Summer Fest 2010: Week 5 -- Tomatoes

Finally! It's tomato week for Summer Fest 2010! And in San Diego it's only appropriate that we've kept this for last because until now this has been a weirdly overcast and chilly summer. Last week, the weather finally broke and we're in full-fledged schvitzy heat wave. Which means, of course, that tomatoes are finally ripening. Our gardens and the farmers markets are now filled with the gorgeous fruit (which actually is legally a vegetable, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling back in 1893 -- don't ask; it has to do with taxes of all things).

So, now we've got a bumper crop of tomatoes just like the rest of the country. The question is what to do with this bounty. In my kitchen, the biggest and ugliest of the heirlooms get sliced up,  then sprinkled with Tajin and olive oil, and eaten. They're the most delicious and deserve to be devoured in their most natural state.

Back in July, I was invited to join in a tomato picking and canning party at a friend's house. Michelle  has a stunning garden and went crazy planting tomatoes. Despite the funky weather, we got quite a haul (see the photo above), including this crazy green heirloom that looked like three conjoined tomatoes.

Michelle doted on that heirloom for much of the afternoon until we finally consigned it to a platter, in slices with salt, pepper, basil, and extra virgin olive oil.

In the meantime, I made a Tomato Tarte Tatin for our group from a Melissa Clark recipe I'd been wanting to try for a long time. You can find it here in her New York Times column. The vinegar, the kalamata olives, the caramelized red onions combined with fresh cherry tomatoes just off the vine? It's swoonable.

Just be very careful with the skillet you've had in that 425-degree oven. Instead of covering the blazing hot handle with a towel when it was pulled out of the oven and onto the stove, I instinctively reached for the naked handle to move the skillet and got quite a bad burn on my hand. It's fine now, but I'm just saying...

When it gets too hot to cook, my go-to summer recipe -- particularly for dinner parties -- is my mom's gazpacho. I've been making this for years. It's really a chopped garden in a bowl and easy to make. So easy and so quick, in fact, that I've now made it several times with the kids and some adults at Olivewood Gardens in our breakneck 25-minute classes. This, along with my corn tortillas with pressed flowers, has become something of an institution already. This is why:

And all it is is a whole variety of veggies, combined with broth, V8 juice, and a few other ingredients -- really whatever you have. For Olivewood Gardens, it means tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, peppers, garlic, green onions, radishes, and herbs -- all from their garden.

Evie's Chunky Gazpacho
Serves 8 – 10

5 - 8 large tomatoes, quartered
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
½ English cucumber, roughly chopped
1 or 2 red peppers, roughly chopped
6 – 8 scallions, roughly chopped
6 - 8 radishes, roughly chopped
½ medium onion, peeled and quartered
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped
½ bunch parsley with major stems removed and/or 1 bunch cilantro
2 tbls lime juice
2-6 tbls red wine vinegar
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
A few dashes of your favorite hot sauce
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
½ tsp sugar
1 regular-sized can beef broth
1 can low-salt V-8 juice
1 cup corn kernels (fresh, frozen or canned – if fresh is unavailable, I like the frozen roasted corn kernels from Trader Joe’s)
1 pound pre-cooked bay shrimp, lump crab or cooked chunks of chicken or pork
Sour cream or Mexican crema

Pull out the food processor and a very large bowl. Process each of the vegetables until the pieces are small -- but before they're pureed -- and add to the bowl, then add the rest of the ingredients, except for the proteins and dairy, which I keep on the table separately for guests to add as they wish. Refrigerate until cold and then adjust seasonings to taste. Top when serving with sour cream or Mexican crema. Serve with fresh tortillas or even hearty sourdough bread.

To make the flowered corn tortillas, simply prepare the masa according to the directions on the package (water, masa, and salt). Roll the dough into golf-ball sized balls. On your tortilla press, lay an edible flower (we've used nasturtiums, pansies, society garlic, and the flowers of herbs that bolted) right side down. Then put the dough ball on top of the flower and press.

Place the uncooked tortilla flower side up on a hot skillet. When the edges curl, flip it over and cook just a minute or so more. That's it. The kids love this. It looks cool and they were shocked that they could actually eat flowers!

So, let's see what the rest of the Summer Fest 2010 folks are cooking this week:

Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: Heirloom Tomato Tart with Parmesan Crust

Nicole at Pinch My Salt: What to do with slow-roasted tomatoes

Alison at Food2: Heirloom tomatoes

The FN Dish: Tyler's Ultimate Tomato Salads

Margaret at A Way to Garden: More than one way to ripen a tomato

Gilded Fork: Celebrating summer lusciousness with a tomato dossier and recipes

Diane and Todd at White on Rice Couple: Sun-dried tomatoes (actually made in the sun!)

