August and September are the Months of the tomato here where I live. It’s when the tomato-glut occurs when every seller at the Athens Farmer’s Market and every roadside stand and the Chesterhill Produce auction is pushing tomatoes of every type, size, color and flavor. They are everywhere.

It’s when I can tomatoes and make marinara sauce and salsa and can those and I eat tomatoes every day raw in salads, on sandwiches, just sliced up on a plate and just biting into them like apples. I eat them like this now because I never eat fresh tomatoes when they are not in season. So I have to gorge myself on them now while I can so I can get good and sick and tired of them so I won’t be momentarily tempted by the baseball-hard pink monstrosities in the grocery stores in the winter months.

But in addition to eating them raw, I cook with them as well.

For example–I got the idea for this tomato gratin from the folks at Integration Acres–they posted it on their Facebook page last Saturday morning and my eagle eye of course caught it on my newsfeed. It involved fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic and blue goat cheese all melted and delicious and I just had to taste it.

Their picture for it looked so darned good, I went right to the Farmer’s Market when it opened and bought the cheese, and got some tomatoes so I could run right home and make it.

(Can I say again how much I love both the fresh and ripened goat cheeses from the Integration Acres people? They really are great. I bet there’s a great cheesemaker near you–run right out and find them as soon as you can. Your taste buds will thank you later. And remember–”Blessed are the Cheesemakers…..”)

I hesitate to even dignify this by calling it a recipe, because it really is so simple. But that’s okay–it’s summer cooking at it’s finest–it’s simple, quick and absolutely allows the tomatoes, garlic, basil and cheese to shine like gustatory beacons.

It also fills the belly admirably for such a light dish.

Integration Acres Tomatoes Au Gratin
Ingredients:

Olive oil as needed
Fresh, meltingly ripe tomatoes–enough to fill a small casserole dish–two or three depending on the size you have
1 clove of very fresh garlic, peeled and minced
1 handful of fresh basil leaves, minced
2-4 ounces of your favorite blue cheese if you can get a ripened blue–all the better
salt and Aleppo pepper flakes or other hot pepper flakes to taste

Method:

Preheat your broiler and make certain that your rack is about three to four inches below the burner.

Lightly oil a small casserole dish with the olive oil.

Wash, core and cut the tomatoes in half. Then, thinly slice them into half-moon shapes. Toss them into the casserole.

Sprinkle the garlic and basil over the tomatoes and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Toss to distribute everything together nicely.

Top with crumbled or chunked bits of the blue cheese, then season with some salt and Aleppo pepper flakes, then drizzle a tiny amount of olive oil on top.

Pop it under the broiler and cook until the cheese is melted and everything is bubbly, happy and delicious with some browned bits on top.

Serve it over toasted bits of good bread. Or, just dig in with a spoon and gobble it right out of the dish. It’s great either way.

If you patronize your local farmer’s market, you may be surprised at the huge number of different types, sizes, colors and shapes of tomatoes available out there.

Tiny round red, green, yellow or orange cherry tomatoes, pear (usually yellow but sometimes red) tomatoes, long finger-like red cherry tomatoes, giant beefsteaks in myriad colors and bi-colors, red or orange plum tomatoes for making sauces, and even tomatoes that are relatively hollow inside that are perfect for stuffing.

Stuffers are available in red, yellow or a pretty striped variety that is red with orange-yellow tiger stripes. It is the latter type I found for sale by Larry and Kim Cowdery of Cowdery Farms, and of course, I had to pick some up.

The truth is, you can stuff any kind of tomato you want, even cherry tomatoes (I’ve done it–I don’t recommend it, though–it’s maddeningly finicky to stuff things that small), but these mostly hollow stuffers are simple. They have three to five chambers for their seeds and the gel that surrounds them, with evenly thick walls of flesh surrounding them. They are also kind of squat or bell-shaped so they have a nice flattish bottom to sit on.

