Slow-Roasted Summer Tomatoes

Tomatoes seem to be falling from the skies these days and gardeners, as well as farmers' market junkies, are enjoying luscious piles of red, orange, yellow and green juicy goodness.  I can't help myself when I see ripe, just-picked tomatoes at the market, and I always tend to over buy.  This recipe is a great way to ensure that not-a-one precious little globe will go to waste.

Okay, so this is less a recipe and more a philosophy, the philosophy being: when you have produce at the height of its season, the best thing you can do to it is simply not much... add a little fat, a little salt and pepper, and let it just revel in all of its harvest glory.  In fact, when I went to write the recipe, it was going to call for 3 pints of cherry tomatoes, but then I used half of one of my pints in my lunch salad and you know what?  The recipe will still be delicious.  So I am going to not even write this like a recipe and instead just tell you this:

• Pre-heat your oven to 300F 
• Rinse your tomatoes
• Toss them in good olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• Put them on a baking sheet and in the oven for an hour, tossing periodically and adding more oil if they look dry

When they come out, they'll be falling apart, slightly caramelized and ridiculously delicious.  Cook your favorite shape of pasta (mine is cappellini, the husband's is rigatoni... both work well with this sauce), drain it saving a bit of the cooking liquid, and scrape the entirety of your baking sheet of tomato gold into the pot, adding the pasta-water bit by bit for extra moisture, if needed at all.  Garnish the whole thing with freshly chopped basil and shredded parmesan and enjoy on the spot.  You could also add some sauteed sweet Italian sausage to the mix if you have a hungry Italian guy to feed, or save some out to spoon onto crostini for a quick bruschetta.  Honestly, it is hard to go wrong with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes.  If you must, you can even just sit and eat them with a spoon.

Mangia!

Cookbook Fetish

Some women like shoes, others like jewels, still others are obsessed with their gardens.  Me?  I love my cookbooks.  My collection is wide, growing and inclusive.  How to Cook Meat sits alongside Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone on my shelves, up and over from Cooking with the Dead (as in Grateful, not passed to the other side) and Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet (a tome on the various cooking styles of Southeast Asia).  My cookbook collection is probably more reflective of my life experience and personality than any other single entity in my life.  And like any good collector, I'm still hungry for more. Recently, I've come across some gems I'm scouting for my collection...

I've always loved Jamie Oliver: his accessible recipes, timely message about school lunches and the state of nutrition for our children, affable working-class Brit sensibility and adorable surfer-boy grin.  I own and love Happy Days with the Naked Chef, and now have my eyes on his latest cookbook  Jamie's Food Revolution, which I was able to thumb through on a recent visit to my sister's house. I am all about "simple, delicious, affordable meals" these days, and this was one of those books where I wanted to dog-ear almost every page.  Each recipe seemed to speak to me, a busy mom on a budget, but could easily speak to any recent college grad or simple home cook.  Jamie draws inspiration from all cultures to give recipes for everything from curries to roasts, and I want to try just about every one from this book.

 

I've mentioned my new favorite cooking blog, Dinner: A Love Story, here before, but I am so smitten with the blog and the book forthcoming from its author and her fellow former Cookie Magazine editors, that I must mention it again.  If Time for Dinner is even half as good as the blog, it will be your go to cookbook every night of the week.  Family dinner is what life is all about, and these ladies aim to make it happen every night, without a nervous breakdown on the way... picky eaters, packed schedules and impatient toddlers will not deter them. If you have a young family or are looking for a fun gift for a friend who does, I am not afraid to recommend this book without having seen it firsthand.  Anything touched by Cookie gets an automatic endorsement from me! 

 

Finally, over the weekend I was having a conversation with one of our great foodie friends about all the things we plan to cook this winter, and he reminded me about a book called All About Braising. Although it is not on my shelves, I've known about this book for awhile, as in a past life I waited tables at a restaurant where we did a book party with the author, and the whole to-die-for menu was right out of the book.  With our current lifestyle, braising suits us perfectly... I love the idea of sticking something in the oven on a Sunday morning, going out and playing in the snow and doing our thing all day, and returning to something tender, succulent, and incredibly low-maintenance for dinner, straight out of a long, slow braise in the oven.  It is so on.  

What's your favorite cookbook?

