Summer of the Green Tomatoes

Which is better than the summer of the wilted, baked garden.
But all the same I know North West gardeners are staring at their tomatoes (that didn't go down to blight in the 3rd week of July), and glaring at the calendar.

What to do with all the darn things?  (Check at the end for a freezer tip!)

Step 1:  Fried Green Tomatoes - Simplified

Crispy, crunchy, slightly sweet,
 pleasantly sour
and lovely tomatoness 

It was time to delve into the array of Fried Green Tomato recipes out there.  And many are these elaborate, double dipped, long soaking, deep fat frying, intimidatingly time chewing operations.  Great for the restaurant industry - but what does it do for the tomato?

Green tomatoes are nice and crunchy, but the secret is, the tomato goo, where the seeds live, is pleasantly sour.  And the seeds are immature and soft, so they don't have the seediness and bitter flavor that makes people want to remove them from the ripe fruit.

Coating them too thickly with batter and crumbs, then frying them for too long, and turning the tomato to mush does a disservice to the whole experience.

Fried Green Tomatoes in 10 Minutes Flat

Ingredients: For Each Tomato

1 hard, green tomato
1/3 C fine cornmeal (or 3 Tbs cornmeal & 3 Tbs flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp Old Bay seasoning (or 1/4 tsp pepper)

Enough oil to completely cover the bottom of your frying pan in a thin layer (2 Tbs of bacon drippings works for my 10" cast iron skillet).
This can be any high-ish smoke point oil - canola, peanut.  Including some bacony-goodness can only make things better.

Prep:

Mix together all the dry ingredients on a small plate, or in a small flat bottomed plastic container that is roomy around the tomato.
Slice the ends off the tomatoes, and remove the core (stem).
Cut the tomato into 1/4" slices.

Cook:

Heat your frying pan with the oil/fat over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes (check that it's hot enough by dropping in a little scrap of tomato.  If it sizzles - it is ready.

Dredge the tomato in the cornmeal mixture (Thoroughly cover the cut sides of the tomato with the cornmeal mixture).
Place the tomato in the hot fat, and let it cook for about 2.5 - 3 minutes.  Flip when the side is browned, but not too dark.  Cook the other side the same amount.

Drain on paper towels for a moment, so you don't absolutely torch the inside of your mouth.

Yum!

But what if I can't eat that many fried green tomatoes Right Now!?

Freeze them!  After you have dredged the tomatoes, place them on waxed paper on a flat pan - with teh waxed paper separating layers, you can go 2 or 3 high.   Place this in the freezer for at least 5 hours (Overnight is better).  Store them in layers - still separated by the wax paper - in zip-top bags.  Remove as much air as possible from the bags.

When it's time to cook, fry them straight from frozen.  (Do Not Thaw!)  You will need to fry for the whole 3 minutes, and MAY need tp add an extra flip, re-frying the first side of each slice for an additional minute.

Can you imagine, Fried Green Tomatoes for Thanksgiving!

CSA veggies + Farmer's Market Sausage

.... 2 Great Tastes that Taste Great Together.


This week the CSA bag was enormous.  The fruit is rolling in, and they sent it all to us in one day!


But fruit for dinner wan't going to cut it, I needed something more.


Last Sunday, I had picked up so beautiful lamb sausages - mixed with plum & dill.  It sounded vaguely Eastern European, or Scandinavian (all that dill).  It needed salad and the potatoes I still hadn't decided what to do with were the obvious choice.

So.... Link Lab's Plum and Dill Sausages,


with Roasted Dill Potatoes


& Fennel and Purple Cabbage Slaw












The best order to do this all, so everything’s ready together –

 

1.     Slice all the potatoes & veg,

2.     Start the potatoes roasting,

3.     Start the fennel softening,

4.     Start the sausages grilling,

5.     Make the dressing

6.     Get everything on their way to finishing

7.     Quickly soften the cabbage

8.     Serve it up hot!

But to keep you from going bananas (Yes, I’m looking forward to the new Planet of the Apes movie… I admit it.), I’ll separate the recipes in the usual way.

The beginning of this recipe is the best – 

Grilled Lamb, Plum & Dill Sausages

Find really good sausages.  Poke em’ so they don’t explode.  Grill ‘em.

If you can’t find these specially, get something else  - and mirror that herb in your roasted potatoes.

I stumbled upon these by Link Lab, 

sold by the sheep farmer at the 

Lake Forest Park Farmer's Market

I love lamb and herbs, so the Plum & Dill
was worth a plunge into the unknown

Here's Linda Martiny herself!
Provider of Tasty Lamb.
Know your farmer.

Poke them liberally to let the juices run (instead of exploding) out.  Grill them up by marking then at high or medium high heat, and then cover and let them cook at medium heat the rest of the way through.