Paige at The Sister Project: 3 substantial, healthy, vegetarian tomatoey main dishes

Liz at the Cooking Channel: Easy Tomato Tart

Kelly at Just a Taste: Tomato Jam

Alexis at Food Network UK: The seven deadly tomato sins

Michelle at Healthy Eats: Top 10 Things to Do With Tomatoes

Marilyn at Simmer Till Done: Cherry Tomatoes and Maytag Blue Beignets

Alana of Eating From the Ground Up: Roasted Green Salsa

Tigress of Tigress in a Pickle: Over 50 Ways to Preserve Tomatoes in Jars

Judy of Divina Cucuina: Tomatoes the Italian Way

Caroline at the Wright Recipes: Savory Tomato Crumble

Now It's Your Turn!
This collaborative effort won't be much fun without you! The more info we all give, the more we'll all enjoy summer's harvest. Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? Starting with our posts of Wednesday, July 28, for five Wednesdays through 8/25 and possibly longer, you can contribute in various ways, big or small.

• Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:
• Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog any upcoming Wednesday, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.

The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and then we're all cooking with some great ideas. Or go big: Publish entire posts of your own if you wish, and grab the big red tomato Summer Fest 2010 badge above (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites). We'll also be tweeting using #summerfood as our hashtag. Here's the schedule:

• 7/28: cukesnzukes
• 8/4: corn
• 8/11: herbs, greens, and beans
• 8/18: stone fruit
• 8/25 tomatoes
• more to come if we all want it — stay tuned!

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Top 10 Hot Weather Culinary Life Savers

It’s a hot and humid Saturday afternoon in San Diego and I can’t bear the idea of turning on the oven or even the stovetop burners. I don’t even want to grill. I don’t want to be near anything over 78 degrees.

This time of year is pretty much about having things around that satisfy hunger without requiring sweat-provoking activities like sautéing, roasting or boiling. I have some favorite cooling foods—some that I’ve found at the markets and some that are easy to prepare and are mostly about fruits and vegetables readily available at your local farmers market or produce store.

So, if you’re desperate for some ways to eat cool over the next couple of months, here are my top 10 favorites—half from the stores and half are recipes.

At the stores:

• Shangri-La Tropical Passion iced tea from Great News. I’m not a big fan of fruity teas. I like to keep things simple with green teas. But at a class last year at Great News I was ridiculously thirsty and, as always, they had pitchers of tea and water for students to enjoy during class. The water pitcher was empty so I reluctantly went for the tea and found I absolutely loved it. Since then I regularly keep my pantry stocked with it. There are five packets in each little red bag. Fill a large pitcher (with a lid) with water. Empty a packet into a large tea filter and gently lower into the mouth of the pitcher. Let the sun do the rest for a few hours, then remove the filter, put the lid on the pitcher and refrigerate.

• Sharon’s Sorbet from Trader Joe’s. I’ve never been a big ice cream person but this time of year I love a cold dessert after dinner. I found Sharon’s Sorbet and now keep it in the freezer. My favorites are lemon, mango and passion fruit, but other flavors include blueberry, mixed berry, raspberry, strawberry, coconut and dutch chocolate.

• Beet vinaigrette salad from Continent European Deli: I’ve written about this before. The salad is made with beets, potatoes, pickles, carrots and sauerkraut. It’s got a lot of flavors and textures going on at once—sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy. I enjoy this and I don’t even like beets!

• Ceviche from Northgate Gonzalez: I love this market and one of the biggest reasons is their selection of ceviches. I’m particularly fond of the octopus and the shrimp but all are delicious. Enjoy with fresh tortillas or chips from their tortilleria.

• Nopal salad from Foodland Mercado in El Cajon: Other Hispanic markets make this but Foodland’s is a winner because of the addition of red onion and crumbled queso fresco; again, pick up their fresh tortillas or chips (better than Northgate Gonzalez!)

To prepare:

Gazpacho

My mom gave me this gazpacho recipe years ago and now it’s a dinner party staple this time of year. It’s got a lot of ingredients, but once you get the produce chopped, it goes quickly and you get a hearty, cold meal that’s great for entertaining or a relief to have around for a few days during a heat wave.

