I am facing the fact that I will soon be leaving this food paradise. I have been living in the northern tip of California's central valley for nearly 10 years now. I have grown accustomed to having easy access to almost any kind of fruit or vegetable I could want. I expect to have TOO MANY tomatoes during the summer; which is not a real thing but means I have to start thinking of ways to use tomatoes rather than trying to save them for a special meal.
This looming transition has me thinking a lot about how one establishes good food practices. How do we go from having an empty barren kitchen, which makes cooking impossible, to having a stocked pantry, which makes cooking joyous. These thoughts are developing very much thanks to Jaleen who has been pushing me to 'food coach' her. I dont know what this means yet but I think that is because I have been in a fictional food land. My kitchen is always stocked, I have help shopping, I have farmers for house mates, I have a yard which is bursting with vegetables! My current concept of a kitchen is so different from what most of us face after a long day of work.
I plan on ramping up the 'advice' I give here as I start to take a hard look at how I put together a kitchen from scratch but today I have one thing to offer . . .
Always have tomatoes around.
I dont care if they are fresh or canned or sauced, tomatoes have incredible utility. The dish I am showing you here:
is pretty much tomatoes tossed on plain pasta and ti was DELICIOUS ( the basil is just garnish to make it look extra pretty)! Tomatoes have the unique pleasure of adding sweetness and acidity. They act like a fruity vinegar that can make flavors pop, add sultry color and natural saucyness!
Keep tomatoes on hand. If you are in doubt. . .look back through my blog and count how many dishes use tomatoes, oh we will find a way to use them dont worry.
For example: Home made pasta sauce. What I love about tomatoes is how you can just toss them in a pot with some oil, salt, pepper and garlic and let them simmer. There are all kinds of ways to get more fancy, roasting, peeling, pureeing, and so on but . . . I love the body of a basic simmer sauce. This sauce made use of cherry tomatoes (sun golds give this sauce a lighter color and higher sweetness). I simmered them with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar ( I love my vinegar). It took 45 minutes for this to simmer down to a sauce I liked. If I were more patient I could have made something wit a much more bold flavor but we always gotta balance that love of food with practicality and I was hungry.
While the sauce was saucing along I prepared the pasta and some extras. Mostly I sauteed some onions in olive oil with a bit of garlic. Towards the end I pushed in some chard (because it grows like a weed here and adds lots of yum), making sure to cut the stems out first. The stems go in the pan earlier than the green (dont you dare throw them out!
If you get your timing right, and let the onions go s-l-o-w so they get sweet and smoky, the sauce is ready at the same time as the extras (which could have included mushrooms, or bell peppers or zucchini or any vegetable we would like but I just wanted sauce). Toss the pasta in the vegetables with the garlicy oil you used to saute. At this point you could also toss the pasta with sauce to give a really even coating. I spooned my sauce over the top for presentation but dont worry I had fun mixing it up a second after this picture!
I hope to become more consistent after I relocate . . . but I dont know what I will be more consistent with. In the mean time . . . Keep Eating!
No comments:
Post a Comment