All you have to do is cut the top off the tomato and use a scoop, spoon or just your fingers (guess which venue I chose–yep, fingers) to remove the seeds and gel. Now you have a nice hollowed out tomato ready for filling up with whatever you like.

And I mean it. ANYTHING can go into a tomato.

I personally like to use leftovers. I basically combine an already cooked leftover grain: rice, spelt berries, bulgar wheat or quinoa, with a leftover sauce, then add any vegetables I want, and voila! Stuffing.

In the version pictured–I heated up leftover steamed rice, and mixed it with heated up leftover sausage-enriched (Harmony Hollow Farm Italian Sausage) marinara (the last of the jars I canned last fall) that I used for lasagne. I added some sauteed onions (from Vest Berries), but I could have easily added some steamed broccoli or sauteed chard or spinach.

I made a bit more filling than I needed to to fill the tomatoes and after oiling the bottom of a small casserole dish with olive oil, I lined the bottom with the filling, then filled the tomatoes and nestled them into the rice and sauce mixture in the dish.

And then, I added cheese.

I used a ripened blue goat cheese from Integration Acres called “Percy’s Blue.” When melted under a broiler, the cheese melts into an unctuous, delicious, gooey, satisfying topping that contrasts beautifully with the still cool, fresh tasting tomatoes, and the warm, flavorful filling.

Finally, I minced up some Greek Columnar Basil from my deck garden and sprinkled it on top.

The result is an almost completely local Farmer’s Market lunch–the exceptions were the rice and the olive oil. If I had wanted to be perfectly local, I could have used Shagbark Seed & Mill’s spelt berries and Hartzler’s butter instead.

Stuffed tomatoes are very versatile. One could use cooked dried beans instead of grain, or in addition to grain. Or, you could use leftover grilled or roasted corn, cut from the cob, as the grain. Any kind of cheese could be used as the topping. Or, one could use Greek yogurt as a topping.

For sauce, one could use salsa or instead of a tomato based sauce, use a creamy one like Alfredo. Or, one could puree roasted bell peppers and use that as a sauce.

Basically, instead of a recipe, this post is going to give you a formula so you can make up your own versions of stuffed tomatoes. It’s a great, frugal way to use up leftovers and turn them into something new for a very quick lunch or dinner dish. It can have meat or be vegetarian, it can be vegan–it can be made however you like it.

Stuffed Tomato Formula
Ingredients:

8-12 stuffing tomatoes (or beefsteaks)
1 1/2 cups cooked leftover grain (corn cut from the cob, rice, spelt berries, bulgar wheat, quinoa, wild rice or cooked dried beans, or a mixture of the two) (If you have huge beefsteak tomatoes, you will need more grain or beans.)
1 1 1/2 cup leftover sauce (salsa, tomato or cream based pasta sauce, pureed roasted vegetable sauce) (If you use really large tomatoes, you will need more sauce)
1/2 cup cooked leftover vegetables (optional)
1 teaspoon olive oil
2-4 ounces of any kind of meltable cheese or Greek yogurt
Minced fresh herbs for garnish

Method:

Preheat your broiler to high and set the rack so it is within two to three inches of the burner.

Cut the very tops off of the tomatoes and scoop out the seeds and gel to leave a hollowed out cup.

Heat the grain and sauce in the microwave and mix them together. Use enough sauce to bind the grain together. Add the leftover vegetables if you want, and mix it into the filling.

Lightly oil the bottom of your casserole pan–use the smallest dish you can to fit the number of tomatoes you have.

Stuff your tomatoes, and pack the filling so it is just even with the top of the tomatoes. Do not mound it–if you mound it, the melted cheese will have a tendency to slip off the top.

Put leftover filling into the bottom of the casserole and settle the tomatoes onto it, leaving them close together in a cluster.

Add cheese or Greek yogurt to the top of the tomatoes and over the top of any exposed stuffing in the casserole dish.

Run under the broiler for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and lightly browned and everything is heated through.

