Tomatoes down and brown

Summer is over -- the tomatoes told me so. I walked out to the garden this weekend and found them, all yawns and elbows and bad posture, asking to be put to sleep for the winter.The cold nights are getting to them, and I'm pretty sure I prompted their early demise by inadequately supporting them throughout their growth.

Lesson learned: invest in those loonly-looking circular support thingies and don't rely on posts and twine to support indeterminate tomato plants.
So I harvested all of the red ones and am mentally preparing to bring down the whole crop pretty soon. Here's the haul + some basil and a few pole beans:
Garden eats are usually cheap as well as delicious, but tomatoes are the gateway fruit. Beautiful, fresh tomatoes and their bully friend, Basil, scream "turn us into a caprese salad!" and who am I to argue with the harvest?So I run off to the store to find some bufala mozzarella imported from (where else?) Italy to slice up and sandwich in between layers of ripe tomato flesh and basil leaves.

(this is not my picture:)Tomatoes? free. Basil? free. Bufala mozzarella? about $17.00/lb (about 2 of those balls). Makes about 6 caprese salads. That's crazy.

But oh, my, god. The flavors. Incomparable. They should use this to ease people off heroin.
In honor of my grandparents' visit this weekend past, we had a little dinner party with some of my favorite people. We had a garden meal of caprese salads, fresh spinach pasta (rolled out by little Ramona) tossed in garden pesto (see recipe), roasted pole beans with smashed garlic and served with no-knead, hot fresh bread (see recipe). And Matt brought a divine chocolate angelfood cake. It was a fabulous evening!-- Complete with dancing and somersaults.
Recipe for caprese salad:

(serves 2-3)

1. Grow/borrow/find/buy/steal:

• 3-4 gorgeous, good-sized tomatoes.
• 1 ball bufala mozzarella
• small handful of basil leaves
• good-quality extra virgin olive oil
• good-quality balsalmic vinegar
• coarse salt/pepper

2. Cut the stems out of the tomatoes and slice into rounds, about 1/2 inch thick.

3. Lay largest of rounds flat on serving plate (if making three salads, lay down three)

4. Slice mozzarella in rounds, slightly thinner. Lay one slice on top of each tomato slice.

5. Cover the mozzarella with 2-3 basil leaves

6. Drizzle with a little olive oil and then a little balsamic vinegar.

(The order is actually important, I've found, because without the barrier of the olive oil, the mozzarella takes up too much of the balsamic vinegar and gets soggy. You'll get a more pleasant separation of the flavors if you pour the olive oil first.)

7. Repeat until you've used up all your tomatoes and cheese, Top with a sprig of basil, oil and vinegar, sprinkle a touch of coarse salt on top and serve. Have pepper on hand in case you want it, but if the tomatoes are punchy enough, you will want them naked as the come.
Enjoy!

Citrus Beet & Greens Salad - good!!

The experiment worked! Our good friends and their daughters were our test pilots (thank you guys for that) and got to share in another garden meal!

I started with the beets I pulled up today. After chopping off (and saving) the greens, this was my collection, seen in the above photo in a dutch oven.

Then I coated them in a little canola oil and stuck them to roast, covered, in the oven at 410 degrees for about an hour (?) until they were done.

I trimmed and washed the beet greens, and blanched them in boiling water for about a minute and a half.

After the beets were done roasting and had cooled a bit, I peeled off the tougher parts of the skin by hand and cut them up into pieces. In this picture, you can see the cool banding in some of the beets. They're heirloom strains, courtesy of my mother. And as we found out, they're incredibly sweet and flavorful (especially if you roast them).

As for the dressing, I winged it and based it very loosely on an epicurious.com recipe. I took a bunch of fresh garlic and wanted to take the edge off (knowing young children would eat this meal), but I didn't have the time/patience to roast it. So I tried something random and stuck it in the microwave for 1 minute. Worked like a charm.

Then I blended that up in a mini food processor with inexact amounts of:

garden herbs (basil, cilantro, chives)

basalmic vinegar (maybe 1/4 cup)

olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup)

1/2 of orange juice (maybe more)

zest and juice of 1 lemon

generous tablespoon honey

salt to taste

I added that to a bowl of thinly sliced onions and let that sit for a while to mellow. When the greens were blanched and drained, I added them to the onions and dressing as well. Then I cut the peels off 3 oranges and sliced them across into pieces - threw them in as well. I didn't add the beets, though, because I wanted to sprinkle them on top of the salad, but I don't think that's important.

To serve, dish the greens onto a plate, top with the beets and serve with a chunk of nice, room temperature goat cheese. Serve with crusty bread and lots of wine!