Posts Tagged ‘tomato’

You need to make this tomato soup. It’s bright and spicy and savory and sweet and best of all, easy. In fact, with very little effort, you can bring a smile to a tableful of eaters, especially if you pair it with yummy grilled cheese. I know I did last week!

The key is to adapt the spiciness to your taste by adjusting the amount of crushed red pepper. Start with less and add until you’re happy with the zing. Remember, you can always add more, but you can’t take it out. Once it’s got the right degree of heat, blend and strain it, and you’re ready to go.

The soup was so simple to make that…

Category: Recipes

Life is nothing short of hectic these days with four teenagers, all on different afternoon and evening schedules. There’s baseball training, newspaper layout sessions, driver’s ed classes, sports broadcasts, Spanish tutoring, yearbook meetings, study sessions, alumni college interviews, guitar lessons, piano lessons, bass lessons—well, you get the idea. Some nights, it’s like Grand Central Station with ridiculously staggered arrivals and departures.

On those crazy nights, instead of wasting time cooking something that will be shoveled down on the fly between activities, I often put together the components for BLTs (or in this case, California BLTs!) and let the troops assemble themselves as time allows. They’re easy and satisfying, and the cool secret is cooking the…

Category: Recipes

I’m a sucker for glamorous hors d’oeuvres. Pour me a lovely glass of wine or champagne, pass a silver tray with scrumptious bites, and I’m at my favorite kind of party. (Good company and good music go without saying!) And this shrimp in spiced phyllo with tomato chutney is right at the top of the list of luxurious hors d’oeuvres.

Basically, if you treat phyllo lovingly and bathe every layer in butter like you’re supposed to, you could wrap up shoelaces in it and I would swoon. There’s something about the delicate, shattering crunchiness of phyllo that seems grown-up and decadent. It’s not an ingredient you use in everyday cooking, so it’s elevated, sophisticated even. And…

Category: Recipes

This is undoubtedly the simplest, most brilliant recipe I have come across in ages. An irresistible combination: sweet, fleshy tomatoes and nutty brown butter. The hot, foamy butter sizzles as it splashes over the cool tomatoes, and the resulting juice is glorious to mop up with crusty bread. Try it while ripe local tomatoes are still plentiful, or you’ll be stuck drooling with anticipation until next summer!

Brown Butter Tomatoes

From Food52

Ingredients

• 2 large or 3 small ripe beefsteak tomatoes
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• Flaky sea salt, like Maldon
• Coarsely ground black pepper
• Baguette or other country bread, for mopping up the butter

Directions

1. Core the tomatoes and slice them 1/3-inch thick. Divide the tomato slices among 4 plates, overlapping the slices just…

Category: Recipes

The moment summer starts, my boys begin clamoring for their very favorite summer dish: this crunchy, flaky, fresh fish in a luxurious, tangy butter sauce. I have a hard time holding them off til late July, when the stripers are ubiquitous and tomatoes are good and ripe. But once I treat them to it, they wish they could have it every night.

Making the dish is easy, although I typically have to triple the recipe to feed my hulking teens. Grrrrr. The good thing is that striped bass is fairly firm, so it doesn’t fall apart in the pan like more delicate fish, plus it cooks relatively quickly. The key is to keep pieces of similar thickness…

Category: Recipes

Looking for some great recipes for your summer tomato bounty? Here are five of our favorites from over the years:

1. Barefoot Contessa Provencal Tomatoes: An unfortunate tomato incident resulted in our discovery of this low-effort/high-reward treat.

2. Barefoot Contessa Cream of Fresh Tomato Soup: The only disappointment with this easy, divine soup was that there weren’t any leftovers!

3. Barefoot Contessa Tomato & Goat Cheese Tarts: My very favorite lunch. Tomatoes and goat cheese are heavenly together, especially when they’re having a love affair atop a crunchy puff pastry crust.

4….

Category: Recipes

Yup, again with the tomatoes. Can’t help myself—they’re so sweet and ripe and juicy that they enhance every summer meal. It’s quite a love affair I’m having this year.

This time, they’re the star of a cool and tasty pico de gallo, or fresh salsa, that can be enjoyed many ways. You can scoop it up with tortilla chips as a refreshing appetizer with a nice, cold cerveza. You can heap it atop a hot-off-the-grill steak for a bright, tangy counterpoint. You can spoon it over a perfectly poached egg for a flavorful, healthy breakfast.

We used it as part of the delectable grilled fish tacos we made over the weekend. The sweet crunchiness of the…

Category: Recipes

My experience with this gazpacho was like going on an exquisitely swoonful first date—where the guy is Jon Hamm-handsome; you trade exceedingly witty, wise and charming discourse; and you wake up the next morning walking on clouds and daydreaming with a silly grin on your face—and then following it up with an even more enchanting second date just days later. Oh yes. It’s that sublime.

I spotted the recipe while flipping through Fine Cooking, and was instantly intrigued that the author was inspired by a handwritten recipe from her Spanish mother-in-law, who hailed from Sevilla, the birthplace of gazpacho. Like she urges, you must wait until the tomatoes are ripe and juicy, or the resulting soup will…

Category: Recipes

If there’s one simple, scrumptious salad that screams “summer”…that people will beg you to bring to BBQs and picnics…that you will never tire of, it’s this Corn & Tomato Salad. The recipe is inspired by a dish at Alforno, one of our favorite restaurants in Providence, Rhode Island.

It’s the goodness of summer on a plate: sweet, crunchy kernels of fresh local corn; juicy sun-ripened tomatoes; crispy-chewy bread with a slight char; a sharp burst of pungent red onion; and a hint of delicate floral basil. We eagerly await that July day when the first early field tomatoes show up in a basket at our favorite farm stand, and the piles of corn beckon. From then…

Category: Recipes

Oh my. I have gone and spoiled myself forever. I have stumbled upon the most perfect breakfast/brunch dish and now I want to eat it every day. And I don’t even like eggs!

I don’t remember where I first saw a version of this recipe, but for some reason it stuck in my head. Ratatouille. Yum. Eggs. Not-so-yum, but Iacono chicken farm is right near us in East Hampton, and the farm-fresh eggs continually beckon to me. I eat them occasionally because I think they’re good for ya and I just should-always poached-but there’s nothing enjoyable about it for me.

But the idea of masking an egg with ratatouille? Brill. I looked at a bunch of recipes…

Category: Recipes