Remove from the broiler carefully, turn off the broiler and garnish with minced herbs.

‘Cause I been doin’ a lotta jammin,’ and I wanna jam it wid you.

Last year, I only made strawberry jam, and I THOUGHT I made enough for last at least part way through the winter, with something like 12 half pints, but I was so wrong. WRONG because Zak liked it so much that he invented reasons to eat it. Totally unnecessary peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on good bakery bread with good peanut butter were made and consumed just so he could eat more of that strawberry jam.

This year, I made twenty-one half pints of it and then froze a bunch of berries to make more when that ran out. I made strawberry jam back in May, and guess what? I already have to break out some frozen berries to make up another big old batch.

But that’s not the jam I made today.

Oh, no, chile.

Strawberry jam is good, but what I made today is like heaven in a jar.

Because Kat, Zak and I went out to our friend, Rick Vest’s farm and picked blackberries from bushes that were burdened with heavy fruit. And to me, there is nothing better than homemade blackberry jam. Nothing. It’s SO good. So tangy-sweet, sticky and the color–red-violet–is just eye-popping.

And, if you leave the seeds in, which I always do, blackberry jam is simplicity itself to make.

Why do I leave the seeds in?

Well, I figure when I eat blackberries, I’m eating the seeds so why should I object to the seeds being in the jam? I mean, really. Plus, I’ve found that if you try and remove the seeds, you lose a lot of the fruit pulp, too, and I refuse to waste something that I spent hours in the hot sun picking in the company of bees, wasps, mosquitoes and a child complaining of heat and thirst.

So, when you eat my blackberry jam, you’re eating it with the seeds. And if I use it in any of my baking, you get the seeds. If you don’t like the seeds consult with a less lazy blogger to find out how to remove the wee buggers without ending up needing to pick a thousand pounds of berries for a few pints of jam. I’m just not your girl for that process.

And while you’re looking stuff up, find out how to clean and treat your jars, lids and rings for safe canning by looking at the USDA National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website. They have all the information you need to know to can safely. They will of course, also try and scare you to death about canning, but the fact is, lots of us have canned for years and never killed anyone yet, so just follow their directions to prepare your half-pint canning jars, new lids and rings for this recipe and you will not go wrong.

For this recipe, I cleaned and sterilized 18 half pint jars, lids and rings, but ended up only using 17 of them. You might end up with 18. It could happen–you never know.

AND now, let’s talk about pectin.

Pectin is a surprisingly sore subject with lots of folks who make jams, jellies, preserves and marmalade out there in the food blogging world, because apparently there is a contingent of “preservistas” who think you just suck the big wang if you use any kind of pectin to get your jams to gel and will get all huffy and be like, holier than thou about it.

I say “horse-hockey.” If you want to use pectin, use pectin. If you don’t, don’t. But I will tell you what–my Grandma made literally gallons of the clearest, most delicious wild blackberry jelly in the world–we’d literally pick the tiny seedy things in five gallon buckets so she could extract enough juice–and she used pectin.

If it was good enough for Grandma, then it’s good enough for me.

Look, pectin isn’t evil. It isn’t artificial, and the use of it doesn’t denote that you’re a bad jammer. It’s nothing more than a substance that exists in fruits in their natural state, that when placed in the presence of sugar and heat, causes your liquidy fruit juice to turn into a nice, thick gel. That’s all. It’s not extracted from a cow’s stomach or made out of plastic. It’s fine and dandy, and I use it, and you can, too.

That all said, I tried out a new to me pectin today and am a convert to what I see is the pectin of choice for all the food blogging world. That would be Pomona’s Universal Pectin, and instead of relying upon sugar to make it do it’s job and make a gel, it utilizes calcium.

Now, before you start frothing at the mouth about the calcium, remember, you need it for strong bones and teeth, so hush and listen. Pomona’s is made from citrus peels–again–nothing bad there–and it has two packets in each box. One contains the powdered pectin and the other has the calcium powder. You can tell them apart because the calcium is in the tiny packet.

