Tomatoes

Recipes: Marinara tomato sauce, Polenta with cheese and tomatoes

This time of year, we're always inundated with gorgeous homegrown heirloom tomatoes.

Brandywine heirloom tomato

That's a good thing, of course. Except that they all come ripe at once and it's a race to eat them, cook them, use them all before they spoil. We have five big tomato plants and they've all produced like champs. I've been cooking sauce all week.

Last night was the fifth big pot of sauce I've made in the last four days. To say I'm tired of cooking tomatoes would be an understatement. However, I'm not yet tired of eating tomatoes and the sad thing is . . . suddenly they will be gone. And there won't be any gorgeous homegrown delicious tomatoes until this time next year. I'm not complaining.

Most of the sauce I've made I've frozen in quart freezer baggies, to use when I have no tomatoes. This year's crop is super sweet, and even though canned tomatoes beat tasteless supermarket tomatoes by a mile in winter, there is no option that will come even close to what I have in the freezer. We'll get to enjoy the bounty later, which brings me joy.

Half the sauce I made last night went into a terrific polenta dish I learned to make from an old Greens cookbook. Greens is a wonderful vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco, one of the first really gourmet vegetarian restaurants, and is still going strong. Here's the method for both the sauce, just enough for the polenta this time, and the polenta with cheese.

Marinara (Tomato) Sauce 

• 5 good-sized ripe fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped, with their juices. Best way to peel tomatoes: Cut out the stem/core at the top, slip the tomatoes into boiling water to cover for 5 seconds, pull them out with a slotted spoon. Once cooled enough to handle, the skins slip right off.
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, sliced thin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• A sprinkle of crushed red pepper
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste (optional)
• 1/4 cup dry white wine

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil. Turn off the heat and put the sliced garlic in. Stir a bit and let cool down slightly so the tomatoes don't spatter. Put the tomatoes in. Turn the heat back up to medium low. Add the herbs and seasonings and stir.

Add tomato paste if you have it. I keep a baggie of tomato paste in the freezer and use it to thicken the sauce, but it will be fine without it.

Simmer the sauce over low heat for about an hour, stirring now and then to keep it from sticking. You will see when it cooks down and starts to become thick. When it gets quite thick and the pieces of tomato have broken down, add the wine. Stir well and cook for another 15 minutes.

Polenta with Cheese and Tomatoes

You will need:

• 5 ounces Danish fontina cheese
• 1 ounce Gorgonzola cheese

For the polenta:

• 1 cup medium ground polenta
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add salt. Whisking all the while, slowly add the polenta. Cook over medium heat, whisking, for 15 minutes.

Pour the cooked polenta into an 8" x 8" pan and let cool. This is a good thing to do while the tomato sauce is cooking, as it takes about an hour for the polenta to cool completely.

To assemble the dish:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly butter a gratin dish.

Put 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce into the prepared gratin dish.

Cut the cooled polenta into rectangles. Place a rectangle of polenta into the gratin dish, then put a matching slice of fontina cheese next to it. Place another rectangle of polenta next to the cheese and continue layering until the gratin dish is full. You can push the rectangles together a bit to get some more in.

Decoratively drizzle a few thick stripes of tomato sauce over the top of the rectangles. Crumble the gorgonzola cheese over it all and give it a good grind of fresh black pepper.

Bake in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes. When it's done, you can top it with some chopped fresh basil if you have it. I served mine with a kale salad, any salad or simple vegetable would go well with this dish. Buon appetito!

Power cooking (or truth and immunity)

Recipes: Pork chops and coleslaw, Cheesy polenta with roasted winter vegetables

Happy New Year! The start of a new year is the perfect time to take a look at how we eat. I'll bet you over-indulged over the holidays. I know I did, and here in the U.S. we have the added juggernaut of Thanksgiving which is pretty much devoted to eating till you burst. It just goes on from there until mid-January - parties, dinners, candy, cheese and crackers, drinks. Fun, but at the end of it you feel awful. Your clothes don't fit and you're exhausted.

If it started and ended there, it might not be so bad. The truth is, many of us don't make smart choices when it comes to food all year 'round. As a result we get to the holidays with already too much weight and too little energy. We need a pick-me-up and that doesn't mean another cocktail. It means we need to eat better food.

"The surest way to escape the Western diet is simply to depart the realms it rules, the supermarket, the convenience store, and the fast-food outlet. It is hard to eat badly from the farmers' market, from a CSA (community supported agriculture) box...or from your garden."  
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food.