You can check by eye (peek inside and make sure they are cooked through), or poke them with a thermometer, and make sure they are 160˚F (since they contain pork as well).

Roasted Dill (or insert herb) Potatoes

Use 1 medium, or 2 small potatoes per adult

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Per each medium potato -

Large pinch of chopped dill (or other herb)   

Pinch of salt & ½ a pinch of pepper

½ tsp of oil (nothing fancy – the flavor will mostly get cooked out)

Prep:

Start the oven heating to 425˚F

Cut each potato half so it gives you 2 blocky pieces (rather than 2 thin flat pieces).  Cut into slices as skinny or skinnier than your pinky.  Toss with oil, salt pepper and herb.

Spread out in a large flat pan with a lip (large baking pan/half-sheet pan/cookie sheet with a lip).

Cook: 

Slide the potatoes into the oven for 10 minutes.  Pull out the pan,  jiggle, toss and turn the potatoes with a metal spatula to release any stuck ones.  Return the potatoes to the oven for about 10 more minutes.  They are done when they are easily pierced with a fork (hence, fork tender), and maybe have a few crispy edges.  How long they take will depend on the age and variety of the potato, and the size you cut the potatoes.

Fennel & Purple Cabbage Slaw

(Green works fine too, but I had purple)

I made a black bean & garlic dressing to add to make it extra savory, instead of the regular creamy or vinegary dressing.

Ingredients:

1 fennel bulb, stalks removed

1 tiny head of cabbage, or half a small head.

½ a regular sweet onion

2 tsp oil (I used bacon drippings…. Extra yum!)

½ tsp salt

¼ C water - optional

1 tsp Chinese black bean & garlic sauce

1 Tbs rice vinegar (+ more to taste)

pinch salt& a few grinds pepper

1 Tbs olive oil (or canola)

Cute tiny purple cabbages

 Prep:  Cut the cabbage and fennel into quarters, through the stem, and slice out the hard core piece from both vegetables.  Then thinly slice the onion, cabbage and fennel.

In the bottom of your salad/serving bowl, with a fork or whisk, briskly combine the black bean & garlic sauce, rice vinegar, salt & pepper.  Continue to stir, and slowly add in the oil. (all dressing ingredients can be placed in a tightly sealing container and shaken.)

Toss with ½ of your sliced onion – and set aside.

Cook:

Heat a sauce pan over medium-low heat with the 2 tsp oil.  Stir in the fennel and ½ tsp salt, and let this begin to sweat and soften the fennel.  This will take a little while, so keep checking in with it.  If it is getting brown, turn down the heat.  Keep stirring occasionally, and checking for softening.  You are going for something that still has a little crunch and plenty of body. 

If after 8 min or so, the fennel is still tough, add the water, and turn up the heat to medium-high and let the fennel simmer. 

As the fennel approaches done, put ½ the sliced sweet onion, and continue to stir to soften.

Right when the fennel and onion are just about done, add in the cabbage, and stir to combine everything.  Let this sit over medium heat for about 5 minutes to just soften the cabbage.

Add this mixture straight from the stove to the dressing and onion mixture, stir to combine. Add any extra vinegar, salt or pepper. Nom!

Ta-Da!

Sizzling sausage, toasty potatoes and irresistible slaw.

Sweet!

 NOTE: Before I get going, I must state unambiguously, I am a fan of the "empty calorie" dessert as long as it meets a few criteria; The flavor, texture and experience of eating it should be decadent and satisfying, and the ingredients should be of the highest quality possible.

Such criteria leaves a very flexible border.  So of course, a few bites of the very "foodie-est" chocolate cake make the list, as does a surprise rocket-popsicle from an ice cream truck at the end of a backpacking trip.  But cool whip mixed with chocolate-pudding-from-a-box to make "chocolate whip" never does, nor would 'cookies' from a "100 calorie pack."  Neither is really food, and neither meets any of the 1st three criteria.

The fruit from Eastern Washington is starting (at last) to roll in.

And I realize something odd about myself - I have gotten out of the habit of eating things that are sweet.

Part of it is the "do without dessert" ethic that has ruled much of my life.  This is an idea I carry around in my head from a variety of influences.

Much of the dessert I've eaten has come only after I am full.

Much of the dessert I've eaten has been "empty" calories; fat, sugar & flavorings.

Many of the people I've eaten dessert around spend a huge amount time talking about how fat it will make them as they were eating it (what a buzzkill).

Much of the dessert I've eaten was an afterthought, an extra.

As a result, in my Puritan-influenced mind, dessert is, on a daily basis, too much.  Sweet, the flavor of dessert, is then left out of my daily food intake.

And only part of it is this "fear of dessert," another part comes from the years when I only got my hands on under ripe fruit.  There was a point where I actually believed I stopped liking nectarines (my Very Favorite Fruit!), because every time I got one, I didn't like it.