Before you start jammin,’ though, you need to make calcium water, and Pomona’s has directions on how to do it right in the box. You just mix 1/2 teaspoon of the calcium powder with 1/2 cup of water in a small clean jar with a lid. You use the directed amount for your recipe and the rest you can keep sealed up in your fridge for the next time you haul off and preserve some fruit for winter.

After you do that, you can start jammin’ with impunity. All you do to make cooked low-sugar jam (AH HA! Now you know why I like Pomona’s Universal Pectin. I can make low-sugar jams that taste great and gel exactly the way I want them to!) is mix the mashed up fruit with the directed amount of calcium water and lemon juice if you need it to balance the flavors, and bring that mixture to a boil. Meanwhile, you measure out your sugar, stir the pectin in completely, and when the fruit boils, you stir in the sugar, and keep stirring for about two minutes while the lovely scented fruit mixture bubbles happily away. This makes certain you dissolve the pectin thoroughly into the fruit and juice. You bring it back to a boil, then remove it completely from the heat and pack your jars. Then you use your hot water bath canner and process it in boiling water for ten minutes, then take the jars out and sit them on a towel to cool off and seal properly. And voila! Jam.

It really is easy.

And it gels up much better than the regular grocery store brands of pectin that I’ve used for years. It’s more reliable, from what I can tell.

So, finally, we get to the recipe for the jam pictured above. It’s very simple, it uses Pomona’s Universal Pectin, which you can get at local natural food stores, Whole Foods or online.

Once again, if you want to remove the seeds, keep in mind you will have to have picked more berries. For my recipe, I got 2 mashed cups of fruit from each quart of whole berries–if you remove the seeds, it will be a much smaller ratio of fruit. Think about that while you are picking or buying berries.

Summer Blackberry Jam
Ingredients:

10 cups fresh blackberries, washed, picked over and mashed
5 teaspoons calcium water
5 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons butter
5 cups sugar
6 teaspoons Pomona Universal Pectin
1 1/2 tablespoons Cortas rosewater

Method:

Put the fruit, calcium water, and lemon juice into a heavy-bottomed pot on a medium low fire and bring to a boil.

While the fruit is heating, stir together the sugar and pectin quite thoroughly. After the fruit mixture boils, add the butter and sugar/pectin mixture all at once and stir the still bubbling fruit for at least two minutes to ensure that the pectin and sugar dissolve thoroughly.

Bring back to the boil and after it boils, stir in the rosewater thoroughly, then remove from the heat and ladle the hot jam into jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headpace. Fit a flat lid and then add the screw lid, making the ring tight.

Process in a hot water bath for ten minutes under fiercely boiling water. Remove from canner, set on a folded towel on the countertop, and leave undisturbed for twelve hours.

As mentioned before, have 18 half pint jars ready. I only needed 17, but I had quite a few scrapings and tastings before I packed the jars, so I might have had enough before Kat, Zak and I started taste testing it.

No, this isn’t traditional. At least, I don’t believe it is a traditional Indian dish. It’s possible that I hit upon a cooking method and ingredient list that is used in some of the South Indian states as a traditional dish by sheer luck, in which case, if there’s a real name for this, please, someone let me know.

Basically, I put this dish together to go with the Lamb Patties With Incendiary Green Chutney out of the vegetables from our garden and the other ingredients I had from the farmer’s market and laying about in the pantry.

This was meant to be a side dish, but if you wanted it to be the centerpiece of your dinner plate, you could add either tofu or paneer cheese and serve it with rice, spelt or wheat berry pilau or bread for a complete meal. You’d just pre-fry the tofu or cheese, then drain it on paper towels and then add it back to the pan at the same time you add the green beans so it has a chance to soak up the flavors from the pan without becoming overly brown.