Easy to say "shop at farmers' markets", if your city's farmers' markets don't operate in winter. Easy to say "grow your own", if it's currently minus 7 degrees F outside and snow covers the ground. Nothing's going to grow in that. If that's your situation, you can locate the indoor market with the best, freshest, most nearly organic goods possible in your area and buy good food there, all the while planning what you're going to plant in the spring and finding out when your farmers' market will open.

We're lucky here in northern California and you may be in your area too. Our farmers' markets operate year 'round, and we can grow many vegetables through the winter. I grow in pots, so I can control the watering and feeding (that's part of my winter garden pictured above - cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts). These plants are easy to grow if you have a spot that gets some sun, and where the temperature doesn't actually dip below 32 degrees F for more than a few hours at a time. When it does, you can throw a towel over the plants and they do just fine. Nothing in the world is as good as fresh picked vegetables. They have a taste that's so good, it's hard to describe.

Well, enough talk. Let's do some cooking. Here are two dinners I've made recently that feature winter vegetables. Try them and see what you think.

Pork Chops with Coleslaw

• 2 medium boneless pork loin chops, not too fatty but not too lean either,about 1 inch thick
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 medium green cabbage
• 1/2 small onion, sliced very thin
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon sweet or hot paprika
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise (light mayo is fine)
• For edible plate garnishes: a couple slices of avocado, a spoon or two of applesauce, a couple slices of persimmon, or a couple slices of ripe pear. Pork is wonderful with fruit.

Season chops on both sides with salt and pepper and let them sit on a plate for about 30 minutes, while you make the slaw.

Cut your cabbage half in half, and cut out and discard the core. Slice the rest crosswise into narrow strands and put them in a large bowl. Add the sliced onion and a little salt and toss.

Make a vinaigrette in a separate small bowl. Mix the vinegar, salt, pepper, and paprika, and then whisk in the mayonnaise with a fork. If you prefer a non-mayo coleslaw, you can substitute an equal amount of extra virgin olive oil for the mayo.

Toss the cabbage mixture with the vinaigrette and set aside in a serving bowl until the chops are done.

Heat a cast iron or non-stick frying pan with one teaspoon of olive oil. When it is hot, put the chops in and turn the flame to medium. Cook for 4 minutes (5 minutes if your chops are thicker than an inch). Turn the chops and cook for another 4 minutes (again 5 if the chops are very thick). Put the chops on a dish and let them sit for 10 minutes so the juices can re-arrange themselves and the chop can finish cooking.

Plate the dinner, pour the wine or beer, and enjoy!

Vitals: 

The latest research shows fats are better for you than originally thought. It's really sugar that's the culprit in much of what fats used to be blamed for. So pork with a little fat is not a bad thing. The key is portion size and moderation.
Cabbage: Along with many other cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, red cabbage, cabbage contains antioxidants called isthiocyanates, which help keep the immune system working properly...essential in winter cold and flu season!

Cheesy Polenta with Roasted Winter Vegetables

Adapted from a recipe in Eating Well in Season.

• 1 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed into 1-1/2 inch chunks.
• 1/2 pound brussels sprouts, ends cut and outside leaves stripped. Leave whole, but cut an X into the end of large sprouts. (or substitute another vegetable, like cauliflower florets)
• 1/2 medium onion, sliced
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder or granules (not garlic salt)
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• Freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

Toss all the above together in a bowl. Spread on a rimmed, parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast, stirring once, until tender and browned in spots, about 25 to 30 minutes.

• 2 cups vegetable broth or chicken broth
• 3/4 cup water
• 2/3 cup cornmeal (I use the coarser cornmeal marked "polenta")
• 1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary, or a pinch of dried rosemary
• 1/2 cup finely shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

While the vegetables are roasting, combine broth and water in a small saucepan with a lid. Bring it to a boil.

Slowly whisk in the cornmeal, rosemary, and a little freshly ground pepper until smooth. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring now and then, until it is very thick and creamy, about 15 minutes.

Sir in the cheese and remove the polenta from the heat.

Pour three or four large spoons of polenta into each dish, and top with the roasted vegetables. A green salad, a kale salad, or some quickly sauteed sausages makes this a complete meal.

Vitals:

This dish is a wonderful vegetarian entree if you use vegetable broth rather than chicken broth.
Butternut squash is an excellent source of beta carotene, which your body converts to vitamin A, a nutrient that helps keep your immune system strong. Again, excellent for winter cold and flu season. Go Immune System!