Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Pasta

This dish is simple and rich thanks to the magic of your humble oven.  A great way to use up large quantities of cherry tomatoes or those that are no longer at their peak.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Pasta

Serves 4

2 pints cherry tomatoes, washed and halved

4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

½ red onion, diced

Olive oil

Salt and crushed red pepper to taste

2 teaspoons dried oregano

¼ cup, loosely packed, torn fresh basil leaves

2 tablespoons capers

1 lb. linguine

On a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spread out your chopped onion and sprinkle with salt, dried oregano, and crushed red pepper.  Layer tomato halves on top, drizzle with olive oil, and lightly salt.  Place in the oven (middle rack) and bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until tomatoes start to shrivel.  Remove from oven, sprinkle with the sliced garlic, and bake another 5 minutes.  

While tomatoes are roasting, cook pasta in well-salted water according to directions on the box, drain and set aside.  When tomato mixture is done, toss into pasta along with fresh basil and capers.  Taste for additional salt and serve.  

Tastemakers invitation: Peet's Café Domingo blend

As a Foodbuzz blogger, I am occasionally invited to participate in a program called Tastemakers, in which a sponsoring product will give me free stuff in exchange for a blog post about said product.  I did this recently with Sargento cheese because I like cheese and free things, but as you can see from my post, it was a little awkward for me.

But when Peet's Coffee sent me an invitation, I jumped at it.  I love Peet's; it's the coffee we most prefer in my house, when it's not too expensive.  I loved the story of Alfred Peet as I learned it in Taylor Clark's informative and entertaining book, Starbucked.  In Clark's recitation of American coffee history, Alfred Peet is the cranky old immigrant in Berkeley, California who reluctantly agrees to apprentice the two scruffy graduate students who would late found a certain big-name coffee shop.  That part's not important.  Peet's coffee was revolutionary in the 1970s, when America was still accustomed to weak, insipid drip coffee served in styrofoam cups for 50 cents in doughnut shops.  After reading about it, I went to find some at my local grocery store, and I've been a fan ever since.  I am also generally a fan of stories about cranky old men, but I'm planning to see someone about that.

Well, I digress, but what I got in the mail was two new medium roast blends and a request to create some recipes for foods that would pair well with each.  My next post will cover more savory recipes to accompany Peet's Café Solano; this post concerns Peet’s Café Domingo, which is described as having "hints of toffee sweetness" (and boy, does it!).

I preferred this new blend to be made quite strong, probably because I'm accustomed to drinking the darkest thing I can find.  It is pleasant, but the caramel flavor I detected limited it, in my opinion, to being appropriate for sweet foods.  I instantly thought the fresh nectarines we had in the kitchen would work perfectly the first morning I tried Peet’s Café Domingo, and I was right.  I also wondered about my favorite sweet nut, almond, and created a variation on my mom's shortbread recipe to go with this blend.  Both work well as pairings with this coffee. There's also a bonus pumpkin-invaded recipe, because it's October and I like to be trendy, which compliments the toffee-ness of this coffee blend.

Breakfast Sundae

It’s so simple, I feel guilty typing this up as a recipe, but it makes me happy every morning.  I know I need to eat breakfast to avoid snacking on Doritos by 10am, but waking up enough to actually think about what to make is a daunting task by the time the coffee is done.  This is easily produced, delicious, and covers most of the nutritional bases to get me through to lunch.  Use whatever fruit is in season.


Serves 1:

1 peach or nectarine, washed and cut into approx. ½ inch pieces
1/3 cup yogurt (I prefer Greek style vanilla or honey flavors)
¼ cup granola
Some almond slices

In a bowl, layer in this order: peaches, yogurt, granola., almond slices.  Enjoy with a medium-bodied coffee like Peet’s Café Domingo.




Toasted Almond Oatmeal Shortbread

This is a slight modification of my mom's Oatmeal Shortbread recipe, so lovingly described here.  The toasted almonds bring out the toffee flavor of Peet’s Café Domingo, I think.

Makes about 5 dozen pieces.  

1 cup unsalted butter
½ cup white sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
1 ½ cups flour
3.4 teaspoon salt
1 cup quick oats
½ cup slivered almonds.

Preheat oven at 325°F.  In a dry pan over medium heat, toast the slivered almonds, shaking the pan often,  until they begin to turn golden and become fragrant (about 4 minutes).  Remove from heat and reserve.

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl.  Gradually add the flour, oats, toasted almonds, and salt.  Press into a greased 13x9x2 pan.   Bake for 30-35 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges.  Cool 10 minutes before cutting into squares.

And finally...


Pumpkin Harvest Muffins

Because it's October...and I succumbed to the pumpkin trend...

Makes 24 muffins or 2 bread loaves

1 cup white sugar

2 c. brown sugar

1 can (15 oz.) cooked pumpkin

4 eggs, beaten

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup canola oil

2/3 cup water

2 cups unbleached white flour

1 cup whole grain wheat flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 ½ cups dried cranberries

2 tablespoons flax seeds

½ cup chopped dark chocolate (Ghirardelli’s baking bar, for example)

Preheat oven to 350˚F.  Combine sugar, pumpkin, eggs, vanilla, oil, and water; mix well.  In a separate bowl, combine flours, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flax seeds; add to egg mixture and stir well.  Stir in nuts, chocolate, and cranberries until well incorporated.

Pour batter into two medium-sized muffin pans (12 muffins each) or two bread loaf pans.  For muffins, bake approx. 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean.  For bread pans, bake 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of loaf comes out clean.

Savory Crepes Primavera

I borrowed the basic crepes recipe from my friend, Tiffini, who uses chick pea flour, giving a nice protein boost to this meal.  Use whatever vegetables you have, and don't be stingy!

