blasphemous tomato salad

You know that time in late summer when you have way too many tomatoes and they are infinitely cheap and absolutely delicious? This recipe is for that time. I'm making it now (June) because the 'fuzz found really great hydroponic heirloom tomatoes at the New York Farmer's Market in Union Square, and bought some in-between flare-ups of violent police activity.

Take a lot of tomatoes. Grate 1/3 of them. Yes, this is the blasphemy. Grate them with a box grater. Chop (or slice) the rest. Mix the grated and chopped tomatoes with red-wine vinegar (maybe less than 1 tbsp for every pound of tomatoes?) and salt (maybe half a tsp for every pound of tomatoes?). Throw in a glug of olive oil if you like. Let stand for an hour or so.

When you are ready to eat, toast hearty slices of beautiful, bourgeois bread, scrape them with a split clove of garlic (to make them garlicky), spoon on surfeit of tomato salad and garnish with basil, olive oil, and anything else you like such as mozzarella, proscuitto, bacon, hard cheese, thyme, sea salt, parsley, you name it. Eat like a sinner.

pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes

It being end of summer and all, and me being over-confident in my no-recipe kitchen skills, I did the following today: I softened up two chopped onions and a bit of red pepper (because it was there) in a stick of butter. I then filled the pot with halved tomatoes (maybe 15 tomatoes) that the 'fuzz brought me from the Union Square Farmer's Market. I didn't peel the tomatoes first because (a) it isn't rocket science, and (b) I know I will be able to fish out the peels later. I added two cloves of garlic (smacked), 1 tbsp of red-wine vinegar, some fresh basil, some sprigs of fresh thyme, and a lot of salt and pepper (and a bit of that Japanese hot spice I have for ramen).

I started this all cooking. The tomatoes immediately released a lot of water and their skins, which I fished out (easily). I then executed the ultimate total-neglect move: I put the pot, uncovered, into a 275 F (135 C) oven and waited, stirring once an hour.

After 3 hours I pulled it out, pulled out the thyme sprigs, mashed the rest (with a potato masher) and then put it on the stovetop to reduce it further. That is, it wasn't thick enough (for my taste). Next time I'll do it at 300, not 275, with the hope that it will come out thicker. But it tastes great!

Recipes on the internet say you should peel and then seed the tomatoes before starting. I'm not sure why.

hand-chopped pesto

At the suggestion of the 'fuzz, I took a small handful of pine nuts, a small handful of hazelnuts, a few cloves of garlic, a large bunch of fresh basil leaves, a small hunk of hard cheese, a bit of salt, and chopped and chopped and chopped. Then I mixed it with enough olive oil (home-made, thanks Kate and Yanni!) to make a solid mass of pesto. We mixed this with spaghetti and ate it with a side of fresh tomato and mozzarella to make a surprisingly awesome late-summer dinner.

ratatouille

Here's what I did (with some help from the 'fuzz) to make the simplest possible ratatouille with all our farmer's-market late-summer vegetables:

• 2 onions, sliced
• 6 small eggplants (or 2-3 huge supermarket-style ones), diced
• 3 zucchini, diced
• a few sweet peppers, seeded and diced
• 3 large tomatoes, diced
• a few tbsp fresh basil, chopped
• salt, pepper, olive oil

Soften the onions (and maybe some garlic) in a lot of olive oil. Add eggplant and cook until it starts to soften. Add zucchini and peppers and cook until the zucchini starts to soften. Add tomatoes and basil and a fair bit of salt and pepper and simmer until the whole thing turns into ratatouille (about an hour, maybe less). Fix seasoning at the end. Serve with crusty bread, and then freeze some for the coming winter.