Provencal Tomatoes

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your dining and shopping companion fancies some juicy tomatoes that aren't even in season yet and before you know it they're in yr fridge, expectantly awaiting a suitable preparation. When that happens, pull out the old Provencal Tomatoes recipe and show your aforementioned dining and shopping companion who's boss (or at least, show him what you'll be forced to do if he purchases un-planned-for tomatoes).

For two large tomatoes (makes 4 side-dish servings):
1. Prepare 1.5 cups of either cooked quinoa or fresh breadcrumbs.
2. Mix the quinoa in a bowl with:
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 tbsp chopped shallot, green garlic or green onion
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
1/4 tsp dried lavender flowers
1 tsp olive oil
3. Slice the tomatoes in half around the equator. Squeeze lightly over the sink to expel seeds. Place cut sides up in a baking dish and stuff with the quinoa mixture. Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes or until the stuffing begins to brown on top.

i heart pork

I've decided bacon -- juicy, free-range, organic, salty, greasy bacon -- is my new favorite food. Possibly also guanciale or pancetta. Anyway, I've been playing with pig products lately and made some delicious things over the weekend:

First off was some yummy Carolina barbecue on Saturday. I adore Carolina barbecue, but I've always figured it wouldn't taste right if I tried to make it myself. Fortunately, I was wrong, and the stuff I made was delicious (though not identical to the real thing). I used the recipe in the Joy of Cooking, which calls for pork shoulder rubbed with something they call Southern Spice Rub and slow-roasted in a covered dish, then shredded and doused with vinegar sauce. The recipe works as written, with two changes: less cumin in the Spice Rub, and keep it well-covered -- any juices that collect in the pan should go right into the vinegar sauce. Very easy to put together and hard to screw up.

Next was a Pate Grandmere/Maison to use up the delicious pork liver in my freezer. I dipped into various recipes and freely substituted to come up with the following modernized approximation:

1. Keep all mixing bowls, implements and ingredients as cold as possible until the pate goes in the oven.
2. Combine about 1/4 cup pork fat with 1 pound pork liver in a food processor, pulsing until just pureed.
3. In a large mixing bowl, stir together 1 pound ground buffalo, 2 eggs, 1/4 cup cream (or whole-milk yogurt), 1 clove minced garlic, 1/2 tsp freshly ground nutmeg, 1/4 cup brandy, 1 tbsp kirsch, 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley, 1 tsp dried thyme, and 1 tsp dried marjoram.
4. Add the pork fat/liver mixture and stir until just combined.
5. Add 3/4 cup fresh raspberries and fold gently into the mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into a pyrex loaf pan and cover tightly with foil.
7. Place the loaf pan into a larger casserole dish and fill the casserole dish with hot water to halfway up the sides of the loaf pan.
8. Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until juices run clear. If, like me, you stab your meat thermometer into a buried raspberry, don't be surprised if the juices aren't clear.

The recipes I was looking at call for lining the loaf pan with bacon strips. I don't approve of this, myself; the pate is fatty enough on its own, and flavorful enough without the distracting smokiness of the bacon. Although I do love bacon (see above).

The only problem is that a whole pork liver makes much too much pate for two people to eat by themselves. I've been having it for lunch and dinner for the past three days and it's less than half gone. Save it for a party.

Italian Sausage Puttanesca Pasta Casserole

Cook about 2/3 of a pound of organic whole-wheat penne.

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Meanwhile, chop and saute an onion, some garlic, some green pepper if you got it. Add about half a pound of delicious hot Italian sausage made from a happy and delicious pig. (I used to find pork products so boring and would never buy pork in the store. Now that I think about it, I also used to find supermarket beef and chicken boring too. The only interesting meat for me was lamb -- which is often grass-fed, coincidentally perhaps. Anyway, this fresh, free-range, organically-grown, real-food-fed pork is a COMPLETELY different animal, with a completely different taste, from the Smithfield special.) Brown and break apart the sausage.

