Early Girl Tomato Sauce with Roasted Onions and Garlic
make about 4 – 5 pints

8 lbs early girl tomatoes, stems removed
salt
pepper
2 T. dried herbs (Italian seasoning blend, or a mixture of rosemary, thyme, basil, marjoram, and sage)
1 head garlic
olive oil
1 sweet onion
2 yellow onions

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil.  Prepare a large bowl of ice water and set aside.

Cut a small X in the bottom of each tomato, then add tomatoes in batches to the boiling water.  Blanch for about 30-45 seconds, or until the skin starts to peel away from the tomato flesh.  The blanching time depends on the ripeness of your tomatoes.  Remove from the boiling water and place into the ice water.  Repeat until all tomatoes are blanched.

Place a fine mesh strainer over a large pot (a 5 qt dutch oven works well).  Remove the tomatoes from the ice water and peel the skins off and discard.  Squeeze each tomato over the strainer so that the juices go into the pot but not the seeds.  Add the de-seeded tomatoes to the pot.  They will break down while cooking, so there is no need to chop them.

Add about 1 t. each salt and pepper to the tomatoes, as well as the dried herbs, then bring to a boil over medium heat.  Reduce the heat to low and simmer for about 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally and scraping the bottom of the pan to dislodge any stuck bits, until the tomato sauce has thickened, but is still a little more watery than you’d like for the final product.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Slice the top quarter off the head of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, then wrap loosely in foil.  Loosely wrap the un-peeled onions individually in foil, then put them along with the garlic into the oven and roast for about 1 hour.  Remove from oven, open foil, and allow to cool.  Once cool, peel and chop the onions, and squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins. and mash into a paste

Add the onions and garlic to the tomato mixture, mix well, and gently simmer for another 45 minutes or so  Taste and season with more salt, pepper, herbs, or even a little acid (balsamic vinegar, for example).  Use immediately, refrigerate for up to a week, or freeze in small portions for future use.  Enjoy!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I lack self control when it comes to buying vegetables from Mariquita Farms.  In no way, shape, or form did I need twelve pounds of early girl tomatoes.  But something — my vision of delicious ripe tomatoes paired with a lack of vegetable self control, most likely — made me check the box ’1 flat Early Girl Tomatoes’ on the online order form.  A few days later I found myself at Piccino picking up not only the twelve pounds of tomatoes, but also ten pound of apples and a 15-20 lb “Mystery Box” of vegetables (including more tomatoes!)…  Delicious, yes.  But we’re just two people!  What was I thinking?

From the moment I picked up the tomatoes, the whole thing seemed like an ill-fated endeavor.  To start, I couldn’t carry the 40 lbs of vegetables to my car by myself and had to have someone help me (which she did very graciously!).  Next, there was no way I was going to fit that much produce into my fridge.  Really? 40 lbs?  that’s like if I tried to put my cat into the fridge four times over… or maybe my entire left leg… you get my point — that’s a lot of produce.  After that, I discovered that fruit flies LOVE tomatoes.  Since I couldn’t put them in the fridge both because of space constraints and the fact that one should never put tomatoes in the fridge, I left them on the counter only to find the box swarming with fruit flies the next morning…  ugh.  What was I thinking?

Ok.  I know what I was thinking.  I was thinking — these Mariquita Farms tomatoes are SO GOOD and they are only available for a few short weeks every year! I missed tomato season last year because I was in the process of moving back from Germany, and I absolutely didn’t want to miss it this year.  That’s what I was thinking.  So what if I had 14 lbs of tomatoes staring me in the face?  I vowed to make good use of them.

And make good use of them I did!  I dried about 4 lbs of them (cut in half, dry in a 200 degree oven on oiled cookie racks until dry but still pliable, about 4 hours), saved one lb, and made the rest into this awesome, simple tomato sauce.  I’ve been using it for all sorts of things since I made it this weekend — as a dipping sauce for cheesy bread, as pizza sauce, mixed with sauteed greens, eating it straight from the jar with a spoon… you know, the usual :)

The most time consuming part of this recipe is blanching and peeling the tomatoes.  If you have a food mill, you can ENTIRELY skip this step!  I didn’t use my food mill this time since I desired a chunky sauce, but I discovered the tomatoes break down so much while cooking that it would have been a wash texture-wise between blanching & skinning the tomatoes versus roughly chopping them with the skin and seeds and passing the mixture through a food mill (which removes skins and seeds) after cooking (but before adding the onions).  Next time I have this many tomatoes I’ll definitely use the food mill and save myself about an hour of blanching and skinning.  Live and learn.