I was inspired to make this because my curry plant is finally large enough to harvest bits and pieces, and I really wanted to use the musky-scented leaves in some sort of vegetable dish. I had green beans, a sweet bell pepper, garlic and carrots from our garden, as well as one purple onion from the market. Cumin seeds and mustard seeds go beautifully with curry leaves, so out of the cabinet they came.

Since the lamb patties are dry–though they are served with a green chutney and yogurt that acts as a sauce, I decided to add a little coconut milk to the pan to make a small amount of thick, clinging sauce which I colored with a scant bit of turmeric and smoked paprika. The paprika adds a subtle smoky flavor as well as color–I’ve found that it gives Indian food just a little bit more of a depth than plain paprika does.

Anyway, this is simple to make and tastes lovely. Zak, Kat and I gobbled it down gleefully–the vegetables retain their color and crunch, while still absorbing lots of the scents and savors of the spices. The coconut milk binds it all together and adds just enough moisture to keep the vegetables both crisp and juicy.

Well worth the time it took to think out and make, and is a good quick side dish or main dish to add to your repertoire.

South Indian Style Vegetable Saute
Ingredients:

1 tablespoon coconut oil or peanut oil
1 medium red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole mustard seeds
10 curry leaves
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and cut julienne
3 carrots, peeled and cut julienne
8-12 ounces green beans, washed, topped and tailed and blanched then drained
1/2 cup coconut milk, divided
1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/8 teaspoon smoked paprika (or regular paprika)
salt to taste

Method:

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium high heat. Add the onion, sprinkle with salt and cook until the onion is turning golden. Add the garlic, cumin seeds and mustard seeds, then the curry leaves. Cook, stirring, until the garlic takes on a golden color and the onions are darker gold. Add the pepper and carrot, and cook, stirring, for several minutes, until the carrots start to become tender and take on color.

Add the green beans, and cook, stirring until the onions are well browned and the vegetables have nice brown spots in places. add half of the coconut milk, add the turmeric and paprika, and stir to combine. Cook down until the coconut milk virtually disappears and the vegetables are tender. Add the rest of the coconut milk, stir and cook for one more minute.

Add salt to taste and serve immediately.

Makes enough for three adults and one child.

So, here’s the deal.

I like vegetables.

A whole lot. Like, when I was a kid, it was way easier to get me to eat my vegetables than it was to get me to eat most meats. (Bacon, lamb, trout fillets and good fried chicken were exceptions. I always loved those.)

In fact, for years, I was certain I didn’t like steak, because I associated that word with pieces of chewy, grey dried-out shoe-leather on a plate.

Yeah, lots of folks in my family overcooked meat.

But vegetables, man–even if I didn’t like them overcooked, if Mom served them to me raw, I was all over that. Green beans–cooked or raw–were my favorite. But carrots came a close second. Turnips, yeah!

So, let it suffice to say I’ve always been a big fan of the members of the vegetable kingdom.

But I’ve also always loved eggs.

Boiled, scrambled or fried, eggs have always had a fond place on my plate. This is probably because I grew up eating really good eggs from Grandma and Grandpa’s farm–I’m a great believer when it comes to truly fresh eggs from truly happy hens who spend their lives eating a varied diet of insects, greens, grain and kitchen scraps will convert most egg-haters into lovers of the beautiful hen-fruit.

But you know what’s weird?

I went through most of my childhood without ever having the two combined into one glorious dish.

No one in my family made omelets, and I’m pretty sure know one had even heard of a frittata.

And this is a sad thing.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager on a summer road trip/vacation to Monticello with my parents that I tasted a Western omelet at a roadside diner somewhere in rural Virginia. It was listed as a “specialty of the house” and was made with onions, bell peppers and sausage bits fried together then folded into the eggs with some really nice melty cheddar cheese. Well, actually, I think it was American, but that’s beside the point.

That was the first time vegetables and eggs were combined in my mouth and it rocked my world.

And so, I took to learning how to cook eggs and vegetables together.

