Olive stuffed tomatoes and parsley and red onion salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Due to insane busyness at work, I have a number of things mentally queued up to post about.  This was actually what we had a a starter for our Christmas Day meal which tells you something about how long my mental queue is!

Cherry tomatoes being hollowed out

Because we were having a relatively heavy main - spanokopita - I wanted something light for the starter but, at the same time, something special.  For some reason, things always feel more special when they're stuffed.  I suppose it's because you know that someone spent ages with their thumb in a series of tomatoes to produce it. Even if that someone is you.  The main lesson that I took from this is that, if you do not want your thumb to be completely numb at the end of this, you should make sure the tomatoes are room temperature before you begin. 

Anyway, that life lesson aside, this was pretty good.  I got some cherry tomatoes - well, baby plum tomatoes, I think but it amounts to the same thing - hollowed them out with my thumb, stuffed them with olives (I had to chop the olives to get them inside but obviously this depends on the relative sizes of your olives and your tomatoes), and served on a bed of chopped red onion and herbs. 

Red onion and parsley salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

cheese-baked egg-stuffed tomatoes - Sally Butcher recipe

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

For no particular reason, I've been making a few things lately that involve baking eggs inside things.  I love eggs and baked eggs are a great way to have eggs for dinner, rather than the usual breakfast.  I also rather enjoy the thrill of fitting the eggs inside whatever it is.

I have Sally Butcher's Veggiestan out of the library at the moment and one of the recipes that I instantly wanted to try was this one for tomatoes stuffed with eggs and topped with cheese.  Cunningly, it involves putting some bread underneath to sop up the juices and make more substantial.

These were pretty easy - just scooping out the inside of tomatoes, frying some onions, mixing some of the inside of the tomato with the onions, cracking an egg inside each and topping with cheese but look a lot more impressive.  I did think that they might go better with brunch than dinner, though.

Hollowed out tomatoes

Hollowed tomatoes with eggs inside

Stuffed tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Salsa

For some reason, it's taken me ages to get salsa right.  It's not that different to Gujarati chutneys (not what is in English considered a "chutney" but spicy sauces of various descriptions to accompany samosas and bhajias and other such savoury things) which I can manage just fine but salsa just never worked for me.  I tried various recipes online but the consistency just didn't come out right - too watery or too chunky or both. ARGH.

Anyway, the other day, we were having Mexican food and I resolved to try again with salsa.  I've tested this recipe out a couple of times since (in the interests of science, obviously, not just because it resulted in more Mexican food) and it appears to work.  Hurrah!  I no longer have to buy it at the supermarket and feel like a dismal failure.

Salsa

Recipe:

Quantity:  plenty for two people who really like salsa.

Chop four tomatoes and two onions finely (do not use a food processor, this makes it all too watery) - I like pretty much a 1:1 ratio of tomatoes to onions but, obviously, if you aren't as fond of onion, you may want to dial back on the onions.

Add the juice of a lime.  If you don't have a lime, lemon works pretty much equally well.

Add  about two tablespoons worth of tomato puree - I find this is the key to making it not watery.

To taste, depending on how hot you like your salsa:  red chilli flakes, paprika, sumac, black pepper.  I find the blend of different types of pepper gives it more depth.

And, obviously, a bit of salt.  Optionally, a little bit (like a teaspoon or so) of vodka gives it a little kick that's quite nice.  Topping with chopped coriander is also good but not vital.

Baked Aubergine with Tomatoes and Feta (Melitzanes Fournou me Tyri)

I've mentioned Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking before.  I've been trying a few more things from it out.  One of the things I really like about the book is that it has some more unusual things in it.  One of them was this recipe which is the Greek version of the classic aubergine/eggplant parmigiana or parmigana di melanzane.

Essentially, it is the same dish but with feta instead of mozzarella and kafalotyri instead of parmesan (if you can find it, I didn't bother since I had parmesan in the house).  I loved it - surprisingly different tasting to aubergine parmigiana despite being prepared in virtually the same way - much more intense than the Italian dish, perhaps not surprising as Greek food in general is more gutsy than Italian food which for my tastebuds can sometimes get a bit too delicate.

Essentially, you slice and fry a couple of medium sized aubergines.    Put them aside.  They look like fish.  It is silly.

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Then make some tomato sauce - I went for a tin of nice Italian tomatoes simmered and seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper and a dash of red wine.  Then crumble 200g of feta in a bowl.  Then put some of the aubergine slices on the bottom of a baking dish, put over a third of the tomato sauce, a third of the feta.

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Aubergine slices with tomato sauce and feta

Do that again until you've run out of stuff and put the kafalotryi or parmesan on top at the end.  Then bake at 180 degrees for around 20 minutes until the top is golden.

