Posts Tagged ‘tomato’

I love discovering new ingredients to play with. Part of the reason I find cooking so exciting and challenging is that there is an endless ocean of cuisine, recipes, ingredients, and food out there to sail though, and although sometimes the waters are choppy, it’s always a fun adventure.

I tried bison meat for the first time recently via it being on sale at my local grocer, and I was amazed by the taste. It really wasn’t gamey as I had expected it to be, but had a very rich, meaty flavor with a great natural earthiness to it. And then I found out it has half the calories and 1/8 the fat as normal beef, plus it’s always free-range. I was in love.

So pondering what to do with a pound of ground bison… meatballs naturally popped into my head. Spaghetti and meatballs is one of those comfort foods universally loved, like pizza or mac n cheese. So why not take on a classic. The meatballs are unbelievably tender and moist despite using such a naturally lean protein (something I was worried about), and the flavor is classically garlicky with parmesan.  My recipe for simple tomato sauce is one of those great things that you can make with pantry staples and it barely takes any time or attention. Plus it always tastes better than the jarred stuff – I guarandamntee it.

Panko.

Meatballs!

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I don’t know about you but after that last post I needed a break from complicated cooking. And since the temperature keeps dropping, my soup Achilles heel weakened me once again and I felt the need to make something that required a lot of simmering and an over-sized Dutch oven.

Now as much as I love Kraft singles between sliced Wonder bread with a bowl of Campbell’s watery tomato soup, sometimes I’m craving something a little more… substantial. I love a good chunky tomato soup so it’s filling and feels like a meal, not just an appetizer or snack, and this recipe fits that bill quite nicely. The texture is thick and hearty, perfect for dipping say, French bread toasted with some Parmesan cheese sprinkled over it. Or maybe a grilled cheese with rye bread and pepperjack sandwiched between it. No matter what you pair with it, this soup is rich, satisfying, and the perfect thing to warm you up on a cold, lazy day.

And a fun note to end with! I recently won Endless Simmer’s contest for Smallest Kitchen (hooray! sort of?) and they gave me a nice little shout-out so I wanted to return the favor. Thanks, guys!

Happy Autumn, everyone! Well, maybe not happy, since this is the weather that greeted me yesterday:

Talk about inspiration for something warming.

You know that scene in “Ratatouille” when Anton Ego is stopped dead in his tracks when he smells and tastes Remy’s ratatouille because it so acutely reminds him of his mother and his childhood? That’s what this dish is to me. Not only does this chili remind me of autumn and thus it was my first dish I happily made for the season, but it so embodies my vision of my mother in the kitchen.  Almost every Sunday in the fall she would make a huge batch of soup or stew, whether it be chili, potato soup, beef tomato rice, chicken noodle, etc, and always make it an all-day affair. Even when I would come home once in awhile from Cornell my mom would still make a batch at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning so I’d have a few Tupperware containers to take back with me.

The chili was always the best though. I remember asking my mother for the recipe time and time again to which she would always reply “There’s no real recipe – it’s a method, and every batch is different, you know that.”

So here is my version of my mother’s method, which she learned from her own mother.  It’s such a simple dish, with very few (and cheap) ingredients. It’s all about time and layering flavors (like any good soup or stew) so this isn’t something you can whip together on the fly and eat 20 minutes later (in my dreams).  I use almost all the same ingredients my mom and grandma do and did, except I change the cooking method a bit to keep the texture of the veggies a bit sharper and I up the spice level quite a bit.  The celery adds such a nice freshness to the chili and alongside the sweet tomatoes, nothing feels or smells more like autumn to me than this dish.

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Be careful what you wish for or you just might get it.

Right before I made this dish I was musing on how out of all the recipes I’ve tried specifically for this site, only one has been labeled a complete and total failure (oh feta dill pie, you were terrible and let’s not speak of you again).  This recipe doesn’t quite make it to ‘failure’ status, but it certainly won’t be receiving the ‘favorite’ tag either.  Since my sister and I have The Shining, we made this within 3 days of each other and both did our spins on it, with mediocre results.  She used capers instead of olives, I used pecorino romano instead of feta and a different pasta shape, yet both results were lackluster.

The idea behind this dish is great.  Like pasta puttanesca, you make a room temperature tomato  sauce (using the best heirloom tomatoes in this case) with some olives, toss hot pasta with it, add some cheese, and dig in.  Since I’ve been battling a horrible head cold and didn’t feel like spending my energy standing in the kitchen for hours, the idea really appealed to me.

The flavor isn’t bad per se, it’s just very subtle and nothing extraordinary.  Something I did notice however while snacking on the cold leftovers late last night was that the flavor intensified and the entire dish was more enjoyable cold, after sitting for a day.  Honestly, if I were to make this again, I would make it, chill it, and serve it the next day as a cold pasta salad.  But hot for an entree?  Probably not again anytime soon.