Which leads to this post, which was supposed to be about making frittatas, except I forgot what I was doing about halfway through making mine and folded it and OOPS–made an omelet.

I’m sure you’ll all forgive me.

But it’s a weird omelet, in that it’s browned on the outside the way a frittata is, and I cooked the vegetables first in the pan I cooked the eggs in, like you do a fritatta. In fact, it’s a fritatta, except I didn’t flip it or stick it under the broiler, but instead half flipped it and half-folded it and damned if it didn’t turn out tasty as well.

This is another of my posts where I remind people not to fear failure in the kitchen. Failures often result in something interesting that you might not have discovered if you’d done everything right the first time. Besides, if it tastes good, is it really a failure, even if it didn’t come out as you meant it to? Besides, remember what Julia Child said about you being alone in the kitchen, so who’s to know if you make a mistake? No one if you don’t tell them, that’s who.

So, never apologize, even if your frittata turns out to be more omelet-like than you intended.

That said, do try making something like this recipe. It is quite good, and serves two to three people for a good brunch or a light lunch. I like it a lot with some sourdough bread toasted with great butter, but nothing is stopping you from replacing that with a salad, or even better, a salad with some garlic bread on the side.

Oh, and what to call this? The Frisky Frittata? The Almost Omelet? Plain old Eggs and Vegetables?

I like calling it Oeufs Verts, which is, of course, French for “Green Eggs” as in “Green Eggs and Ham.”

No, the eggs aren’t green themselves, nor is ham involved, but I like the sound of it, and if you use green vegetables (in this version, I used scallions and zucchini along with sweet red peppers) and herbs, I think that takes care of the “verts.”

Besides, this is a nice vegetarian dish and you cannot get more “green” than that, can you?

Besides, everything sounds better “en Francais.”

Oeufs Verts
Ingredients:

1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil or butter
2 scallions, cut into thin slices on the diagonal
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 small zucchini, cut julienne
1/2 small red bell pepper, cut julienne
4 eggs, well beaten, then blended with 1 tablespoon of milk
1 teaspoon butter
2 teaspoons or more to taste of freshly chopped fresh herbs–I used basil, Italian parsley and tarragon
3 tablespoons grated sharp cheddar cheese or any strong cheese of your choice

Method:

Heat the olive oil or butter in a heavy-bottomed 9″ in diameter non-stick or well seasoned cast iron pan on low heat.

Add the scallions and sprinkle with salt then season to taste with freshly ground black pepper, and cook until it’s just beginning to turn golden. Add the zucchini and peppers and cook, stirring until the onions are browning and the edges of the zucchini are brown and the peppers show a bit of browning action, too.

Add the teaspoon of butter, and melt, turning pan this way and that to distribute the melted butter and to spread out the sauteed vegetables. Use a spatula if you need one to get the vegetables into a uniform single layer on the bottom of the pan.

Pour in the eggs off heat, then put them back on heat again and let them begin to set on the bottom. Sprinkle with the herbs.

As the eggs cook, push the cooked edges toward the center of the pan with a spatula and then tip the pan to let the uncooked egg slide toward the outer edges. Keep doing this until there is a uniform layer of cooked egg on the bottom and most of the inside is starting to look a bit dry.

Sprinkle on the cheese and then carefully slide your spatula (A large vinyl fish spatula works best for this) under the eggs and lift it up, tipping the pan away from the eggs as you lift. Carefully fold the eggs over, so that you overfold it slightly, letting the last of the uncooked egg and some of the cheese to hit the hot bottom of the pan. Set it back on the stove and cook for about thirty seconds to one minute longer, then remove your mostly half-moon shaped eggs and vegetables from the pan and set it on a serving plate.

Cut it into wedges to serve.

You can saute any vegetables you like in this dish, just adjust cooking times accordingly. I like lacinato kale sauteed with onions and garlic in this dish and if you use a lot of it, it really makes the eggs green.