Add a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes, 1/2 cup chopped olives, 2 tbsp chopped fresh Italian parsley, and a few mashed anchovies. Simmer for a bit but don't boil it. If your tomatoes were juicy, as mine were, I highly recommend pouring off the watery portion into a separate shallow pan and boiling it down into a delicious concentrated paste, which you can then return to the main event. This really didn't take long.

When the pasta's done cooking, drain and toss with the sauce. Put the mixture in a casserole dish and sprinkle with about half a cup of grated parmesan. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until the cheese has melted and some of the pasta on top is nice and chewy. Add a veggie or salad and serve.

Roasted Onion Tart

The leftover leeks, spring onions, and green garlic from the farm tend to accumulate in the bottom fridge drawer, leaves turning brown, since they're my least favorite part of the box by far. I don't much care for the flavor of green garlic and I'd much rather have a solid workhorse of an onion that I can chop, saute and forget about than these green things that dry up and burn. Fresh green onions I can accommodate at the rate of about one every two weeks. Anyway, this is a great way to use up those lonely leftover alliums.

Roasted Onion Tart

1 pound assorted onion-family veggies (I used 1 large and 2 small spring onions, 1 medium leek, and 3 stalks green garlic, tough outer leaves and leaf tips removed)

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt

10 sheets phyllo (about 12 x 12 in. square)
1/8 cup melted butter OR olive oil

2 oz. blue cheese, crumbled
1 tbsp chopped fresh sage

Chop up the oniony stuff into fairly even chunks. (I quartered the large bulb ends and chopped the long stems into 1-inch lengths.) Mix the next five ingredients together and toss with the onions. Roast at 425 for about 30 minutes or until softened and getting brown around the edges.

Layer the phyllo in an 8- or 9-inch pie pan, drizzling a bit of the melted butter or olive oil between every couple of layers. Blind-bake the phyllo crust by sticking it in the oven during the last 10-15 minutes of onion roasting, and remove when the edges look browned.

Scrape the roasted onions into the phyllo shell with their delicious juices. Sprinkle the fresh sage on top, then sprinkle the blue cheese over that. Put the assembled tart back into the oven for about 5 minutes or until the cheese has melted. Slice & serve, yum.

The recipe on which this one is loosely based called for a can of refrigerated pizza crust dough, which I never have lying around, so I changed it to a phyllo crust. The phyllo worked fine with the freshly made tart but reheated the next day a bit soggy, so in this version of the recipe I recommend blind-baking the tart for a longer time.

Coeur de Porc au Vin

Sorry for the long delay. It's been a while since I both worked up a recipe worth talking about and then had time to post about it afterwards. But this one was pretty good:

Coeur de Porc au Vin

Melt a tablespoon of butter or lard in a saucepan with a splash of olive oil.
Finely chop one medium onion and cook over medium heat until softened, along with a bit of bacon.
Take one whole Clark Summit Farm pig heart, split and rinse it.
Brown the heart with the onions, then add 1 cup stock and 1 cup red wine, along with 1 tsp dried thyme, 1/2 tsp dried rosemary, 1 clove finely chopped garlic, and salt and pepper to taste.
Simmer, but do not allow to boil, for about 1 hour or so or until tender.
Remove heart from stock and wine and allow to rest for 5 minutes.
In the meantime, make a roux and whisk into the cooking liquid. Reduce the cooking liquid to a sauce.
Slice the heart in thin slices against the grain, pour sauce over, and serve.
Serves 2-3 people who like heart and 4-6 who don't.

I served mine with steamed quinoa and a salad. The quinoa was tasty but the salad couldn't stand up to the heart's flavor. The heart itself was delicious, chewy and fine-grained; it reminded me of duck. Even the chief taster, who confessed he'd been dreading this dish, was favorably impressed (though he did doubt its palatability for children).