Week 14

Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
Green beans

Does anyone have something in mind that they've always wanted to make with a whole pound of hot peppers?  I'll probably get even more this week, so maybe some green chili experiments are in order.  Or I could try out some recipes for sofrito, which i just learned about from the Man vs. Food Puerto Rico episode. 

In the meantime, I've been eating tomato pie at least twice a day.  I used the spelt and cornmeal crust recipe from the turnip green tart I linked to here.  The filling recipe is pretty standard, sliced tomatoes layered with a mixture of mayo, green onions, basil, and shredded cheddar.  I used some of the tips from America's Test Kitchens to keep it from getting soggy (recipe is behind a pay wall, but the tips are free):

1.  salt and drain the tomatoes
2.  put some cheese in the bottom of the pie shell to make a barrier from the tomato juice
3.  place the pie in the bottom of the oven on a preheated baking sheet to crisp the bottom

Tomato pie is a Southern kind of thing, but I first had it in Maine.   My lovely friend and former roommate Megan, who grew up there, said the long winters make them appreciate summer more in New England.  She would come back to school in the Fall with freezer containers of pesto made from the overgrown basil "trees" in her parents backyard, and if we made it up for the short tomato season, she'd ask her mom to make tomato pie.  It's one of those things that makes perfect sense once you've tried it, so I suggest you make one while tomatoes are ripe.


Since it's a short list this week, I'll leave you with this timely nugget.

The disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another -- particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke, and short of fish.  - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe