Meatless Monday: Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Those of you who read my recent post on peaches know that I cannot pass up a bargain, particularly when it comes to food. At a late Friday stop at Bishops’s Orchards in Guilford, Connecticut (on a quick mission to buy lettuce on our way home from Hammonasset Beach State Park) we discovered that large baskets of plum tomatoes were available for just under $11. We had to buy one.

When the weather turned surprisingly wet and windy on Sunday, I had the perfect opportunity to turn these beauties into two large batches of Oven Roasted Tomatoes, using a recipe from a cookbook called The Cape Cod Table, by Lora Brody.

In her preface to the recipe Lora Brody wrote, “These tomatoes will become a kitchen staple when you see how much punch and flavor they add to a vast number of dishes, including soups, sauces, fish, poultry, and meat.”

She is so right. I have been cooking up multiple batches in early fall for the past several years. I use my largest stainless steel baking pan; it holds 30 plum tomatoes, by my calculations equal to the amount called for in the recipe. The recipe is really easy if you have a large pan and a bit of time on your hands.

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 5 pounds of plum tomatoes, rinsed and cut in half lengthwise
• 4 large springs fresh thyme, or 2 teaspoons dry thyme leaves [Fresh is great, but dry is fine.]
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons balsamic or red wine vinegar [I used balsamic with a delicious result.]
• 2 teaspoons coarse salt
• Five or six peeled shallots if available [My tweak. I had some on hand and had used them in the past in a similar recipe.]

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 400°F, with the rack in the upper third of the oven, but not the highest position.
• Place the thyme in the bottom of the roasting pan.
• Spread the tomatoes over the thyme, in one layer if possible.
• Scatter the shallots.
• Drizzle with the olive oil, and sprinkle with the vinegar and salt.
• Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the tomatoes have browned (unevenly) and given up their juices and the juices have reduced and become slightly thickened and syrupy. [I let them go for an hour and a half.]
• Allow the tomatoes to cool in the pan.
• Remove the thyme sprigs if used.

Tomatoes before cooking

Once the tomatoes are out of the oven I let them cool down and congeal a bit at room temperature. I put them in a covered glass casserole overnight in the fridge and then bag them in freezer bags, label and date them, and lay them flat in the freezer; I find that three cups per bag works well. If you don’t eat them they will last until next season.

Tomatoes when they are done

My favorite use? Can I mention fish on Meatless Monday? I like to use my oven roasted tomatoes for baking or poaching cod fillets. I discovered individually wrapped MSC certified  Atlantic Cod Fillets, frozen in packages of six at Whole Foods. Three cups of tomatoes is the perfect amount for cooking two fillets, and that is all you need to make a great meal. It is easier if you thaw the fillets in the refrigerator a day ahead.

However you use your oven roasted tomatoes, I promise you will be amazed at just how easy it is to give yourself a taste of summer all winter long.

Happy Monday!

I often blog on food, food issues, or topics related to growing things on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Meatless Monday: Peaches 3 Ways

We had a very pleasant surprise on a visit to Bishops’s Orchards in Guilford, Connecticut several weeks (and a season ago now). We are peach lovers and, though hopeful, didn’t really expect to find baskets of perfect, ripe, jumbo, native peaches for sale. They were pricey at $22.99 a basket, but we couldn’t resist.

They were a little firm when we brought them home. I spread them out in flat baskets in a single layer and waited for them to ripen. By the next morning I found one ready to slice for breakfast cereal. By the next day the scent of peaches permeated the air, and it was time to do something with them. 

These survivors of both the early budding/late frost in the spring and the scorching summer drought that followed are the sweetest and juiciest I can remember — the kind that send liquid dribbling down your chin when you bite into them. We did not want to waste a single one.

I set aside about a dozen, and the rest I froze using a very easy method that had worked for me last peach season.

Easy Frozen Peaches

• Line a baking sheet with plastic wrap.
• Peel and slice the peaches as you would for a pie. [A ripe peach peels easily. If the skin doesn’t come off easily, you can dip the peach into boiling water for 10-20 seconds using a slotted spoon, cool slightly and then peel.]
• Lay the slices on the baking sheet in a single layer without overlapping them.
• Cover with a sheet of plastic wrap, pressing the wrap firmly down over the peach pieces.
• Pop into the freezer overnight (or until the peaches are firmly frozen).
• Put the peach slices into ziplock freezer bags.

Last year I sliced, froze, and bagged five peaches (enough for a crumb top pie) as an experiment. Turning them into a pie was a snap.

That evening we had fresh peach halves filled with Sweet Italian Cream, probably the easiest elegant dessert ever. This was a dish inspired by a recipe in an Italian travel magazine calling for mascarpone, marsala, and crushed amaretti, none of which I had in my pantry. It did, however, bring to mind a ricotta-based recipe from my friend Claire Criscuolo’s cookbook Italian Feast. I had no sweet vermouth, but I did have everything else. I substituted Amaretto and came up with a delicious treat.