Well, tomato season is upon us for probably 3-4 more weeks, and if you find you cannot exercise tomato self-control (similar to me) when confronted with a case of beautiful dry-farmed tomatoes, try this recipe and know that you will have delicious tomato sauce for weeks, months to come.  Enjoy!

Roasted onions and garlic — I roasted one too many onions, but have been making great use of it on other things!

Still Hungry?  Try one of these:

- Wintertime Tomato Sauce

- Simplest Tomato Sauce with Roasted Onion, Shallots and Garlic

- Tomato and Cheese Auflauf

“Potsticker” Radishes

1 bunch Watermelon radishes, peeled, cut into 1 inch chunks
1 – 1 1/2 T. olive oil
salt and pepper
water
1 T. maple syrup (optional)

Mix radish chunks with olive oil in a bowl and toss to coat.  The radishes should be generously coated in oil.  Season well with salt and pepper.

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the radishes and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Add enough water to come up about two thirds the height of the radishes, and add the maple syrup if using.  Cover and simmer until the water is mostly absorbed, about 7-10 minutes.  Uncover and boil off the rest of the water.  Fry the radishes in the remaining oil until the edges become crisp.  Turn once or twice after one side is crisp to allow the other sides of the radish chunks to develop a crisp crust.  Remove from pan and serve immediately.  Enjoy!

My favorite type of radish is — hands-down — the french breakfast radish.  Oblong, fading from white to pink, mostly mild with a slight peppery bite, I can eat pounds of them if they are slathered with high-quality butter and garnished with flakey sea salt…  They are one of life’s small pleasures.

But life doesn’t always give you french breakfast radishes.  In fact, sometimes it gives you watermelon radishes when you are expecting beets.  This afternoon I pulled out a bag of white-ish root vegetables from my refrigerator thinking it was a bag of white beets from a recent Mariquita Farms Mystery Box.  I cut the inch or so of stem from the ‘beets’, then proceeded to cut off the tail in preparation for roasting, only to discover a bright magenta center — not exactly the white beets I was expecting!  Slightly perplexed, I cut into one and discovered it was not a white beet at all, but rather a watermelon radish!  Que sera, sera…  The two are almost identical on the exterior when the greens aren’t attached, so I can forgive myself for confusing the two…

But although I could forgive my vegetable confusion, it really threw my lunch plans for a loop.  I was planning roasted white beets with sauteed spinach atop quinoa.  What could I do with watermelon radishes instead?

Though I typically eat watermelon radishes raw (julienned with soy, mirin, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and rice vinegar), today I wanted something hot.  Roasted radishes seemed… not so appetizing… so I decided to experiment.  I decided to cook these radishes how I typically cook potstickers — a quick saute in oil, a medium-length steam, and finally another fry to crisp the edges.

Wary, I flipped on the burner and started cooking. Worse comes to worst I could always scrap my lunch and visit the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen… oh the joys of working from home on Tuesdays.

After about 15 minutes the “potsticker” radishes were done, and I spooned them atop my quinoa and spinach.  I took one bite, then another, and deemed the grilled cheese kitchen completely unnecessary.  The radishes were DELICIOUS!  Who’d have thought?  I guess, when life gives you radishes………

On a different note, things have been pretty quiet around Modern Beet as of late.  I haven’t been cooking much, or at least not things that are really worth sharing.  But something else exciting is going on — my big news is that I got an awesome new job!  You might have heard of the company…  they do awesome things, have lots of awesome people, and generally just exude awesomeness…  Wish me luck!

Still Hungry?  Try one of these:

- Ever-So-Slightly-Sweet Mashed Turnips

- Absolute Simplicity: Cucumber and Cantaloupe

I love chard but often find myself at a dead end when trying to come up with new ways to prepare the humble green after weeks, months, years of getting it my CSA boxes.  How many different ways are there to saute, braise, broil, bake, or cream a leafy green?  Sure, I’ll add a little spice, perhaps some candied ginger, an extra dollop of butter, but at the end of the day, I feel like I have exhausted all the possibilities.