Savory Crepes Primavera

 

Serves 4

 

Crepes:

 

1 cup flour (for a protein kick, use chick pea flour)

2/3 cup water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

¼ cup grated zucchini, drained

1 tablespoon minced red onion

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon salt 

1 tablespoon crumbled feta

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

 

Combine all ingredients into a runny batter; cook over medium heat in a large hot skillet that has been liberally prepared with cooking spray until golden on each side.  Each crepe should fill the skillet, yielding a total of four.  Place in a baking dish and keep warm in the oven at about 250°F.  

 

Vegetable filling:

 

1 large onion, sliced into half-rings

4 large yellow, orange, or red bell peppers (or any combination), sliced into 1-inch strips

1 tablespoon Olive oil

Salt

½ cup green beans, blanched and Frenched (pull apart at the seams)

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon capers

 

Sour cream for serving, optional

 

Wipe out skillet and heat the oil in it over medium heat.  Add onion, peppers, and the salt and cook about 20 minutes, stirring frequently, until onion is very soft and peppers start to wilt.  Add the balsamic vinegar and green beans, cover and reduce heat to low, and cook another 15-20 minutes or until vinegar is mostly reduced.  Stir in capers and remove from heat.  

 

To assemble: Place one crepe on each of four plates.  Place equal amounts of the vegetable filling in a vertical line in the middle of each crepe; fold over the sides to create a loose burrito.  May be served with sour cream on the side.  

In praise of unhealthy food

Well, in light of my recent post siding with Anthony Bourdain, perhaps this title seems a bit hypocritical.  Perhaps it would be better to praise "eating food for food's sake" and "not freaking out every time a new item at the grocery store is labeled a super food".  My thoughts today are about whether or not we can rely on our groceries to stave off cancer, keep us looking like we are 20 forever, and make us thin.  Despite ongoing, desperate reports to the contrary, it appears that about all food can do is keep us from going hungry.

This is no longer meat.

Those antioxidants in super-expensive pomegranate juice?  Slate tells us they are probably useless.  In fact, who knows?--they might even be bad for you.  Drinking milk after workouts to get/ keep thin?  Probably a load of crap pushed through by the powerful American Dairy Association.  Remember the food pyramid?  It's gone.  Remember when eggs were bad for you?  Now they're good!  Potatoes?  Also good!  Bacon?  No longer considered a meat source!

What I am trying to illustrate is our utter and complete confusion regarding exactly what the perfect diet is for all Americans.  It's no wonder, of course--different bodies probably need slightly different foods.  But with so much idle time and our dabbling in what the media has convinced us is "science", we have spent far too much time, in my humble opinion, searching for magical ingredients to help us live forever and puzzling over why others seem healthier than we are.  The Asian diet, because some Asians live much longer than some Americans, has been touted as our new savior: very little meat, lots of vegetables, tea, and tofu.  No booze.  It sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

But then, why do Italians have such low incidences of heart disease when they drink red wine and eat pasta every day?  It's the fish!  If you eat exactly what they eat, you, too, will have a healthy heart!  You see, it's all healthy fat.  That's the difference.  But wait--what about the French?  They don't go to the gym, they eat stinky, fatty cheese, duck liver, and tons of white bread, and they drink champagne like it's going out of style.  That does sound awesome, but is it a diet America can get behind?  Well, they live slightly longer, on average, than we do and they are noticeably thinner as a culture, so yes, yes we can do that.

The Italian diet in action.

Here's the dirty little secret that never gets mentioned in our obsessive, schizophrenic search for the perfect diet: A LOT of countries have longer life expectancies than we do.  35 countries, to be exact, including Japan, Italy, France, but also Malta, Macau, and Israel, where people are constantly killing each other.  We kind of suck at staying alive, apparently.  Same thing for staying thin, which is supposed to help with being alive.  We are fat and die earlier than others despite our constant anxiety and our constant talk about diets and health.  And we will experiment with all kinds of kooky, nonsensical fads, but we never seem to make up our minds.  So here is my inexpert, entirely non-tested advice (but I'm not overweight and I'm not dead yet, so who knows?):

Don't eat this too often.  Unless you're my grandpa.

• Stop looking for a miracle cure.  It's not pomegranate juice, nor pasta, nor red wine (sorry).  No food or beverage will guarantee that you won't contract some rare form of cancer and die at age 35.  And while many people around the world struggle just to eat enough to stay alive, isn't it a bit crass to pay $26 for an antioxidant tonic promising to be your new fountain of youth?
• Stop trying to copy others.  My grandfather lived to be 92, and he ate only tan foods whenever possible: fried chicken, potatoes and gravy, and of course Werther's carmels.  He had low blood pressure, low cholesterol, and was relatively active late in life.  I would not attempt his diet for myself (because it's disgusting), but it worked for him.  And tofu and veggies work for a lot of Japanese people, and cheese that smells like feet works in France.  Our bodies are all different, though, so that doesn't mean that any of these approaches will work for you.  
• Stop acting like a freak and use some common sense.  Three meals of Reese's peanut butter cups every day, while FABULOUS!, is probably not good for you.  Nothing but grapefruit all week, with no other nutrients to round it out, is also probably not a wise choice.  That cheesy omelet you had last week?  Meh, I don't know.  But if you're worried about it, maybe you can have some more broccoli today to even things out.  Moderation, and not constantly worrying, might be the only tricks we need.  

               

Oh yeah, and

• Move your fat butt off the couch!  French people aren't thin from loving life, they are thin because they walk everywhere.  I have perfectly mobile colleagues who will wait for an elevator for several minutes to go up one floor, so strong is their disdain for walking up a flight of stairs.  Stop it.  That's stupid.  

This is how you walk.  Try it today!