Fantasy Fall Part 1

Fall is on the horizon, and along with the apples, pumpkins, cooler nights and switch from white wine back to red, come fall fashion and beauty products, all being heavily and cleverly marketed to the likes of me.  Okay, I'll bite.  Certain gentlemen I know like to have a fantasy football draft this time of year, so this is my version: Fantasy Fall Catalog... wherein I will "draft" my "picks" for fall greatness.  Hut, hut hike!  Or whatever.

Pick #1

Check out the 7 For All Mankind Featherweight Trouser in Deep Blue Black.  Oh yes...my quarterback, to be sure.  I love the color, love the drape, love the lightweight denim (because ever since having the baby, something in my metabolism has changed and I am ALWAYS roasting hot...can't bear the thought of normal-weight denim most days).  Love that I could wear these to chase little J at the playground and be the hip city mom I strive to be these days, but also dress them up for an evening out.  Top draft pick right here.
Pick #2

In the words of Rachel Zoe, "I love me a sequin" and the J.Crew Ciel étoilé cardigan delivers.  I love how delicate the sequins are... a little special, but not over the top.  I could wear it to take little J to music class in a "oh yes, I am wearing sequins before 10am on a Monday...bring it" kind of way, or I could pair it with my favorite costume-jewelry earrings and those QB trousers above for a night out with the chicas.  Very wide receiver and oh so pretty.
Pick #3

Remember when I told you about the Eat, Pray, Love branded collection at Fresh?  I was captivated by the description of the products (and, like the marketing sucker I am, my love for the book made me assume I would love the scents... makes absolutely no sense at all, but that is what they are banking on), but had not actually smelled them with my own shnoz.  Well, my fave playground for little J just happens to be a few blocks from Boston's Fresh store.  So recently, I "had to run to the restroom at Starbucks" and happened to cruise on by for a sniff.  OH MY.  I just swooned over "Love", the fragrance inspired by Bali.  Peeps, I think I have found my scent.  I think Fresh's genius marketers say it best, "This fragrance bottles the bright, colorful, anything-is-possible feelings of falling in love. Scents of passion, like percolating pheromones, sun-caressed skin, and salty kisses, are combined with the lush aromas of Bali’s exotic landscape".  Hells yes.  I couldn't stop smelling my wrists for an hour after my spritz.  I LOVE the floral, fruity, unabashedly flirtatious scent.  And at $32/bottle, this is more attainable than some of the other delicious but super-pricey scents on the Fresh roster.  Call it my cornerback of sexiness.
Pick #4

Last time I was a serious yogini, I had not yet had a baby.  As such, my small but formerly adequate collection of yoga tops no longer work for me.  As I recommit myself to my practice, I require something more forgiving and much more supportive than my spaghetti-strapped yoga tops of yore.  My favorite yoga teacher happens to be one of my nearest and dearest and also happens to be quite well-endowed in the boobage, and she swears by Athleta yoga tops to do the job and do it well.  I fancy this blue one with the cute, cute back.  Since it will help me get my buns back in shape, I will call it my tight end.
Pick #5

MoroccanOil Intense Curl Cream is the offensive tackle on my wish list this Fall.  Like all MoroccanOil products, it smells like the love child of sandalwood and the beach, and works like a dream; tough enough to tackle even the roughest frizz!  After my last haircut, this was scrunched into my wet hair, and as it air-dried, the curls held beautifully. When a product is recommended by your hairstylist, InStyle Magazine and the best man from your wedding, you know it is a winner. 
Pick #6

This shirt would be my runningback; the workhorse, dependable, daily wardrobe pick.  J. Crew's Twist Knot T looks soft and comfy enough to wear all over town, yet there is an added cuteness with the twist that says, "see, I am making an effort."  It is affordable enough that you needn't be crushed if someone gets jelly on it and it comes in many cute colors, some of which would hide jelly spectacularly well (see "wild plum").

Apparently there are 11 people on the field per football team during a game, so my list is merely half-done.  Stay tuned for Part 2, which will feature my kicker (hint: ballet flats) as well as my linebacker.  Aw yeah.

In the meantime, tell me, what's in your fall line-up?

P.S. - I would like to dedicate this post to the husband, who endures my (often-wrong and ill-conceived) football analogies with good humor and minimal eye-rolling, and to my girl Sara Sully Goody who, though quite pregnant, is no doubt hosting the best fantasy football draft you've ever seen again and with style and flair as per usual (Jason, you're a lucky man).

