Adapted from a recipe published in the New York Times: September 28, 2010.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings.
Minestrone with Field Peas and Almond Pistou
Tomatoes
Santa Fe Summer Pot
Or how about this idea for a dish that will use up some tomatoes and require no cooking (if you buy precooked shrimp)? It’s from “The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper: Recipes, Stories and Opinions from Public Radio’s Award-Winning Food Show” by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 2008). The shrimp could be switched out for tofu, tempeh, chicken, meats or other fish.
Serves 4
Fusilli Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and “Hidden” Squash
And all those gorgeous tomatoes! So here’s my favorite tomato sandwich. You might want to try this if you’re over your fixation with white bread and mayo. You’ll need a crusty loaf of bread like a ciabatta. Split the bread in half and layer on sliced tomatoes, olive oil, sliced fresh garlic, capers, anchovy (optional as always) and basil. Throw on a splash of red wine vinegar. Close up the loaf and let the ingredients sit for at least an hour. Eat it outside.
Your basil, like mine, probably looked pretty wilted. Do not throw it out! It’s still perfectly wonderful for a sandwich like the one above, or you can do what I did last week with mine – make ice cream. There’s a wonderful new book out, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home. She makes a vanilla ice cream base and then suggests adding a bunch of basil to the ice cream mixture as it cools. Strain out the ice cream before freezing. Amazing. Then, to make it even more wonderful, she suggests caramelizing some pine nuts in honey with just a bit of butter, salting the mixture, and then stirring it into the finished ice cream for storage. Salty-sweet-buttery nuts, basil ice cream. Fabulous. I saved a little money and used half pine nuts/half pumpkin seeds. Perfect.
Don’t want to make ice cream? Try the minestrone recipe below, with its bonus recipe for a basil pistou made with almonds and tomato. Or throw the basil in the freezer (yes, well wrapped please) and pull it out when you want to make a big pot of pasta fagioli this fall. Tie the basil into a bunch and then you can just fish it out of the finished soup. Or chop it up and throw it into your next batch of spaghetti sauce. Wilted, slightly browned, none of that will matter.
And if you need another idea for tomatoes and squash, how about this pasta?
Our box held a mix of tomatoes today. Use the smaller, meatier ones for this recipe, which means leaving the big juicier specimens for your favorite sandwich. Serves 4.
Greek Salad with Pork Tenderloin and Lemon-Basil Vinaigrette
You can substitute chicken or shrimp here.
Slow Cooker Beef and Butternut Squash
I think this recipe originally came from Better Homes and Gardens magazine. Substitute your fresh tomatoes for the canned ones if you like.
Stuffed Tomatoes 2
What? You’re weary of tomato sandwiches and tomato salads and ……
Ok. Try this recipe from Prevention magazine’s “The Healthy Cook.”
Cucumber, Onion, Tomato and Tahini Sandwiches
This recipe is adapted from an idea I saw from Whole Foods. Squeezing out the seeds and pulp from the tomato will keep your sandwich filling from becoming soggy.
Tomato and Peach Salad
Have you noticed more and more restaurants are including fruit in their salads? Of course, tomatoes are really a fruit, but peaches, blueberries and strawberries are making their way into more salads than ever before. Love this combination of tomatoes and peaches, both available in abundance right now. Peel your tomatoes and peaches or not, up to you.
Tomato Marmalade
This recipe is adapted from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders (Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 2010). Marmalades are not instant preserves, you have to make them over two days, but you can easily arrange the timing to suit your schedule.
Makes 11 to 12 8-ounce jars, but you can cut this recipe in half.
From the book: “Tomato marmalades are the perfect partners for crackers, cornbread, or sourdough. They have a long history in the United States, where they were traditionally seen as a way to use up extra fruit during summer’s long tomato season. Like tomato jam, they tended to be heavily spiced with cinnamon and cloves. For this lighter version, I have introduced saffron into the mix. The result is magic.”
That said, the saffron is totally optional.
Chicken Cutlets with Bell Pepper Ragout
This recipe is adapted from Fine Cooking magazine, one of my favorite sources.