Mediterranean Tomato-Saffron Tilefish

There's a Beaufort-based seafood guy now coming to the All-Local Farmers Market every Saturday, and his fish is amazingly, absurdly fresh. Yesterday we bought grey tilefish, which I've never bought before. It was lovely -- bright spotted skin, big easy-to-find bones, grouper-like color and grain. You could put your nose right down on it and smell nothing except a faint, fresh sweetness.

I poked through some more complicated recipes and came up with this simple Mediterranean preparation, which has some of the flavor of bouillabaisse but is more straightforward. Any blend of garden and canned tomatoes would work; I used a little of both. It's not a super tomato-ey dish.

I'm out of the food-photographing habit, so here's Patty demonstrating how hot it is here lately.


Mediterranean Tomato-Saffron Fish

Preheat oven to 400.

In Dutch oven, saute in olive oil until onions are softened and smaller:
- 3 small Vidalia onions, sliced
- 8-10 saffron threads
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Add and let some of the booziness cook off:
- 3/4 c dry vermouth

Add and cook for just a few minutes:
- 1 ripe tomato, chopped
- 1/2 cup chopped canned tomatoes
- salt
- pepper

Add, cover, put in oven and cook 8-15 minutes, depending on fish size:
- 1 lb. fish

I left the fillet whole, and it took exactly 15 minutes. The bones and skin thickened the broth just a little.

I served it over farro, with which Lawson and I are in love. He says it tastes like he wishes brown rice tasted.

Crusty bread would also be good with this. On the side we ate sliced cucumbers in rice vinegar, and baba ghanoush made with our own eggplant, which are the only plants really doing well this year in our yard. I drank vinho verde. Lawson drank Pabst Blue Ribbon. It was a good summer dinner.

Grilled Radicchio Salad

I'm glad you got out of town for a few days, Mom.

I invented a salad. I guess this means my cooking slump is over. I don't know if Lawson loves it as much as I do; he is not as into bitter leafy things as I. Too bad for him.

I've grilled radicchio before, but I was never successful at tempering its bitterness very well. This works, though. It accompanies easy grilled meals well, too, because you do most of the speedy prep ahead of time, then grill the radicchio along with your burgers or sausage or whatever right before serving.

Toss together and set aside at room temperature for at least an hour:

• cherry tomatoes, halved (or chopped good summer tomatoes, when available)
• sugar snap peas, de-stringed, halved if desired
  
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• merest hint of salt
• pepper
  

Then quarter one head of radicchio and lightly spray all sides with olive oil cooking spray. Grill quarters over direct but not too high gas or coals, turning as needed, until radicchio is browned but not charred.

Cut grilled radicchio pieces roughly with scissors, toss with tomato mixture, and serve.

The picture is blurry because my camera sucks. I am in the market for a new one.

Grilled Salmon with Winter Tomato Relish

I'm calling this "winter tomato relish" because it contains only fresh things which you can reliably find at most grocery stores in early March and that don't taste insipid and awful: cherry tomatoes, red onions, garlic, parsley, and fresh lime juice, plus salt and pepper and olive oil. I can think of a whole lot of fresh herbs I'd like to put in there, but I didn't have any, because it's early March.

As fresh dinners go, this was really easy. An hour before dinner I made the relish and started the grits. If you keep the heat quite low, after the first five minutes you only have to stir slow-cooking grits every 10 or 15 minutes to incorporate the skin that forms on the top. An hour was just long enough for the relish flavors to blend well (at room temperature, of course). I finished the grits up with a little parmesan cheese and half-and-half. Then I grilled the salmon, sliced up an avocado, and assembled the plates.

Mahi Mahi

We don't get really fresh mahi mahi very often--we live in the desert, after all--but this was good. This recipe is for halibut but works equally well for mahi. I remove the skin first.

