Tag Archives: tomatoes
August 24, 2011 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
After the movers whisked my stuff away to California on Saturday, it occurred to me: “I won’t be able to cook for several weeks!”
That’s a problem for a food blogger. So while making plans with my friends Patty and Lauren, who live in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, they made mention of their C.S.A. box. (For those not in the know, C.S.A. stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You pay a set price and get a box of goodies from a farmer each week.) “I have an idea!” I said, suddenly excited. “What if I come over and cook you both dinner based on whatever’s in the box? It’ll be just like Iron Chef!” I’m sure pretty Patty and Lauren exchanged nervous glances at this point (this was over I.M.) but before I knew it, Patty wrote: “Sure.”
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August 31, 2010 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
It’s been more than a month since I made the ratatouille you see in the above photo. I made it for a dinner party where there was lamb (a leg of lamb, actually) and, as many will tell you, ratatouille goes well with lamb. When I wrote my last book, the final chapter “Feast” featured a leg of lamb paired with a ratatouille just like you see above. In fact, it was the exact same recipe as the one you see above, a recipe from Gourmet magazine that now lives on Epicurious.
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November 6, 2009 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
At the end of yesterday’s video podcast with Michael Symon, you may have heard me sheepishly express doubt about adding blue cheese to tomato soup. For some reason, I thought the result would be grainy and gloppy and just kind of gross. Instead, this tomato soup was absolutely the best tomato soup I’ve ever had–and the best part about it is you’d never know that blue cheese was what was making it taste so good. It adds depth and creaminess but it doesn’t taste funky and you don’t notice the texture.
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September 1, 2009 | By Adam Roberts | 0 Comments
So yes, when you come home from a foreign country, you want to cook all the things you ate there–to see if you can recreate the magic–but then you also want to cook something familiar: the kind of food you missed when you were abroad. The very first thing that I made when I came back from Barcelona was a tomato salad. Sure, there were tomatoes there in BCN, but I wasn’t looking for a tomato rubbed on toasted bread with garlic and oil; I wanted big chunks of tomato with basil, olive oil, All American corn, and (here’s the doozy) big pieces of toasted bread. I bought all my ingredients from the Union Square Farmer’s Market, which I visited bright and early the Friday after we got back, still jet-lagged and able to awake at 6 AM.
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October 7, 2008 | By Adam Roberts | 13 Comments
Your biological clock may be ticking, but your gastronomical clock is practically stomping on the ground and demanding that you get thee to a farmer’s market to enjoy the last of this summer’s tomatoes.
It’s a truth that often goes unacknowledged that tomatoes are at their best not during the hot, sweaty days of summer but during the crisp, clear, brand new days of fall. I first learned this watching “Molto Mario” but now I’ve confirmed it by buying the brightest red tomatoes I’ve ever seen and serving them with varying accoutrements. The salad you see above, for example, features sliced tomatoes with basil, blue cheese, oil and balsamic vinegar. Salt and pepper, natch. Actually, I hate using the word “natch”–that was the first time I ever used it–and I didn’t enjoy it.
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September 24, 2008 | By Adam Roberts | 23 Comments
A journey of a thousand miles may begin with one step, but a recipe of several steps begins with precisely 2,408 miles. Specifically: the distance from New York to Seattle.
It was on the plane from New York to Seattle that I read last month’s Bon Appetit magazine which featured our friend Molly Orangette’s recipe for slow roasted tomatoes. The recipe was adapted from the one at Cafe Lago, a restaurant Molly writes lovingly about in the accompanying article, and a restaurant that’s back-to-back with an apartment where Craig used to live with his friends Ryan and Kristen.
The story might’ve ended there, with me reading about Cafe Lago’s Pomodori al Forno on the plane, except the story–like those slow-cooked tomatoes–gets richer as it goes along.
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September 3, 2008 | By Adam Roberts | 7 Comments
[The Amateur Gourmet is on vacation and, while he's gone, he's asked his friends to cover for him. Our final guest poster is not only a dear friend of Adam's, but she's watching his cat while he's away! Please give a warm welcome to Stella Ragsdale. Stella just got back from spending the summer on a farm in Martha's Vineyard and the tomato you see in the picture below is a tomato Stella picked herself. (She's eating a tomato salad that Adam made for her before he left.) Adam will be back tomorrow from his trip--woohoo!--but he thanks Stella and all his guest posters for keeping his blog (and cat) alive while he was gone. Bring us on home, Stella.]
Tomatoes are some of nature’s most luscious fruits. But what goes in to growing them? Blood, sweat, and tears. This is Mighty Tomato reporting in from Martha’s Vineyard. As a Southerner who has been living in New York City for four years now, I found myself longing for the sun on my back and the feel of the dirt under my feet. So I fled the city this summer and came to Morning Glory Farm where I worked for the Athearns.
I am a farm worker. I work in the sun. I work in the hot dirt. If you’ve never been to Martha’s Vineyard, Morning Glory Farm is the premiere farm on the island. Working on a farm is hard work but its also rewarding. And so is the food!
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September 6, 2007 | By Adam Roberts | 8 Comments
It’s September and tomatoes are at their juiciest, and according to many food gurus, their best. More importantly, heirloom tomatoes are so prevalent everywhere these days that you can compose a gorgeous salad like the one you see above with very little effort. Just slice the tomatoes in half or quarters, drizzle with olive oil, spot with balsamic vinegar, shred some basil over the top, sprinkle with salt and pepper and crumble on some feta. That’s it. Make it as pretty as you can. If you make an extra pretty one, link to it in the comments–I’d love to see it.
