using my last tomatoes

The larger of my two tomato plants is reaching its limit in my yard. The fruit is really not ripening any more so I have a great deal of green tomatoes. SO I decided to try to make fried green tomatoes. I sliced a firm green tomato into roughly 1/2" rounds, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. I pan fried them in a shallow puddle of hot canola oil until they were a nice brown and no longer really hard. Then I laid them on a plate with paper towels to soak up some of the oil.

Results: Not that exciting. I really kinda felt cheated by the flavor of these. I just really wanted them to be better. I ate them with some cholula hot sauce and that perked them up but overall, they were kinda disappointing.

Ideas: I also read about dredging them in cornmeal instead of flour. So my idea is maybe using cornmeal and some more spices would jazz them up. I am unwilling to totally give up on fried green tomatoes.

Does anyone else have any uses/ideas for green tomatoes?

Pearl couscous fruit salad

I got this recipe from a colleague of Akiko's. I've only made it once, but I think it's a winner.

Ingredients:
pearl couscous (a.k.a. Israeli couscous)
1 pomegranate
1 can mandarin orange slices
dried currants
vegetable oil

1. Split open the pomegranate and remove the seeds. I found cool directions for this on-line. As you're separating the seeds from the fibers inside the pomegranate shell, drop the seeds into a bowl of water. The fibers will float, while the seeds will sink. Then you can skim the fibers off and drain the water and you'll have mostly fiber-free seeds.

2. Make 1 cup of pearl couscous as per the directions. The stuff I had said: bring 1 and 1/4 cup water to a boil, add 1 cup couscous, simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Optionally, add a little butter when you add the couscous. I didn't add butter, but maybe I should have.

3. When the couscous is done, transfer it to a bowl and stir it until it cools off. The idea here is to keep it from glopping up. The recipe says that when it starts to cool off add a little veggie oil; this is where I think cooking it with butter or oil might have helped, because no matter what I did it still ended up kind of sticky. The good news is, it was still good.

4. Stir in the pomegranate seeds.

5. Open the can of mandarin orange slices, drain, and stir in the slices. (Of course you could use fresh tangerine slices, too, if they're in season.)

6. Stir in a handful of dried currants. (Raisins are a good substitute if you can't find dried currants, but if you can, I think the currants match the pomegranate and mandarin orange a little better.)

7. Voila. You're done.

Apple Cider Vinegar

My Vegetarian Times finally started coming again (there was a crazy address problem after we moved) and it has a tiny article on apple cider vinegar in it. Only one recipe (for salad with vinaigrette) but several general food suggestions. Since Taryn was asking about cooking with cider vinegar, I thought I'd post them.

It says and I quote: Apple cider vinegar's bright, crisp taste and more-than-a-hint-of-tart flavor work well with lentil soups, slaws, baked beans, braised cabbage, and roasted winter squash. Bean salads and cooked whole grains also take well to apple cider vinegar's tang.

Brother Momonjii's Japanese Curry, Variation #2 (Summer, again)

This is very similar to the previous one, but with a few differences.

1. Use S&B Tasty Curry sauce, medium-hot. (Japanese name is Torokeru curry, which means "melt-in-your-mouth." It's a little milder than Java.)

2. Cut up a chicken breast, a couple of yellow summer squash, and some carrots.

3. In your kettle, sautee the chicken in butter with some ground sage and thyme.

4. Add the carrots and sear.

5. Add water.

6. When the carrots are starting to get soft, add the squash and some frozen corn kernels.

7. When everything's soft, add the curry.

8. When the curry is dissolved, while you're simmering it, add lemon pepper to taste. Make sure it's salt-free lemon pepper; additional salt at this point would not be a good idea. (BTW, Spice Hunter brand Lemon Pepper is pretty awesome - like, zowie-strength lemon flavor.)

9. Add unsalted sunflower seeds, and simmer until they begin to get soft.

This one, too, is good with parmesan cheese, or with hard-boiled egg (either shredded or just cut in half).

This is, I'll admit, pretty close to Variation #1, but different enough to be worth repeating, for us at least.

PS: If you like J. curry as much as we do, it's worth making a whole box at once, even if you're only cooking for two, because, as every Japanese cook knows, it's better the second day. Something about the way the flavors seep into the ingredients overnight. In fact I think one reason so many households there have Curry Night once every other week or so is because it means you don't have to cook the next night. Bonus.

The contents of our dry goods cabinet (well, the main one). We have one of those corner cabinets with lazy susans in it, and it's a little busted. So Eric took all the stuff out to look at it but it's not fixed yet. All stacked up like that it's sucking up counter space and blocking the microwave, but it looks cool, so I took a picture, which I'm following up with my top ten dry staples.

1. basic short rice, of course. I'm lumping white and brown together as number one. It's a rare week that we don't eat this, usually several times. Plus I think it's better the next day than basmati, which gets dry really fast.
2. other rice--basmati, arborio, wild rice, jasmine. I once did a presentation for Relief Society on vegetarian cooking and food storage, and when I said I had several kinds of rice, several ladies were surprised there even were several kinds. *sigh*
3. wheat--I don't actually use the wheat, but Eric makes bread with it every couple of weeks, so I reap the benefits of his wheat usage, mostly in the form of toast.
4. quinoa--when I feel like we've eaten nothing but rice all week, I make quinoa instead. It's cute and round, so you've gotta love that.
5. pasta--I like different shapes because they fool me into thinking I'm eating different foods. Yay!
6. lentils--these are pretty much the only 'beans' I cook from their dry state because I am too lazy for other beans. Lentils usually means green lentils to me (or cute French blue ones) but I also use red lentils sometimes. I make a pretty tasty lentil salad, maybe I'll post the recipe later on.
7.peanuts, for cooking and snacking.
8. millet--I only have one recipe for this, but it's got a great, nutty flavor so I'd love to expand my millet use.
9. split mung beans (moong dal)--I also only have one recipe for these, but I also throw them into soups.
10. barley--you can cook this up like rice and put stuff on it, but I rarely do that. But I throw it in crockpot soup to add texture. It keeps its chewiness even with long cooking.

Brownie mix

I don't bake very much. Only when I can't avoid it. Recently it became unavoidable to make brownies: our local supermarket back in Somerville carried some brownies we were addicted to, and our local supermarket here doesn't have anything to compare, so we finally started looking at brownie mixes to see if anything would fill the void, since making brownies from scratch wasn't in the cards.

The upshot: we like Ghirardelli's Dark Chocolate brownie mix. Rich, even gooey, but still with a cake-like fluffiness, and a firm, almost crisp surface. And of course like the other brands it takes like two minutes to mix it up.

So there you have it.

Recipe Generator

I discovered this a few weeks ago and thought it was funny, and I just remembered it again now. It's a recipe generator with a junior high sense of humor. The recipes don't look like links, but they are.

Warning, this website contains foul language and may literally insult you. ;)

What the fuck should I make for dinner?