Halibut Fillets With Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette

2 halibut fillets
¼ cup dry bread crumbs
Butter and olive oil

Season halibut with salt and pepper and dredge both sides in bread crumbs. Heat a small amount of butter and olive oil in a heavy, oven-proof skillet until very hot. Place fillets in skillet rounded-side down and sauté until golden, three or four minutes. Turn fillets over and place skillet in a 400-degree oven to finish cooking, just 5 to 10 minutes. Serve in a pool of Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette or other sauce.

Roasted Tomato Vinaigrette

3 ripe plum tomatoes
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 ½ teaspoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
¼ cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Cut tomatoes in half and place cut side down on baking sheet. Bake about 15 minutes or until blistered and even a little blackened. Let cool slightly.

Pureé tomatoes with garlic, mustard, and vinegars in food processor. Slowly add olive oil in a steady stream to make a thick dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature.

The Cooking Process

I started out with the intention of making ratatouille tonight, because of having eggplant and other ingredients on hand, but after cookbook browsing and back-and-forth with Dad, I ended up with an Indian eggplant/potato/chickpea stew. I served it over brown rice, and it was quite okay, but the condiments were better: cilantro chutney, pear chutney, and a cherry tomato raita.

We used cherry tomatoes and cilantro freely from the garden, because it might freeze tonight.

With Anchovies

This was a good spontaneous pizza: whole wheat crust; pesto from the freezer; a mix of jack and parmesan cheeses; then anchovies, Kalamata olives, cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers from a jar, and fresh jalapenos from the garden.

To cook pizza, I preheat a pizza stone in the oven for about half and hour at 450 degrees. Then I build the pizza on a perforated pan sprayed with olive oil. I put the pan on the stone to bake for 8 minutes or until it firms up, then I slide it off onto the stone to finish baking for about 8 more minutes. This seems a lot less risky than using a peel to slide the raw pizza into the oven. The crust still rest directly on the stone for the last half of the baking time, so it gets nice and brown and thoroughly cooked.

We have had a cherry tomato orgy lately. We use them on pizza, in soup, and eat them for breakfast and lunch. It's only a miniature version of your tomato crop in the summer, but what a pleasant phenomenon in November and December.

Green and Red Tomato Pizza

This was a Viana La Place idea: make a pizza with all the tomatoes you have to pick the day before the first frost, both red and green. In our case, they were green, yellow, and red. She suggested leaving the cheese off, but I added some fresh mozzarella and herbs, and it was delicious. The green tomatoes were tart and very good.

I have a number of longer posts planned for the next few days; I just wanted to get this up.

Tomatoes and A Cold Dinner

A moment of silence, please, for the last garden tomatoes of the year.

They were so good that we just ate them plain, with salt, accompanied only by bread, butter, cheese, and grapes. Sometimes that's all the dinner I need.

The cheeses weren't overwhelmingly fancy, but they were better than what I usually eat and went well together. We had a Maytag blue, a gouda, and a cheddar. I've read that good cheese shouldn't be eaten cold, and I found that leaving the cheeses out of the fridge for an hour before dinner really did make them taste better.

North by North Africa by West Africa

I bought some Canadian haddock and made your North African Fish Fillets for dinner. I served them with couscous and steamed okra. It was great -- one of those dishes I can't quite imagine the taste of from reading the recipe but that makes perfect sense once it's prepared. The haddock was quite good, and good wild fish is always cause for celebration in Columbia.

For the sauce I used a bunch of garden tomatoes that desperately had to be cooked today -- homegrown tomatoes don't last long off the vine before before breaking out all over with mold or spontaneously liquefying. One minute the tomato is fine; the next it has split down one side and urinated on the counter. I cleaned the heck out of the kitchen today and scrubbed at more stains from little yellow puddles of tomato goo than I care to recount.

I also used some garden chiles instead of a jalapeno: one cowhorn and one dedo de moça. So here's a picture of tomatoes, chiles, and day lilies.

