Passata!

It's that time of year that we go from famine to feast where tomatoes are concerned. Not that tomatoes are concerned about much.

I'm so proud of LW who's been slaving away in the veggie garden, tending the seeds she germinated, encouraging the seedlings, weeding, feeding and and pruning the swiftly-growing plants so that they crop well without falling over in the sub-tropical storms that pop up just when its time for the tomatoes to ripen. As a result, we have a beautiful crop of tomatoes, with a few amazing varieties represented here. The "Moneymaker" is the standard, and tastes good enough, and looks great, the "Beefsteak" is big and tasty, and the "Great White" (which is yellow) is great (but yellow), but the star is the "Brandywine"; a huge (as much a 500g per fruit) and ugly, split, odd, and misshapen as a tomato could get. But the flesh is a dense, almost watermelon texture, with few seeds, and the taste is that pure, old-fashioned sweet and tangy flavour that all tomatoes used to have until they started appearing in supermarkets with labels saying things like "grown for flavour" on them.

of course I removed any dodgy bits...

Naturally, they all ripen at the same time and the glut has to be used. And our favourite is passata. It could be made and put in jars, but we prefer to freeze ours and it keeps for a year, no problem.

Here's what I do: Gently sweat an onion and a few cloves of garlic. Deglaze the pan with white wine and some worcester sauce and add a few herbs. For this one I used dried "herbes de provence" and some salt, 

then add about 5 kilos of chopped tomato, and let it simmer in its own juices for about an hour. 

no really, I did.

well, you'd never know.

Once the tomatoes have softened and fallen apart, put the whole lot through a mouli, and then bag it up in 250ml portions for the freezer.

It makes a great pizza topping, or pasta sauce, or, as LW did, is the basis for a brilliant ketchup! 

Very useful stuff, and a great way of stretching out the tomato season all year round.

veggie (well almost!) cannelloni

I know that some people regard him as a bit of a prat. But if you have ever used any of Jamie Oliver's recipes you'll know that he's pretty much excellent, almost all of the time. I like his enthusiasm, and I'm really liking the "at home" series and book that comes with it. Here's one of his recipes, with (most unusual for me) almost no variation from the printed word.

Cook broccoli and cauliflower florets in salted water for a few min and drain, keeping the liquid. Fry some finely chopped garlic for a few seconds and then add anchovies, (and their oil), some thyme leaves, a crumbled dry chilli, and fry for a few more seconds before adding the veggies and a small amount of the cooking water, and stew slowly for 20 min. Add more of the veggie water if it looks too dry. Keep the lid off for the last few minutes to evaporate any excess liquid off. Season.

Mash the resulting stew to a smooth paste and spread over a plate or oven tray to cool.

Meanwhile, spread a layer of passata over an oven dish with a splash of wine vinegar.

When the vegetable paste has cooled, pipe it into the cannelloni,

and put the filled cannelloni on top of the passata.

Cover the pasta with basil leaves

and then a white sauce made of creme fraiche, grated parmesan and seasoning.

Grate more parmesan over the top and spread some torn mozzarella on top.

Then bake at 190degC for about 40min.

Here's how it looked after baking, all bubbly and delightful:

And here's how it tasted: Superb! The chilli was hotter than anticipated, which certainly was noticed by LW, and I will modify next time I do this dish, but I will certainly cook it again.

Pizza night!

I hate pizza. Actually, I thoroughly dislike the soggy, thick dough-ed, over-dressed stuff that passes for takeaway pizza. But every so often we make some dough (breadmaker!) and construct our own. It's always Margherita; and we keep it as simple as possible: Olive oil, passata, tomato (fresh or sun dried) mozzarella and basil.
We have some of the last ripe tomatoes of the season, so they had to go in:

The dough has to be rolled as thinly as possible, the oven has to be as hot as possible, and the stone on which the dough sits goes into the oven for ages 1st.

It was just slightly overdone; amazing just how quickly they cook! But it was delicious nonetheless. We plan to build a pizza oven this spring, so that we can cook them outside in intense heat, but doing them this way- I love pizza!