But then, I got my hands on a perfectly ripe, tender and unbruised specimen.  Ah Hahhh!

So as I restart the tradition of Dessert, and fruit as dessert in my house -

The moral of the story is - plain fruit as dessert ONLY works with beautiful, ripe, in season fruit.

A banana in November, or a crunchy, mealy, tasteless peach in March do not.

So for the moment, bring on the cherries, and I'll figure out what to do with the excess so they CAN be enjoyed in November.  But I'm not going to fool myself and believe they would work "fresh and plain" in November.  They'll need a little sprucing up.  

Break for Beets!

(and I mean Take a Break!)

Back from the cruise, I at last get my next bag from Tiny's CSA.

Cherries!  Well that's easy.  Cherries go with everything & nothing.

Deeper down in the bag I have fennel, baby onions, lettuces, cabbage, peaches, potatoes...
And I have the beets left from before we left.  That is one of the best features of beets - they'll be there for you.

So-o-o-o-o....
 Beet salad with Wilted Onions and Fennel,  Orange-Fennel Dressing & Toast

Ingredients:

3-4 baby beets
1 small fennel bulb sliced thin
1 baby (small, early) onion sliced thin
3 Tbs goat cheese

1 Tbs fennel fronds - the feathery parts only, chopped
Juice from 1/2 of an orange + 1 Tbs white wine (or similar) vinegar
- or - 2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1 tsp goat cheese
1 clove green garlic minced
salt & pepper - to taste
1 Tbs + a little more olive oil (break out the good stuff)

Prep:

Preheat the oven to 450˚
Trim the leaves and the scraggly root end off the beets.  Give them a good scrub, and rub some oil on them.  Put them in the smallest pan they'll fit it in a single layer.  Pop them in the oven for 40 - 50 minutes.  They are done when a knife slides in easily.  (This can be done a day or two before...)
Let cool, and scrub/peel the skins off.  Wash your hands immediately to avoid the dreaded "pink finger"!
Chop roughly into bite size pieces.

Slice the onions and fennel thin.  Place in saute pan over medium heat, with a little oil and a sprinkle of salt.  Start a sweat of these ingredients - warm them to soften and release some liquid.  Take them off the heat when they are still crisp.

Make the dressing by stirring the juice/vinegar with the teaspoon of your goat cheese.  Stir in the minced fennel and garlic.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
slowly add the oil while stirring the dressing with a fork.

Combine all the vegetables with the dressing.  Only stir a few times to avoid turning everything pink.
Scatter the crumbled goat cheese over the salad.

I added a couple of pieces of toast, brushed with olive oil.

Enjoy yourself, and leave behind a bright pink puddle.

Galley Edition - 11 Crabs in 3 days

Audacious and Ludicrous Gourmet Crab Enjoyment in Puget Sound

( click on the Crab Dishes to get to the recipes)

They're Monsters!!!!!

6 Crabs on opening day means:

Day 1

Fresh crab, steamed and then cracked in the cockpit with Garlic Bread, and melted butter for dipping.  We had apples and carrots for lunch, and limes in our Mount Gay and tonics, so that counts as salad… Right?

Get out the crackers!
(Caught short?  Break out the pliers.)
The pointy toes mean crabs come with their own picks.

Day 2

Breakfast on the fly (coffee, juice & granola bars) to pick up the pot as we head north to the islands. 

5 more Dungeness!  (it would have been 6, but 1 was a survivor – jumped off the boat!)

Lunch that day – Crab Melts and apples. This was especially appropriate while ‘hove to’ waiting for a favorable tide, at an infamous passage.  The leg meat from the 1^st 6 crabs created an impressive pile of Crab Salad.  Gourmand proportions.

A 2 mile walk (round trip) for provisions landed us a half dozen eggs, buttermilk pancake mix and some veggies. 

Dinner that night – another crab crackin’ good time! 

And the trek to the store meant a Big Green Salad – we were ready for it!  What a way to start the season.

Day 3

Remember those 6 eggs we got last night?  That means breakfast is Crab Omelets.  Too much you say?  But wait, there’s more.

Lunch, after nesting at a mooring with our cruising partners, is Crab Cakes!  More salad on the side.

Dinner – more Big Green Salad, and a pile of Crab Salad made from all the leg meat left.  A loaf of sourdough, and correct beverages make it a lazy summer dinner to write home about.

Day 4

I know I said 3 days, but as long as we eat it all by the end of lunch, it counts as 3.

So for breakfast, a share of the lump meat goes into Crab Crepes.  That packet of buttermilk pancake mix thinned way down made this happen.

And for that last lunch?  Crab Quesadillas.  If you happened to bring tortillas you are all set.  If not, left over crepes might even be better.

What happens next?  Sail around outside your crabbing grounds, and eat some of the food you had actually packed for the cruise.  And then catch some more crab.