Sublimely Silent Breakfast

Q: What do you do when it is 10am, you still haven't eating breakfast, you've run 4 miles and need some restorative calories, and you are about to get on a conference call and don't want to be slurping and chomping into the phone?

A: You whip up a silently sip-able and delicious breakfast in the form of a smoothie.  Mine is protein and potassium packed, making it a great recovery drink, and I split it with little J, who got kind of hot on the run himself.  He sucked it down and asked for more, so this was a win-win all around.
SMJ and Little J's Favorite Smoothie
Ingredients
6 ice cubes
1/2 banana
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/2 cup calcium-fortified vanilla soy milk
1 teaspoon honey
1 heaping tablespoon almond butter
small handful blueberries
Directions
Throw all ingredients in blender.  Blend until combined.
Serves 1.5

*Please note: I had no time for photos this morning... I was truly on the fly.  So I found the beautiful photo above on All Recipes, where it illustrates a recipe for a Banana-Peach Buttermilk Smoothie which looks divine... try both recipes while the weather is still toasty!

Dip-o-licious

Mine is a household that takes appetizers seriously.  As we've discussed before, the husband is a sucker for chips and salsa, and I would be happy to have cheese and crackers for dinner any day of the week. In fact, dinner of appetizers is one of my favorite dinners, hands down.  However, our cheese spreads have been getting old, and aren't the healthiest option, and the brutal heat is back, meaning lighter and more refreshing fare was in order to accompany our Sunday evening barbecue sesh.  I thought a bounty of fresh veggies would be just the thing, but lest we be too virtuous, they'd need a dip to make them special. When I am in the mood for perfection, I always turn to Ina, who never lets me down.  


The Pan-Fried Onion Dip in the original Barefoot Contessa Cookbook is a play on the French onion dip we all grew up eating (packet of French onion soup + container of sour cream = 80s party staple), but this version of that classic is so much more complex and flavorful than the original.  Why?  Because instead of using dried, sodium-crusted onions, you caramelize fresh onions into ooey, gooey perfection, and blend them with a melange of creamy items until the whole thing is ridiculously smooth and dreamy.  Honestly, how can you even compare this:

To this:

You can't. 
There's nothing like keeping it fresh.  Try this while all the harvest veggies are at their finest.  YUM.

The Barefoot Contessa's Pan-Fried Onion Dip
Ingredients
2 large yellow onions
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup good mayonnaise
Directions
1) Cut the onions in half and then slice them into 1/8-inch thick half-rounds. (You will have about 3 cups of onions.) 
2) Heat the butter and oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onions, cayenne, salt, and pepper and saute for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 more minutes until the onions are browned and caramelized. Allow the onions to cool.
3) Place the cream cheese, sour cream and mayonnaise in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth. Add the onions and mix well. Taste for seasonings. Serve at room temperature.

End of an Era

My parents moved out of their house this week.  I was thinking I'd just gloss over that little happening in our lives on SMJ... maybe find some cute fall trouser-jeans or another good pasta dish to post about, but I've realized I just can't.  It is the end of an era for our family and this move of my parents' is major, and it is tugging on my heart this week in a way that just can't be ignored.  So, I'm writing about this today in an attempt to get some closure, and also in an homage to a place my whole family called home for the last nine years.

Nine years may not sound like a lot to those of you whose parents stay in one place for decades, who always come home to the same place with the same tchotchkes that have been there since you were a child.  In my family, however, nine years is about an eternity.  Wherever my parents land next will be their twelfth house they've lived in my thirty-three years, so you do the math... we moved a lot.  The home where my parents most recently lived was one they built themselves on the beach in Maine, and a place where a lot of big life things happened.  My sister was married at this house, baby J had his naming there.  We all boomeranged back there at one point or another as well.  I spent one particularly rough patch of 2003 living briefly in the foyer (don't ask), but most recently, as you all know, our whole little family set up camp there for about four months while we figured out what life would like in Boston.

The hub, the babe and I moved 3 times in his first year of life, and it was hard on me.  I went back to work before I was ready, I never quite hit my sweet spot of being a working mom in those first months back, and my body chemistry rebelled against me, making me anxious and sleepless more often than not.  By the time we landed at my parents house in February, I felt raw and fragile, and more than a little exhausted.  Being at the beach healed me.