This chard preparation, however, is REALLY different.  It’s not that often that I find a vegetable dish that tastes nothing like anything I’ve ever made before, and it’s even less frequent that I actually like (let alone love) that vegetable dish!  With the first bite of this, I knew I had stumbled on something different, and more importantly, something remarkably delicious.  Who’d have thought it would all be thanks to lime pickle?

Indian lime pickle is a very pungent, salty, mildly spicy, incredibly unique condiment made with mustard oil.  I first tasted it back in 2001 when I spent a few months living in Jaipur, India.  The first time I put Indian pickle in my mouth, I’m pretty sure I spit it out and puckered my face with disgust.  Ewww!  But somehow I’ve come to love the pungent condiment, and it’s my favorite part of any Indian dining experience (and the fennel/sugar palate cleanser at the end).

Since lime pickle is decidedly an acquired taste, I don’t really recommend you try this recipe unless you know you like Indian pickles.  The taste of the pickle in this dish is assertive and unmistakable.  Never tried lime pickle or can’t remember if you have?  Pick up a jar at an Indian grocery store, or ask for a side dish of pickle the next time you eat at an Indian restaurant.  If you get it in a restaurant, it’ll probably be mixed pickle (with mango, lime, carrots, and other vegetables), but the taste is 95% the same.  If it turns out you like pungent pickles as much as I do, then by all means, make this easy, unique chard dish and be excited that the world of leafy green vegetables is wider than you might have thought. :)

Swiss Chard with Indian Lime Pickle
Adapted from Epicurious.com
Serves 2

1 1/2 T. Indian Lime Pickle
1-2T. olive oil
juice from half a lemon
1 t. salt
1 T. butter
1 shallot, minced
2 T. water
1 bunch swiss chard, stems removed and reserved for another use, chopped into bite size pieces

Finely mince the lime pickle.  Combine with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt in a small bowl and mix.  Set aside. Heat butter in a saute pan over medium heat.  Add shallot and saute until translucent.  Add chard and toss to coat with butter.  Add water, then cover pan to steam the chard, lifting the lid and stirring occasionally until the chard is wilted, about 3-4 minutes total.  Add the lime pickle mixture and stir to combine.  Cook an addition 30-40 seconds.  Serve atop brown rice or as a side dish for an Indian meal.  Enjoy!

Still Hungry?  Try one of these:

- Creamed Swiss Chard with Bacon

- Spicy Slivered Green Beans with Lime and Cilantro

- Crispy Okra Raita with Indian Spiced Tofu

The tumbleweed rolled and tumbled down the windy street as we sat in the diner. Little plumes of dust swirled in its wake, lit by the morning sun. I remember watching the tumbleweed as I ate my breakfast, thinking… where *are* we? I felt like I was in some eerie, abandoned Old West town, but my dad kept things light by making Wile E. Coyote jokes and doing voices from Looney Tunes because that’s the kind of guy he is :)

Who’d have thought that more than ten later I would open up my Mystery Box of vegetable from Mariquita Farms and find a close cousin of that tumbleweed. And furthermore, that I would cook it up into a cheesecake and write a post about tumbleweed and cooking.

But that’s far enough down memory lane. Let’s talk agretti!

A bunch of Agretti

Please do not judge agretti by its appearance. It hardly looks like a vegetable, but rather a strange grass you might find growing at the edge of a pond or an oasis in the high desert. When eaten raw, agretti is the slightest bit lemony, reminiscent of sorrel, and when you bite into it, has the tendency to pop, a little like a juicy grape. Cooked, it loses its pop but retains its flavor. Raw or just barely cooked it has a brilliant green color, which darkens after about 5 minutes of cooking.

When confronted with this vegetable I had never seen before in my life, I was a little… intimidated. The internet offered few ideas, and it isn’t mentioned even once in my LARGE stack of cookbooks… what to do? But of course! Cheese, eggs, herbs, more cheese, bake… this combination rarely fails me.

I’ve yet to see this vegetable anywhere besides vegetable boxes from Maraquita farms, but if you do happen to come across it, I encourage you to pick up a bunch and try out this unusual vegetable!