Crab by the bucketful!

Dungeness Crab Quesadillas

A brilliant recipe for cruising since it works as a recipe to plan for, or as a way to use up the odds and ends of a bunch of other meals.

Basically, the American Quesadilla has come to mean a tortilla - or other flatbread - folded around cheese - and sometimes other filling - and pan toasted, until the cheese melts.

At the end of my three days of craBonanza I had; body meat, a little crab salad, swiss cheese, and leftover crepes from breakfast.

Lunch turned out to be:

Swiss cheese and a mix of the crab meats placed inside the crepe,
folded in half, and sizzled with the last of the crabby butter left over from the nights we cracked the crabs, in a flat bottomed pan until the cheese melted.
With some apples on the side, it was a wonderful last hurrah to these  lovely crabs.

If I were planning this, and found myself near a farmers market (and this does happen often cruising around North Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands), I would also grab some fresh goat cheese - and some parsley, or basil or thyme.  Hey, if I found the market, I might as well make the most of it!

For each quesadilla:

1 tortilla or other flat bread
1 palm full of crab meat
1 palm full of crumbled or grated cheese (swiss if fresh goat cheese isn't around)
(optional herbs)
A little butter or oil to give the tortilla a nice browning and crispy edges.

Assemble each quesadilla with the cheese crab (and optional herbs) on on half of the tortilla, and place in a heated pan.  peek at the bottom after 2 minutes or so, and watch until it starts to brown.  Flip the quesadilla over, brown the other side, and melt the cheese.

Cut in to pieces (or not) and enjoy as hot as you can.
Apples go very well with this (and Salsa Verde if you are enjoying this on land).

Dungeness Crab Cakes

After a few nights of fresh crab, straight from the shell, I craved something a little more complex.

Since we had a chance to grab a few things from the store - I decided to go for crab cakes.

This was particularly ridiculous since I have never even made them at home.

However, a boat provisioned for sandwiches and salads has everything you need for crab cakes - if you can get your hands on an egg.

These will make very loose crab cakes - more crab, less cake, but they are delicious, and the sort of wonderful, ridiculous thing to do in a surfeit of crab.

Dungeness Crab Cakes... I didn't know until now,
but I've been dreaming of this all year!

Cruising Crab Cakes
(this recipe is proportional.  The recipe works with about 1 heaping Cup of picked crab body meat.  Multiply the proportions for the amount of crab you have.)

Left over bread from previous crab nights, or other bread - toasted until crunchy
                    - or - several plain, Saltine type crackers.
A chunk of onion a little bigger than your thumb, chopped fine
1/3 a red bell pepper, chopped fine
A small handful of parsley -or- half a stalk of celery, chopped fine
(When you are done, all the chopped vegetables should come to less than half the volume of the crab meat)
1 lemon or lime (optional, but very nice)
Salt - to taste
Mayonnaise - amount to be determined
1 egg

Toast the bread until it is crunchy.  Crush it (or the crackers) to crumbs.  You should aim to have approximately as much crumbs as vegetables.
I do the crushing it in the bottom of my broiler pan with another rectangular pan I have on board that fits inside.  Another excellent method is to place the bread in a tea-towel or zip-top bag (with all the air pressed out), and smash it with a sauce pan.  This is an excellent job for idle crew.

Stir together the crab, crumbs, all the vegetables, a sprinkle of salt, and squeeze in the juice from half of your lemon/lime.  Start by adding 1 or 2 tsp of  mayonnaise.  Taste for seasoning - add more salt or lemon as needed.  I do this by hand to get a feel for the mixture.
Then take a handful, and squeeze together.  If it completely falls apart, add a bit more mayo, until it *barely* holds together.

Crack the egg into the mixture, stir that in, and let the mixture sit at least 15 minutes to let the bread crumbs soak up a little more liquid.

Form crab cakes between the palms of your hands, just before you cook them.  They should be the size that your hands make when you gently cup them together, and be no thicker than your hand.  (You really can make them any size you want of course...)

Cooking:

The crab is already cooked, so really you are just frying the egg and the bread to get it all to hold together - and taste more delicious.  This means a quick pan fry - and very gentle flipping.

Heat equal parts butter and oil - enough to *completely cover* the bottom of your skillet/flat bottomed wok in a thin layer.  Don't skimp, or the bread crumbs and egg can't do their jobs.
Making sure each cake has plenty of room around it, place as many cakes as will fit.
Watch one cake, and, as it begins to get brown and crispy on the bottom, flip it, and it's pan buddies over - Very Gently!
Don't be dismayed if a few fall apart.  You will get better at handling these with practice.
These are, after all, much more crab than cake.

Some salad on the side, and a glass of white wine makes this, with the view, an occasion you dream of 11 months and 20 days of the year.