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to go into the oven

Baked aubergines with tomatoes and feta ready to eat

Party food - puff pastry tarts, mushroom & stilton, tomato, garlic & olive, tomato & mozzarella

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tart

One of the things that I find difficult about hosting parties is providing enough food to cater for different preferences - e.g. people who don't like cheese or tomatoes or whatever - while not cooking so many different things that results in kitchen chaos.

At the party we hosted recently, I went for making mini puff pasty tarts with different toppings.  Very easy, can be made small enough that they are finger food, and allow you to have a variety of toppings to appeal to all.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tart

Mushroom and stilton puffy pastry tarts

What you do is:  buy some puff pastry, cut into squares of about 2 1/2 inches square, put on topping, bake for 10-15 mins at 200 degrees C.  It's worth leaving some space around the edges to avoid spillage but you don't need to leave more than about a 1/4 of an inch.  To avoid having to faff in the kitchen too much with guests around, we baked these the morning of the party and served at room temperature but they would be good hot/warm too.

The toppings I went for were:

Mushroom and stilton:  which I made by frying mushrooms in butter and sherry, then melting in some stilton.  These were probably the ones that got eaten fastest at the party.

Mushroom and stilton puff pastry tarts

Tomato and mozzarella:  thin slice of tomato on each with a slice of mozzarella on top.  These looked like mini pizzas.

Tomato and mozzarella puff pastry tarts

 Tomato, olive and garlic:  slice of tomato, olives and chopped garlic.  Mmmm, garlic!

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tart

Tomato, olive and garlic puff pastry tarts

Tomatoes stuffed with blue cheese

Stuffed tomato!

So, a while ago, I experimented with stuffing leeks with blue cheese, with the stuffing mixture adapted from Ottolenghi's fantastic stuffed onions.  I thought the leeks were a little tough but I really liked the stuffing mixture, so I decided that I'd use it again, this time for stuffing tomatoes.

I scooped out the insides of nine tomatoes and left them upside down on some kitchen towel while I dealt with the filling, get them as dry inside as reasonably possible.

Hollowed out tomato

Hollowed out tomatoes

The stuffing was slightly different this time to the time with the leeks, because of having slightly different ingredients on hand but was broadly similar:  two slices of bread's worth of breadcrumbs, 6 finely chopped spring onions, three cloves of garlic finely minced, 300g of Danish blue, a handful of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of mustard, a glug of olive oil and salt and black pepper.

Stuffing

Tomatoes ready for stuffing

Tomatoes ready for stuffing

I then stuffed the tomatoes and baked for 20 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Cooked stuffed tomatoes

Verdict:  very nice, though probably more of a starter than a main course (unless you serve with something else - we had garlic bread with them).  If you want the tomatoes to be more roasted, it's probably worth baking them for longer (which probably requires putting the tops back on them so that the stuffing doesn't get burnt or baking them for five minutes or so before stuffing them.) We quite liked them at the level of roasted they were, though.

Cooked stuffed tomatoes

Roasted tomatoes, inspired by Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries has a couple of recipes that involve halving then baking tomatoes with olive oil, a bit of garlic, and chopped fresh herbs on top.  All well and good, I thought, but not enough garlic.  This is quite a frequent thought, I have.  I love garlic and so do tomatoes.  How to get more garlic into this dish?  I decided that the way forward was to try slicing some garlic and then sliding it into the tomatoes.  It works rather well and you end up with lovely roasted tomatoes with little bits of roasted garlic inside them.  I recommend having some bread to mop up the juice with.

Mmm, tomatoes

Putting garlic into tomatoes

Putting garlic into tomatoes

Tomatoes ready to go into the oven

Recipe:  slice tomatoes in half, slide bits of garlic into tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil, fresh herbs (I think parsley and/or rosemary stand up better to baking than basil, myself, but it's up to you - I've also used coriander before as I am more likely to have it in the house and that also works), a little bit of balsamic vinegar, salt and lots of black pepper, bake for about half an hour or until they look tasty.

Barley, tomato, feta and garlic risotto - Ottolenghi recipe

This is how much garlic goes in!

I've been meaning to try pearl barley risotto for a while now and, last week, the bag of barley that I bought started guilt tripping me with its forlorn stare so I had a quick google for a recipe and came up with this one from Ottolenghi whose recipes I generally enjoy.  Any recipe that starts with two whole heads of garlic is good with me.

Seriously, you actually put this much in!

It was amazing.  I can see why Ottolenghi initially intended it to be a stuffing as it's extremely intense.  It kind of tastes more like tomatoes than actual tomatoes do.  Admittedly, some of its intensity may have been down to the fact that I put three times the amount of a little more paprika, chilli and black pepper that was suggested.  I am totally making this again.  Once I've stocked up on garlic.

Tomatoes!

Once everything has been added in

Tomatoes, garlic, feta, coriander, what is not to like?!