  

Every day, my parents and B would leave for work, and eventually I'd get little J down for a nap, and then I'd head out to their porch.  I'd work out there, think out there, conduct endless conference calls and other business out there, pacing back and forth across the granite steps; but no matter what I was doing, the ocean stretched out in front of me, and it soothed my soul right to the very core.  In the warm embrace of my family home and the endless sea, I found my little bit of peace again, and started to find my way back to my self.  Beyond every dinner around my parent's massive dining room table, beyond every party we threw in the great room for every engagement or expected baby or graduation, the time we spent there this spring will always mean the most to me.  It was part time passing and part family and part chemistry that helped bring me back, but the house was the setting, and for that I will always be grateful.

I know a few things for sure: that wherever my family is is home to me, and that can never be defined by the walls of any house.  I know that wherever my parents land next will grab on our hearts the same way, thanks to my mom's uncanny ability to make spaces inviting and beautiful.  I also know they won't be too far from the ocean and the beach that we all hold so dear.  With a short drive, we'll be able to walk the same walks and see the same views... this doesn't have the finality of a cross-country move or anything like that.  But as we say goodbye to the gray-green cupboards, the collection of heart rocks on the porch and in the yard, the cool concrete floors and the yard rolling down to the sea, I have to pause and give thanks.  Thanks that we lived in such a beautiful place, thanks that our family forged through good and bad times there to emerge together with strength and love, thanks to the ocean that soothed each of us in its own way.  And thanks to my parents, whose love for us and for each other is filled with goodness and grace, and makes any space one worth calling home. 

Rainy Night Comfort Food

Can I even tell you how much I am loving this weather?  In Boston, it is rainy and 65-ish, and I am savoring every minute of it.  The past few weeks of baking hot weather might be nice under other circumstances (beach, umbrella drink, good book) but have been rather patience-testing in our current reality (moving, unpacking, organizing, working like fiends).  I was born in Portland, Oregon, and the Oregonian in me will always have a soft spot for dark, rainy days.  I just love the cozy feeling that comes from being able to hole up inside, don a few layers, and cook something superbly delicious, especially as a respite to all the heat and hectic-ness we've been through lately.  We had a busy weekend of moving furniture from my parents' house to ours and generally dealing, so this chilly Monday evening was the perfect time to settle in and rest with some Italian comfort food.

At Whole Foods last week, I spied some Niman Ranch Uncured Ham and impulse bought it.  Ham and other pork products don't come naturally to my cooking lexicon, you'll be shocked to find out.  Growing up in a Jewish home, pork products were just non-existent, even though we never kept kosher.  Now, the husband has shown me the piggy light, and I am coming around adding things like guanciale or pancetta to dishes, but it still rarely occurs to me to buy pork chops or ham at the store.  Nonetheless, this ham steak looked beautiful and all-natural to boot, and I decided it had to be mine.  But what to do with it?

Hello, Radiatore with Ham and Peas.  Where have you been all my life?
Ingredients
1 lb. radiatore pasta (I used veggie radiatore from Trader Joe's and it was delish, but any variety could work, as would orchiette or shells)
1 tablespoon butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 green or yellow tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
~6 oz. ham steak (preferably all natural, uncured... this Niman Ranch one was phenomenal), cubed
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup half-and-half
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
Directions
1) Prepare pasta according to package instructions.
2) Heat the butter in a deep skillet.  Add the minced garlic and saute until golden, about 3 minutes.
3) Add the chopped tomatoes and saute until wilted, about 5 minutes more.
4) You'll likely be running out of liquid at this point, so add the olive oil as you add the ham steak and peas.  Saute until the peas are cooked through and the ham starts to brown a bit, about another 3-5 minutes.
5) Add the half-and-half and turn the heat to low.  Allow the mixture to reduce and thicken as you drain the pasta.
6) Add the drained pasta and the cheese to the skillet and mix well to combine.  Season generously with salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4-6 people.

Health food this is not, unless we're talking about the health of the soul.  This was such a gratifying and comforting meal, and although it does have a bit of cream and butter, a reasonably sized bowl left me feeling perfectly full and not over-indulged.  Everything in moderation, right?  With a glass of wine and some good dinner conversation, this was just the thing for rainy late summer evening.  Oink.