5 -8 large tomatoes, quartered

1 large cloves of garlic, minced

½ English cucumber, roughly chopped

1 or 2 red peppers, roughly chopped

6 – 8 scallions, roughly chopped

6-8 radishes, roughly chopped

½ medium onion, peeled and quartered

1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and chopped

½ bunch parsley with major stems removed and/or 1 bunch cilantro

1 tbl lemon juice

2-6 tbl red wine vinegar

A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce

A few dashes of your favorite hot sauce

2 tsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

½ tsp sugar

1 regular-sized can beef broth

1 can low-salt V-8 juice

1 cup corn kernels (fresh, frozen or canned – I like the frozen roasted corn kernels from Trader Joe’s)

1 pound pre-cooked bay shrimp, lump crab or cooked chunks of chicken or pork

Pull out the food processor and a very large bowl. Process each of the vegetables and add to the bowl, then add the rest of the ingredients, except for the proteins, which I would have at the table separately for guests to add as they wish. Adjust seasoning to taste. Top when serving with sour cream or Mexican crema.

Serves 8 – 10

Cucumber Yogurt Bisque

Years ago, decades actually, I lived in New York, where summers can be truly miserable. So, when my friend Susan Leon made this for me, I added the recipe to my hot weather arsenal. It’s ridiculously easy to make and you can riff on it by adding other ingredients, like hot sauce or additional chopped veggies. I sometimes will toss some cooked shrimp on top to get some protein.

1 large cucumber

2 cups unflavored yogurt

2 tbl red wine vinegar

½ cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

¼ tsp dill

¼ tsp ground pepper

1 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped

¼ cup sliced scallions

Peel the cucumber, slice it lengthwise into halves and scoop out the seeds and discard. Cut the cucumber into chunks and combine in food processor or blender with yogurt, vinegar, onion, garlic, dill and pepper. Process briefly until blended. Stir tomatoes into yogurt mixture. Cover and chill at least 2 hours or overnight. Garnish with sliced scallions. (If you use a very thick yogurt, like Greek yogurt, you can add a little chicken broth to thin the mixture.)

Serves 4

One-Hour Japanese Pickled Cucumbers

This is a wonderfully simple snack I love to munch on while trying to survive a sultry afternoon. In fact, I’ve got a little bowl in the refrigerator now that I’m going to pounce on shortly.

Use a mandoline to thinly slice an English or Persian cucumber. Place slices in a shallow bowl and add rice vinegar to cover. Refrigerate for an hour or so until the cucumbers have absorbed some of the vinegar and have chilled. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and hot pepper flakes. Pull out a set of chopsticks and dig in.

Hearts of Romaine Salad Dressing

My dad swears he doesn’t remember faxing me this recipe, but I have the original. I love this. It’s thick and goopy and the flavors are sharp—just perfect for the romaine it was created for, but also for a tomato salad or just dipping with veggies.

1 cup olive oil

2 tbl feta cheese, crumbled

1 tsp Dijon mustard

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 to 8 anchovy fillets, minced

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Fresh lemon or lime juice to taste

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a food processor fitted with a metal blade or in a blender or process till smooth. Taste and adjust the seasonings.

Use as a salad dressing or dip for Romaine leaves.

Peggy Knickerbocker’s Fennel Salad with Black Olives and Arugula

This is why Bay Area writer and teacher Peggy Knickerbocker is so good. She takes unlikely combinations of foods—fennel and olives in this case—and creates something so splendid. Our La Cocina Que Canta class at Rancho La Puerta got to make this salad and I love it. Fennel is so refreshing a flavor and it benefits from the saltiness of the olives.

For the dressing:

3 tbl sherry vinegar

2 shallots, minced

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the salad:

3 to 4 medium heads of fennel, tough outer leaves discarded

12 black imported olives, pitted and cut into long slivers

½ cup chopped parsley leaves

4 stalks celery, thinly sliced into rounds

A few handfuls of arugula leaves, washed and dried

To make dressing: In a small bowl combine the vinegar with the shallots and salt and pepper to taste. Allow it to macerate for a few minutes, then whisk in the olive oil.

To make the salad: Cut the fennel in half lengthwise, removing the core. Cut the fennel into thin strips and place in a salad bowl. Toss with the olives, parsley and celery.

Make a bed of arugula leaves on a serving platter. Toss the salad with the dressing in a bowl and mound on top of the arugula leaves.

