’t work I added quinoa. 

Sigh.

The meal sated me, but oh how excited I was to make it to have it fall so short of my expectations. Now I’m stuck with six more roti in the freezer (next to the frozen and failed naan experiment of a few months ago). 

My one consolation though – I purchased more pistachios and dried apricots and I still have goat cheese and fresh dill…I see a repeat of the Persian rice in my future.