Raw and Roasted Summer Pasta

Oh, this was so good. I made a raw tomato sauce out of:

- 10 medium and small ripe garden tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3/4 cup of fresh basil, chopped
- a few tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper

I combined all that and let it blend for about an hour on the counter. Meanwhile, I tossed together:

- 1 zucchini, cubed
- 2 small Japanese eggplant, cubed
- olive oil
- salt

I put all that on a baking sheet and roasted it at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Then I boiled some gemelli and tossed everything together with:

- 1 ball fresh mozzarella, cubed
- grated Parmesan

It tasted like summer. We ate a lot of it with some really cheap and fairly crummy Merlot. It even made the wine taste good.

Tomato Gravy II: A Recipe

Tomato gravy is one of those Southern foods for which there are hundreds of different recipes. I, of course, believe Lawson's recipe is the best. It's how he won over my parents, after all.

It's a simple recipe, but it requires lots of fresh tomatoes in season, and they're supposed to be peeled. I suppose one could make it with canned tomatoes, but since the fresh, bright tomato flavor is the whole point, I would advise against it.

With so few seasonings, the tomato flavor is brassy and acidic and not sophisticated at all, but it's wonderful.

This recipe serves 6 to 8 people.

Saute until crispy but not too brown:

- 1 package bacon

Drain on paper towels and set aside. Pour out all but 2 or tablespoons of the bacon fat, if there is extra. Saute:

- 2 onions, preferably Vidalia, diced

Add and simmer until slightly reduced and thickened, about 20 minutes:

- Several pounds of fresh tomatoes (~10 medium?), peeled, seeded, and chopped

Add salt and pepper to taste. Crumble the bacon and add it to the sauce. Serve over grits, garnished with parsley if you like. A fried egg on top is good. Sauteed shrimp are good. If you wanted to be really South Carolinian, you could top it with a thin fried pork chop.

Succotash Pizza and a New Knife

It had to be done, right? Right?

I love okra. I love pizza. We have many fresh tomatoes. Tomatoes, okra, and corn go together brilliantly. It was natural that I would want to put all these things together. But I couldn't shake the memory of the pizzas served from carts on the street in London: soggy and unbrowned, cluttered with greasy cheese and all the wrong vegetables. One of those pizzas had corn on it. It seemed to have been dumped right out of the can onto the pizza.

To avoid the yucky canned corn effect, I roasted loose kernels of frozen corn ahead of time. After 10 minutes at 425 degrees, they were nutty and gently browned, and much more appealing. I roasted the okra a bit, too, but I needn't have. Fresh tomatoes, a little mozzarella, one sliced poblano chile, and grated Asiago and Parmesan pulled all the flavors together quite well.

I also made a classic pizza Margherita to balance things out.

Our friend Mark is visiting from Kyoto and gave us this amazing knife, shown here with the poblano:

It's made by a company called Aritsugu, which I'd never heard of but have enjoyed reading about. Lawson's and my names are carved in the blade (on the other side -- this side says Aritsugu). It's beautiful.

Breakfast of Champions

Here's my favorite breakfast, made by Lawson: Grits with Tomato Gravy. The gravy contains bacon, onions, and tomatoes. Lawson uses coarse grits, and accompanies each serving with a fried egg.

Caprese Corn Salad and More

Katherine made us a version of Caprese salad with the addition of grilled corn cut off the cob.

She served it with this fabulous platter of pork tenderloin wrapped with bacon and grilled by Greg; a bed of fried noodles; and chimichurri sauce.

Insalata Caprese

It's famous because it's so good.

In August I feel like I get most of my protein from mozzarella cheese. Caprese salad is just such a perfect expression of tomato flavor.

I like it with balsamic vinegar. Lawson likes it with just tomatoes, salt, olive oil, and basil. I make it with alternating slices of tomato and cheese with whole basil leaves, and Lawson makes it as shown here. Unsurprisingly, it's good both ways.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Rice

This is roasted tomato soup, another recent recipeless creation. With a sunny side up egg on top, it made for a light but complete meal.

I destemmed about 12 tomatoes and squeezed the seeds out into the compost bucket. I then roasted them under the broiler, holes down, until they got blackened and juicy. Meanwhile I sauteed a Vidalia onion, then added the tomatoes and their juices, some chicken stock, some fresh basil, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. After it was heated and the flavors had mingled, I pureed it in the blender, then added some big basil leaves. I added cooked white rice to each bowl and put an egg on top.