Serves 6

Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? What do you do to beat the heat in the kitchen? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

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Tierrasanta Farmers Market: The Island in the Hills Meets the Farmer in the Dell

I’d been waiting on tenterhooks for this moment. My neighborhood, Tierrasanta, finally got its own farmers market last Thursday afternoon. By the looks of it, my neighbors were also in eager suspense. With all the oohing and ahhhing, you’d have thought none of us had ever seen an heirloom tomato or fresh peaches before.

The market, located in the parking lot of Gaspar de Portola Middle School, has been in the planning process for some five months, according to Ron La Chance, the market manager. For its debut, La Chance brought in 10 farmers and 20 other vendors, selling everything from jams and breads and flowers to prepared foods and jewelry. There’s room for another 25 vendors if business is good and demand calls for it. By the looks of this first outing, my fellow Tierrasantans should make a point of showing up regularly and requesting more. We need it. I loved what I saw, but there are some definite gaps that need to be filled.

There were a number of familiar farmers market faces. I first encountered Jackie’s Jams, run by Jackie Anderson and Robert Shay, at the Ocean Beach market. They have about two dozen flavors of jams that Jackie makes in a commercial kitchen nearby off of Convoy.

Her jams are offered at Bread & Cie down in Hillcrest. There are some unusual concepts like Mango Raspberry and Papaya Mango, Spicy Peach, Tomato, Strawbarb and Zippy Jalapeño. And she makes some more traditional fare like Strawberry, Plum, Triple Berry and Apple Butter. They’re all delicious and sing with flavor, especially the Zippy Jalapeño.

I’ve already written about Baba Foods and their pitas, humus and salads. They’re there. As are the crepe guys. World Famous Smoked Fish was there selling fresh sea bass, salmon, albacore, mahi mahi and ahi, along with smoked yellowtail, ahi, salmon and albacore and dips they make from the tuna and salmon.

Petrou Foods, minus the outsized personality, George Petrou, was there with their delicious olives and olive oils. I picked up a bottle of their low-sodium green olives. They’re soaked in sea salt for three months instead of six, which the young sales woman said accounted for their lower sodium. However, at 10 percent sodium, they’re not that low. I looked at the label of a jar of Trader Joe’s pitted Kalamata olives and those are only 6 percent. But, Petrou’s olives do taste good and don’t need refrigerating. Just put them in a cool pantry or cupboard and flip the jar over periodically since there’s not a lot of liquid.

Johann’s Austrian Bakery sold the market’s only baked goods—Mountain Rye, Farmers Bread, Jalapeno Cheese, French and whole wheat. I bought a lovely braided raisin challah, which I’m enjoying. It’s sweet and moist and perfect for French toast. However, the strudel was a tremendous disappointment. I tried it that evening and could barely cut through the dough and still am not sure about the flavor. I think it was apricot. The next day, I thought I’d try again, this time reheating in to see if the pastry would crispen. It did somewhat, but still, this is not something to seek out.

At farmers markets you can always count on the presence of a few characters. I found my first at the entrance. Papa Louie—the only name he’ll give—makes a lovely marinade/dressing made of extra virgin olive oil, balsamic and rice vinegars, garlic, salt and spices.

It’s got a nice zippy punch to it and is intriguingly thick, given that it has no mustard or other emulsifier. What’s the secret? He won’t tell. All he admits to is that it’s a 106-year-old family recipe created by his grandmother in Venice, Italy. Papa Louie also sells vinegars and olive oil from Spain.

Another character at the market was Deborah Giraud of Sunflower Organics. She convinced me to buy a jar of her ginger-flavored honey and bee pollen mix. She also sells honey from Hawaii, loose teas and a line of jojoba oil lotions. Stand around her stall and you’ll learn more than you’d thought you wanted to know about the beneficial aspects of bee pollen. That it’s a complete food with all essential amino acids, minerals and vitamins. That raw honey is easily metabolized in the body and rich in Vitamin A, beta carotene and rich in enzymes. Good thing for us that it tastes so good.

I also got a kick out of meeting Emilio Carranza of Carranza Fruit Farm in Valley Center. He sells a nice selection of pesticide-free produce—enormous zucchini, lemons, tiny and tart tomatillos and an assortment of items you’d think you’d be more likely to find in a Mexican market.

The tunas, fruit of the nopal cactus, were lovely hues of green and red orange. Inside, depending on which color you bought, the flesh was white or yellow. Carranza also had nopal paddles available, already de-needled and ready to be chopped into a salad with queso fresco or used for some other recipe. He had bunches of epazote and something I’d never seen before—white sapote.

