Since I’m out of garden pics, here’s a recipe for the use of gardeners. Mark Bittman, in NYMag:
… We think of tomatoes as summer food, and they’re the best thing to eat right now. For the next couple of weeks, you can make the best late-summer pasta sauce there is, though it’s probably the most ingredient-dependent pasta sauce, too. That is, if you do this with supermarket ingredients, you’ll be rewarded with decent sauce. If you do it with Sun Gold cherry tomatoes; fresh-picked basil; strong, ultrasticky garlic; and top-notch olive oil (mine happened to be Californian), you’ll end up with something mind-blowing.
Getting the ingredients is the hardest part — the actual prep and cooking are simple. Let’s say for two servings you want 30 or 40 cherry tomatoes, cut in half. You want a couple of big cloves of garlic (or a few smaller ones), slivered, and, say, a quarter cup of oil — maybe a little more. A small fresh chile is not a bad addition.
As you start the water for the pasta, grab a medium pan and begin cooking the garlic in the oil very slowly (add the minced chile, if you’re using it). By the time the water boils, the garlic should have begun to color. Add the halved tomatoes to the garlic and crank the heat a bit. A minute or two later, start the pasta. I’d use long pasta for this if you have it, but I’m not slavish about shape. A decent serving size is 75 grams, but 60 is good for a snack, and 100 if you’re hungry.
When the tomatoes have broken down a bit, throw in a lot of roughly torn basil leaves — an entire supermarket-size bunch isn’t too much. Add salt and pepper, of course, and toss the whole thing together. It does not need cheese; a little shredded basil on top of it all is nice….
Bittman also includes a recipe for a tomato “galette/crostini/free-form tart”, for which you’ll have to click the link.
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I’ve got a friend coming out from the midwest to sightsee, so my blog participation this week is liable to be spotty and unreliable. Good thing there are other front-pagers to take up the slack — here’s hoping for a slow news week…
What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?
Sunday Garden Chat: “How to Make the Most of Gorgeous Late-Summer Tomatoes”Post + Comments (88)