Here is my version:

Italian Cream Filled Peaches

(Makes enough to fill 4 peaches)

INGREDIENTS

• 1/8 cup golden raisins
• 1-1/2 tablespoons Amaretto
• 8 ounces whole milk ricotta
• 1/8 confectioners sugar, sifted

DIRECTIONS

• Soak the raisins in the Amaretto for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
• Put the cheese in a bowl.
• Add the now plumped raisins with any liquid remaining.
• Add the sugar.
• Stir to combine.
• Peel and cut two peaches in half.
• Remove the pit.
• Use the sweet ricotta to fill the centers. 
• Put any remaining cheese into the refrigerator.

Claire uses her sweet ricotta to top poundcake and fill cream puffs. She also shared that her mother liked to spread it on her breakfast toast.

And the next day I made this beautiful pie, based on the Neely’s Peach Crumb Pie  on the Food Network site. The only substitution I made was to swap almond flour for the flour. It enhanced the flavor of the sliced almonds, which goes so well with the taste of fresh peaches. 

The recipe is “easy” as it promises, particularly if you have an empty pie crust on hand. The smell as it bakes is sublime. It is particularly delicious served slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This is why I froze just enough peaches to make this pie on some cold, dreary day in the future when a taste of summer is just what I need.

My apologies. Peach season is over. It’s time for apples and pumpkins now, and these tips will be much more useful next August. Life got in the way of blogging. That happens sometimes.

I often blog on food, food issues, or topics related to growing things on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

Meatless Monday: Raspberries, Raspberries

The normal late summer sequence of Pick Your Own in Connecticut is blueberries, peaches, raspberries. It was a terrible season for pick your own peaches; a string of 50 degree days in February tricked the trees into thinking Spring had arrived and then two extremely cold spells damaged the buds, but this year’s raspberry crop is amazing! 

Nearby Bishops’s Orchards grows a variety called Heritage. Their orchard handout sheet explains that pruning the canes to ground level in late winter yields new growth that produces a crop in late summer and early fall. The season typically begins in mid-to-late August, peaking in September, and winding to a complete close after a killing frost. Several friends have reported that the picking is already great, and I have evidence, too — the 4 qt basket of freshly picked berries two friends gave to my husband on Friday!

Raspberries are a fragile fruit, and you really need to use them within a day to keep them from losing their shape and spoiling. I didn’t want to waste a berry. So I came up with a plan. 

• We gently washed and ate some right away.
• We picked out individual beauties, laid them out on a single layer on a baking sheet, and put them in the freezer. The next morning I poured the frozen berries into a ziplock bag. I followed old advice to freeze the berries without washing and to rinse the frozen berries well before using. The new message seems to wash and dry gently first. You can read more about storing fresh berries here. 
• We set some aside in one layer in the fridge for eating on cereal over the next two days.
• I measured out 4 cups to bake into raspberry crisp the next morning.

We had been buying and enjoying long distance berries over the past few weeks as they have been a BOGO item in all the supermarkets. But it was amazing to taste the difference a local berry makes.

Crisp is one of the easiest desserts to bake. It stores well in the freezer, too. Here’s a photo of the one I baked while it was still intact.

Here is the recipe I used; it is based on an old Bishop’s Orchard handout.

RASPBERRY CRISP

Ingredients

• 4 cups fresh raspberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/3 cup almond meal [The original recipe called for flour.]
• 3/4 cup rolled oats
• Fresh lemon juice

Directions

• Place berries in a 9” square pan.
• Sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice.
• Mix together dry ingredients.
• Cut butter into the dry ingredients [This is a snap with a hand held pastry blender if you have one.] 
• Sprinkle the topping evenly over the raspberries. 
• Bake at 350° for 25 minutes or until the berries start to bubble.

This was a birthday dessert, so we topped it with Farmer’s Cow Hay! Hay! Hat! Vanilla Ice Cream. 

Raw raspberries (fresh or frozen) are high in Vitamin C and dietary fiber and have many other health benefits. You can use them to top your cereal or spinach salad. 

Raspberries are also great in pie. And they make delicious syrup and jam. There are many, many ways to prepare them. 

I plan a visit (or two) to Bishop’s soon, a tradition I began when our son was small. It was the perfect outing for those early fall school holidays. Bishop’s has a “sin bin” for contributions to pay for the berries that never made it to the basket for weighing; back then I was a generous donor.

If you want to locate a PYO near your, Local Harvest is a great place to start. Enter a location and click on Pick Your Own to find the farms nearest you. It’s a great and healthy family outing. Enjoy!

I often blog on food, food issues, or topics related to growing things on Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”