Agretti and Ricotta Cheesecake
Inspired by 101 Cookbooks

1 large bunch Agretti, rinsed and dried
2 medium shallots
5-6 cloves garlic

8 oz. neufchatel cheese (or cream cheese)
2 c. ricotta, drained for 10 minutes
a large handful of fresh herbs, chopped (I used a mix of tarragon, sage, and parsley)
1/2 c. grated parmesan
2 eggs

1/3 c. goat cheese, crumbled

Preheat the oven to 325. Oil a 7 inch spring form pan*.

Trim the bottom 1-2 inches from the agretti stems and discard. Chop the rest into 1-2 inch pieces.

Heat about 2 T. olive oil in a large saute pan over medium high heat. Add the shallots, cook 1-2 minutes, then add the garlic. Saute for 2-3 minutes, then add the agretti and very generously season with salt and pepper. Saute until the agretti has reduced to about 1/3 it’s original size. Allow to cool, then transfer to a cutting board and roughly chop.

Put the neufchatel into a large bowl and whip either with a fork or an electric whisk to soften. Add the ricotta, herbs, parmesan, and eggs and mix until well combined. Fold the agretti mixture into the cheese. Pour into the spring form pan, place on a baking tray, and bake for 1 hour.

Sprinkle goat cheese over the top of the cheesecake and bake for an additional 20-30 minutes, until goat cheese has softened. If desired, place the cheesecake under the broiler for 1-2 minutes until the top is golden. Remove from oven, allow to cool for about 15 minutes, then release from spring form pan. Serve warm or at room temperature.

*Note: if you don’t have a spring form pan, you may use a regular pie plate. Keep an eye on the cooking process though, as the depth of the cheesecake is quite different when using a pie dish versus a small spring form pan. You will likely need to cook the cheesecake for less time.

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Uncooked Spinach Balls, about to be frozen

Steven’s grandmother Faela is a woman I wish I could have met.  She passed away long before Steven and I knew each other, so anything I know about her is gathered from old photographs, recipe cards, and stories told by Steven and his family members. One thing I do know is that she was a heck of a cook, with specialties ranging from spinach balls to chicken pie (with few vegetables and lots of chopped hard boiled egg) to brisket and much more that you may or may not expect from a culinarily gifted Jewish Grandmother.

Faela’s recipe for spinach balls makes (in her handwritten words) enough for a small army. Expect anywhere from 100 to 150 spinach balls depending on whether your interpretation of ’1 inch ball’ is a little over, a little under, or spot on the 1 inch mark. I got about 140 from this latest batch. Unless you in fact are feeding a small army, this is probably many more spinach balls than you care to eat at once, however delicious they may be (and trust me they are delicious!). I typically freeze the whole batch, and then bake 10-20 at a time, as desired (which is often!). They are a great just-home-from-work snack to hold you over to a later-than-it-should-be dinnertime (often the case in my house).

Do you have any recipes that have been passed down through your family that are dear to you?

Faela’s Irresistible Spinach Balls

40 – 48 oz frozen chopped spinach (i.e. 3 x 16 oz bags, or 4 x 10 oz pkgs)
12 eggs, beaten
1 c. butter, melted
1 T. black pepper
1 T. salt
2 t. dried thyme
1 T. granulated garlic
4 onions, chopped (a food processor makes quick work of this)
10 oz. dry stuffing mix, or homemade croutons chopped/pulsed into pea sized pieces
1 c. grated parmesan or gruyere

Cook the spinach according to package directions, then drain.  Once cooled, squeeze the excess moisture from the spinach with your hands.  Set aside.

In a very large bowl combine eggs, melted butter, pepper, salt, thyme, garlic, onions, stuffing mix, and cheese.  Mix well.  Add spinach and stir until everything is evenly distributed.  Optionally chill mixture for a half an hour to make it easier to work with.

Working with slightly wet hands, take about 1 – 1 1/2 T. spinach mixture and roll into a 1 inch ball and place on a baking sheet (if you are going to cook the spinach balls right away, leave about 1 inch between the balls; if you are going to freeze them, you can line them up so that they are almost touching).  Repeat until all of the mixture is used up.