The soup would have been better with some more interesting, less classic spices. Basil was fine and summery, but I think cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, and cilantro would be good, especially with the rice and egg.

It continues to be unbearably, record-breakingly hot here. The last night my parents were here we made a vaguely herby-noodly Vietnamese dish, another infinitely adaptable Lawson specialty: cold rice noodles, grilled scallops, mint, cilantro, Thai basil, red onion, cucumber, and red pepper, all sliced in a bowl and dressed with fish sauce, cider vinegar, and chopped peanuts. We passed the fresh herbs around on a big plate and drank a lot of wine.

Pork Feast

My brother, his girlfriend, and my parents are all visiting us here in Columbia. For the first big meal, Lawson smoked a pork butt and some pork ribs. He went to work; I took the day off, and we all monitored the smoker all day. With the pork we served sliced garden tomatoes, steamed okra, white corn grits, and Lawson's homemade mustard-based barbecue sauce.

We ate outside. It was hot, and we were supplied with the other usual South Carolina outdoor hazards: here is Russell picking a fruit fly out of his wine.

Thai Stir-Fried Okra, Eggplant, and Tomatoes

Lawson is much better with the wok than I am, so he usually does the stir-frying around here. He's fun to watch. As you can see here, he moves at superhero speed.

He roasted the eggplant first to soften it -- without precooking, it seems to stay tough and soak up too much oil. He then stir-fried onions, okra, the roasted eggplant, and tomato in some chile-garlic-basil paste he made last year. A little fish sauce, chicken broth, and fresh Thai basil finished it. We served it over plain white rice.

The chile-garlic-basil paste is based on this amazing product we found at the local Asian market a few years ago: Por Kwan brand sweet chile basil paste. It consists of basil leaves, garlic, fresh chiles, salt, and oil. The Por Kwan is almost as good as Lawson's garden-sourced reproduction.

Pissaladiere

I made pissaladiere for the first time this week. It was pretty good -- not transcendent, but pretty good. I read a bunch of recipes but ended up using no particular version.

For the crust I used my standard no-rolling-pin recipe from the Joy of Cooking. Like you, I don't really get flaky pie crust; I feel the crumbly pat-in-the-pan versions are just as good any other crust I've had. Anyway: 1.5 cups flour, 5 T butter, and about 3/4 t salt -- more than the recipe calls for.

I put two beaten eggs and some grated Parmesan in the bottom of the crust to seal it and hold everything together. On top of that I put a whole bunch of caramelized Vidalia onions -- two medium onions reduced to a dark gold color. Next came four anchovies, broken up; a teaspoon or so each of fresh basil, rosemary, and oregano; and two medium tomatoes, one chopped and drained and one sliced. On top of that was a bit more Parmesan and some oil-cured olives. I baked the whole thing for about half an hour.

I'd like to know Aunt Katherine's pissaladiere recipe. If she doesn't see this post, maybe you can ask her when you see her next week to put it in the comments or send to us.

B-T-no-L

Back in 2002 and 2003, all through my gradual unvegetarianing, the Forces of Meat had one weapon more potent than any other. That weapon was bacon, and specifically bacon in combination with fresh tomatoes. Once Lawson had made me my first bacon-tomato sandwich, it was all over.

Here's how he makes one:

- 2 slices storebought multigrain bread
- thin layer on each slice of medium-fat mayonnaise (I find the super-lowfat mayo wretched, and neither of us wants to eat the full-fat stuff 3 times a week all summer)
- one small or 1/2 large real summer tomato. Really, there's no use at all making a bacon-tomato sandwich with pale grocery store tomatoes. You need actual tomatoes grown outside in the sun. Gardens are good. The farmer's market is good. Cut the tomato up in thick slices.
- 3 slices thick-cut bacon, cooked. It's better (crispier and more even) in a pan, but sometimes we use the microwave.

That's all. I love lettuce, but lettuce is totally unnecessary here.