Photos this week

white wonder tomatoes

Ahhh, yes. Another tomato post. But, I imagine that entire odes have been written upon first taste of a white wonder tomato. Friends,  I hope you have been lucky enough to receive a few of these excellent tomatoes in your share since the tomatoes started coming on strong. The color is unique and beautiful, of course, but the flavor is truly rich and outstanding. Plenty of sugar, plenty of acid, they do not last long in my kitchen  Pale yellow and cream colored tomatoes are often piled up en masse at the grocery store around this time each year and I have, admittedly, paid good money for them. Alas, a grocery store tomato is a grocery store tomato no matter how pretty. I promise myself that the next white wonder to grace my kitchen will not be eaten out of hand like an apple, but prepared simply and with deep reverence.  Sliced, peppered, salted and stacked high on rough, white bread spread with ripe avocado. We'll probably add a few crisp leaves of lettuce and a couple strips of  bacon hot from the pan. A perfect summer meal.

cherokee purples... summer's jewels

I have never given a different answer to the question, what's your favorite food? Since I began chewing the answer has always been tomatoes. I am a resolute and unapologetic tomato snob. I will pass up a free massage, an hour alone with a good book and a crisp hundred dollar bill for a perfectly un-messed-around-with tomato sandwich. There is nothing better. Toasted white bread. Mayo. Freshly plucked, sliced tomatoes. Salt and pepper. If I had to pick only one food to eat forever and ever, the tomato sandwich would be that food without question. But had better be stuffed with fat, juicy slices of cherokee purples. They are rich, meaty, sweet and little bit briny to the taste. A real tomato eater's tomato. There have been days, recently in fact, when a tomato sandwich made with ripe cherokee purples has been on my plate at every meal. My three year old can easily pick out the few lopsided, crinkled, deeply burnished fruits from our weekly share and set them aside calling them, Mama's tomatoes.  If you ask me, he's gifted.

tomatillos

Something mysterious and divine happens when you toss a few tomatillos with salt and oil and charr them in a blisteringly hot oven. Those hard, tart little green globes emerge from the heat unctuous, silky smooth inside, sweet and begging to be smashed up with a bit of onion, chile, lime, garlic and avocado. There is a little Mexican restaurant in Houston that serves that with huge, sweet gulf shrimp as a cocktail appetizer. From here to Houston is about 1,300 miles but I could see making the drive for that. We could  also just stay here and make it in our own kitchens and serve it over fajitas. At my house we like to stake out a cool spot on the front porch and just scoop it up with chips and wash it all down with a nice cold beer full of lime wedges. That mysterious flavor we're picking up in those tomatillos may be the taste of summertime. 

eggplant has a special place in my heart

I am seriously lucky in many ways not the least of which is my being the mother of a child who begs for eggplant. Lucky for him I seem to be on a one woman mission to cook every imaginable eggplant recipe before I die. I'm about halfway there, I think. Eggplant has an unfairly earned reputation for being difficult to prepare but I find that the huge payoff in yumminess far and away outweighs what little if any extra prep eggplant requires of me. And it does not have to require ANY extra steps at all. Two of my favorite ways to cook eggplant could not be simpler. The first being whole baked eggplant. Just wrap the eggplants in foil, yeah, just like a potato and bake at 400 for about thirty minutes or until tender. Open up the foil and split length wise making a little pocket to fill with a dribble of olive oil, salt and pepper, chopped raw tomato and cucumber and crumbled feta. I could eat that right now. My most favorite, favorite, favorite eggplant recipe is even easier. I slice the tops off the eggplants and then slice them again length wise and make deep slashes in the cut sides. I stuff the slits with whole peeled garlic cloves, rub on a good bit of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and arrange an a baking sheet and bake at 400 until tender and beginning to caramelize. Then buzz everything in the food processor with a good squeeze of lemon, a glug of olive oil and a handful of parsley. This can be served and eaten as you would hummus or the more complicated baba ghanouj (also completely delicious). Or use it as a pizza sauce as you would tomato sauce or pesto. I suspect that my roasted potato pizza with goat cheese and eggplant sauce played a significant role in my husband's decision to propose. He says no but.... he did ask me in the kitchen with two of those eggplant pizzas cooling on the stove. I may very well I owe much of my happiness to eggplant one way or another.

my beloved okra

Sneaky, sneaky okra. You have so many people stumped. I have heard more that a handful of unkind words used to describe okra, slimy, gooey, runny. Usually, I believe, from people who have suffered the misfortune of eating badly cooked okra. I grew up eating okra as most people from the Deep South do and there is not a person in my family who will turn down a plate of okra. Lucky me. Let's begin with a better understanding of okra. It is the tender green or burgundy seed pod of an edible hibiscus relative and quite a beautiful flowering plat as well. When it was first cultivated by whites in the Americas it was grown purely as an ornemental (the same is true at one point in history or another for potatoes, blueberries, tomatoes, celery and pumpkins. What were these people eating?) Okra is widely eaten through out India, South East Asia, and Africa. It is a plant that loves heat and can thrive in imperfect soil. As a child okra was in everyone's garden, growing up through the hard, rocky, red clay soil and the long, dry Texas summer. It can be dipped  in an egg wash and  dredged in seasoned flour and cornmeal and fried up for one, but I love it stewed in a fragrant bath of onion, garlic and tomatoes and a good slug of vinegar. Saute a chopped onion and two minced cloves of garlic until just tender and add to the pan sliced okra, about three cups of crushed tomatoes, fresh or canned, salt and pepper to taste, about a cup of water and a good slug of vinegar. Let that simmer on a low flame for about twenty minutes or until everything is tender and the flavors have all come together.  As they say in my home state, this is some very good eating.

Sungold cherry tomatoes

I defy anyone to produce a single un-messed-with bite of anything on earth half as delicious as a single sungold tomato. It just cannot be done. This is a bit of a silly post and not one about cooking at all as I have never in all my life actually cooked a sungold. The only way I've ever eaten them is directly off the plant or shortly there after and I am just fine with that even though I'm sure that any way you fix them will be a revelation. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, the famous Berkeley, California eatery has recipes for a sungold cherry tomato martini, a sungold tart and a savory sungold French toast. Yow! I may be missing out. But, I'll never know. And I doubt anyone struggles in the kitchen with what to do with all their sungolds. They are a gift from the Earth and the Sun and the beautiful, dirty faced gardeners tending to them. They best way to honor the work that produces such a gorgeous crop of sungold tomatoes them is to eat every last delicious one just the way you like best.