To cook the spinach balls right away, bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, until the stuffing is golden brown.  Otherwise, freeze the spinach balls on the baking tray(s) until solid (about 1-2 hours).  Remove from tray(s) and store in an airtight plastic bag in the freezer until ready to use.  To cook from frozen, preheat oven to 350, and bake about 20 – 25 minutes, or until golden.

Enjoy!

Steven about to eat a spinach ball!

Still Hungry?  Try one of these:

- How to Freeze Homemade Biscuits

- Pie Crust with Rendered Bacon Fat (aka Bacon Grease Pie Crust) (aka The Best Pie Crust Ever)

I daydream a lot about cooking during the week, especially when I’m on the train. Its rhythmic click-clack, the morning fog, and a warm cup of coffee are just the right combination for daydreaming about things I want to cook. During the week not so many of those dreams become reality, but during the weekend I break out of my daydreams and actually head into the kitchen.

Last week Elizabeth David’s book Italian Cooking kept me company on my train rides to and from work. Ms. David is one of my favorite food writers of all time. Eloquent, elegant, humble, and humorous are all words I would use to describe her writings. Her recipes are less like instructions and more like suggestions. I’ve made quite a few things from her various cookbooks over the years, and I find they turn out best not when you follow her words and ingredient lists exactly, but rather when you use it as a starting point and utilize your own knowledge and creativity to complete the dish.

Her Polpettone recipe (Italian meatloaf stuffed with hard boiled eggs and cheese) is no different. I have an odd love of loaves of meat, and typically turn to Paul Prudhomme’s cajun meatloaf whenever the craving strikes. Moist, spicy, and with a wonderful texture, I am not sure it can be improved upon (except by using rolled oats rather than breadcrumbs — a personal preference that results in a more tender meatloaf). So, when I decided to make Ms. David’s Italian meatloaf, I fused her suggestions with Prudhomme’s technique, and added spices and other ingredients as I saw fit. The result? Fantastic! Don’t get me wrong, I am not abandoning my beloved cajun meatloaf, but this Italian version is different enough that I can definitely make space for both in my repertoire.

Polpettone: Italian Stuffed Meatloaf
Inspired by Elizabeth David

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 t. salt
1 t. black pepper
1/2 t. white pepper
1 t. dried sage
1 t. dried marjoram
1 t. dried oregano
1/4 c. catsup
1/2 c. milk
1/3 c. chopped parsley

4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 c. rolled oats
2/3 c. bread crumbs or stuffing mix
1 1/2 lbs ground beef (15% fat or higher is best)
1/2 lb ground pork

2 hard boiled eggs, chopped
2 oz. ham, minced
3 oz. grated provolone

Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare vegetable mixture:
Heat about 2 T. olive oil in a large saute pan.  Add onions and saute until softened.  Add the carrot, saute for another minute, then add the garlic and red bell pepper.  Saute the mixture until vegetables are softened, about 3 minutes longer.  Add salt, black pepper, white pepper, sage, marjoram, and oregano, mix well, and saute another minute or two.  Add catsup and milk, mix well, and cook for about 3-4 minutes until mixture starts sticking to the pan.  Remove from heat, fold in the chopped parsley, and set aside to cool.

Prepare meat mixture:
Mix the raw eggs, oats, bread crumbs, beef, and pork in a large bowl.  Using your hands, mix until everything is well amalgamated.  Add the cooled vegetable mixture, and combine well with your hands.  Divide the mixture into two roughly equal parts.

Shape the loaf:
In a 9×13 glass pan shape half the meat mixture into a flat loaf about 6 inches wide, 12 inches long, and about an inch high.  Sprinkle the hard boiled eggs, ham, and provolone evenly over the meatloaf, leaving about a 1/2 -1 inch border at the sides.  Now working with the other half of the meat mixture, take small handfuls, flatten it between your hands, and place atop egg mixture, creating ‘patches’  of meat to enclose the filling.  Take care to enclose the sides with meat mixture so no eggs or cheese will leak out.  Once you’ve used up all the meat mixture, smooth with your hands to make a compact, neat loaf.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, then raise heat to 425 and continue to bake until meatloaf is done, about 35 minutes longer.  Allow to stand for 10 minutes after removing from oven.  Slice into 1-2 inch pieces, and enjoy!  Serve on its own or with some spicy tomato sauce alongside.

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