White sapote (or sapote blanco) is grown predominantly in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica. You’ll also find it in northern South America, the Bahamas, the West Indies, along the Riviera and other part of the Mediterranean, in India and the East Indies. It’s also grown in the southern U.S., both in California and southern Florida.

The fruit looks rather like a green apple, but don’t be fooled. It’s a member of the Rutaceae family, to which citrus belongs. When ripe, the flesh is like custard—sweet and creamy—and perfect for spooning out and eating plain or adding to a smoothie. Don’t eat the skin or the seeds.

I bought several sapotes and a basket of tunas. But really, what was I going to do with all those tunas?

Carranza suggested I make Agua de Tuna (cactus fruit drink) and told me how: peel the tunas and coarsely chop them into a blender, add a little water and pulverize. Then place the puree into a strainer over a bowl and push out all the liquid. Toss the solids, add some lemon juice and sugar and more water to the tuna liquid. Pour into a glass over ice. Sounded easy. I took them home and found a recipe online with a little more structure and tried it. Here it is:

Agua de Tuna

1 pound of green cactus fruit (tuna), with the spines removed
½ pound red cactus fruit (tuna), with the spines removed
The juice of 3 lemons
1 cup sugar
2 liters of water

Carefully peel the tuna fruits, making sure that they are free of spines. The spines are often tiny, so be very careful handling the fruit! Place the tuna fruit in a blender with the sugar and a little water. Blend well. You can pass the pulp through a colander to remove any seeds. Add the water and lemon juice. Or, if you prefer, simply add the water to the pulp with the lemon juice.

Serve over ice.

From “Mexican Culture for Kids.com”

I have to say it was delicious. Thick, the color of rich orange juice, but a blending of sweet and sour in a uniquely tropical way. Perfect for a hot and humid afternoon.

I strolled around the rest of the market, picked up some magnificent heirloom tomatoes at JRB Farms from Lake Perris and enjoyed a sample of their oh, so sweet honeydew melons (which they ran out of…). I also bought several little squash—the kind that look like they were victims of “spin art,” with their crazy splashes of yellow and green. I love baking these in olive oil and garlic, topped with bread crumbs and grated parmesan cheese.

Actually, all the produce looked good. So, what do you do with all this gorgeous bounty? It’s August. It’s hot. It’s muggy. Gotta make gazpacho. You’ll find most of the ingredients for this recipe (my mom’s) among the farmers’ booths here or at your neighborhood market. The chopping can be time consuming but there’s no cooking with heat involved and what you end up with is a healthy and refreshing series of meals that are utterly delicious.

Gazpacho (serves 8-10)

5-8 large tomatoes, chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, minced

1 cucumber, peeled (unless it’s an English cuke) and diced

1 or 2 red or green bell peppers, chopped

6 to 8 scallions, chopped

6 to 8 radishes, chopped

½ medium onion, chopped

½ bunch parsley, minced

½ bunch cilantro, minced

2 cups corn (I like either fresh from the cob or Trader Joe’s bags of frozen roasted corn)

2 to 6 dashes Worcestershire sauce

4 tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 small can V-8 juice

2 tsp. olive oil

½ tsp sugar

1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1 tsp. salt

1 can beef or chicken stock

Tabasco sauce to taste

The easiest way to do this is to roughly cut up each set of veggies and put in the food processor to chop into small pieces – don’t process until smooth – and then add each to a large bowl. Once all the vegetables are chopped and in the bowl, add the corn, the herbs, the liquids and the salt. Mix it all together and refrigerate until cold, then correct the seasonings. Add cooked shrimp or other protein if you like when serving. Top with a dollop of sour cream.

And for dessert? Stop by Smit Orchards for their O’Henry freestone peaches, or Arctic white nectarines. They no longer have plumcots (the fabulous yellow fruit I fell hard for earlier in the summer), but they do have Dinosaur egg pluots (3/4 plum, ¼ apricot).

Okay, I mentioned there were gaps. I missed Rodriquez Farms and their wide variety of greens. I obviously would like another bread and pastry vendor and how about Valdina Farms and their magnificent beans and mini veggies? And, Peggy’s Fresh Pasta. Well, I’m going to be patient. Hey, it took years for us to get this far. I’m sure that with community support, Mr. La Chance will be able to bring in many more wonderful vendors and Thursday afternoons will be the highlight of the week for locals.

The Tierrasanta Farmers Market is located in the front parking lot of De Portola Middle School at 11010 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. in Tierrasanta. It’s open from 3 to 7 p.m. every Thursday.

Have some thoughts about the Tierrasanta Farmers Market or other farmers markets in San Diego? Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

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