I could give you excuses for why I've been gone so long. It's not that I haven't been making food, because I have. It's not even because I haven't been taking pictures of my food, because I've been doing some of that, too. It's CERTAINLY not because I have been away from the internet for any amount of time. Don't be crazy.
Things I can potentially use as excuses:
- I moved from one house to another house.
I battled a dragon.- I accidentally found myself working two jobs this summer.
I spent the month of July doing a meditation-based hiking tour of Mount Ranier while blindfolded.I got a pair of mittens stuck on my hands and couldn't type.
I do have a recipe success, though! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to go with it, at the moment. However, I'm planning to re-make this tasty dish when I head to the family homestead in a few weeks, so hopefully I'll take pictures then and upload later. It'll be like they were here all along...
EDIT: PICTURES
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| CHOMP |
So these tomatoes.
(First, a detour.) Some people reading this may know a guy who used to sit at my house table as part of something informally called "The Square." The Square was a group of three guys known for entrapping anyone foolhardy enough to sit in the fourth seat at the table (thus, Completing The Square) in thick and twisty philosophical discussion. At one point, I may have completed The Square, or I may simply have been in firing range, because I got into a conversation about human awareness, desires, and consciousness. Specifically, degrees of want. So, "I want ice cream" is a first-degree want. But "I want to NOT want ice cream, because I'm on a diet" is a second-degree want, because the want-er is aware of one level of desire, and is exercising a different level of conscious control, confounding the first-degree desire because of the perceived superior importance of the second-degree desire.
So basically, how I feel about tomatoes.
That's what I told The Square. That I have a number of second-degree desires regarding food. I want to like tomatoes. I want to enjoy watermelon. I want to reap the social benefits that go with the eating of these foods--the connotations of summer and picnics and sunshine and the camaraderie of the universal brotherhood of people-who-think-that-fresh-from-the-garden-tomatoes-are-delicious. To that end, I try out these foods--that otherwise set me gagging--once every couple of years, in the wistful hope that maybe, maybe my tastebuds will have mutated just a teensy bit, and I will finally be able to take part in the summer that is watermelon and tomatoes and red checkered picnic blankets.
After I gave this answer, The Square chatted a bit about how social pressures could be an incitement to second-degree desires, and then probably went on to talk about Plato and the mutability of market forces. I don't remember. But now I can't think about any of those second-degree want foods--tomatoes, watermelon, beer, goat cheese--without thinking about that conversation. (It always comes back to meals at the house table, doesn't it? Call me, UChicago. I'm ready for my alumna soundbite.)
This meandering preface is simply to say that I've achieved one of these second-degree wants. I've developed a taste for tomatoes.
Anyone who has known me for several years or more, now's your chance to freak out.
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And done. Freakout over. Pull yourself together. Geez. How do you think I feel? Anyway, recipe. It's full of all the summery things I could find in my fridge, plus some that I found at the farmer's market. The quinoa stuffing was intended to draw the moisture out of the tomatoes, which it did admirably. It also had the added benefit of crisping on top, much like a crust of bread crumbs would have done. The dual-natured quinoa--crispy on top, soft and tender inside--was my favorite surprise of the recipe. Apart from how delicious it was, of course.
Quinoa-Stuffed Tomatoes
(makes 2 servings)
3 medium tomatoes, halved--I used roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise, to give me a bit of a long boat shape
1/3 cup quinoa
2/3 cup water
1 slice bacon
1 tbsp crumbled feta cheese
1/2 tsp brown sugar
Pinch nutmeg
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp pesto
2 oz goat cheese
Olive oil, for drizzling
Preheat oven to 325 F.
Cut/scoop out the innards of the tomato halves. I did this simply using a knife dragged around the line between rind and pulpy, seedy flesh. Remove innards to cutting board and dice.
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| Empty tomatoes, waiting to be filled with delicious. |
In small saucepan, heat water on medium-high to just boiling. Add quinoa and lower heat to a simmer. Toss in the diced tomato guts and juice. Keep heat on for one minute more, stirring to make sure all the quinoa is evenly cooking, and then cover, turning off heat entirely.
Chop the strip of bacon into nice 1/4 inch chunks. Once quinoa seems sufficiently bathed in steam and tomato juices (quinoa should be translucent, instead of bright white, with some stem showing), add the chopped bacon and feta. Stir, grinding and sprinkling in the sugar and spices. Set aside briefly.
Now, it's time to fill those tomatoes! Hooray! Put the tomato hulls on a baking sheet or in a shallow baking pan. Line each one with a spoonful of pesto.
Then add a heaping spoonful of the quinoa/bacon/feta/allofPaula'sfavoritethings mixture to each. It's fine if it overflows a bit--the tomatoes will probably get a bit collapse-y anyway. Then, top each tomato with a slice of goat cheese, smushed out to roughly cover the stuffing. (The coverage isn't important--don't worry.)
Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil and place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes start to get collapse-y and the topping gets nice and brown and crispy. Then, while pondering the social forces which led me to this recipe, DEVOUR.
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| The tomatoes that live on my back porch. Sometimes I eat them. Right off the vine. You don't know me. |
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