The Bitten Word

The Best Way to Roast Tomatoes

Cook's Illustrated (July/August 2015)

We're really craving a BLT right now.

Toasted wheat bread. Crispy bacon. Peak-of-summer tomatoes. Mayo. Maybe some basil or pesto thrown in there. Heaven.

But our tomatoes aren’t quite there yet. We’ve been getting tomatoes from our CSA for a few weeks now. They’re good, but they’re nowhere close to what we’re craving. You know what we're talking about: that peak-of-summer tomato, bursting with flavor, that you want to eat standing over the sink, tomato in one hand and a salt shaker in the other. 

We dog-eared this recipe for the best way to roast tomatoes as soon as we saw it, knowing that the tomato onslaught was coming on our way. 

We thought this pocket of summer -- when local tomatoes are good but not great -- was an excellent time to try out this recipe. So we went to the farmers market, where we’ve recently fallen in love with the “seconds” bin. The tomato seconds are in really good shape are only 99 cents per pound. We grabbed a few pounds and got to roasting. 

Summer Tomato Jam

Fine Cooking (August/September 2014)

 

When we had Margie & Co. over for dinner earlier this summer, she showed up with a whole little goodie bag of food treats: eggs and produce from her own farm, some cured meats, a couple nice cheeses, and some lovely pickles and preserves.  

One of the things she pulled out of her bag of tricks was a small jar of homemade tomato jam. "Actually," she said, "don't ever fool with tomato jam. It's not worth it. It just tastes like sugar."

Margie's cautionary words were ringing in our ears when we decided to try Fine Cooking's recipe for Summer Tomato Jam. We wanted to see for ourselves whether tomato jam would be a good way to make use of the abundant tomatoes in our area right now. So we went to the farmers market, bought a bunch of tomato "seconds" (you know, the ones that are slightly damaged or overripe) for about a buck a pound, and got to work.

 

Bread-and-Butter Zucchini Pickles

Food & Wine (August/September 2014)

We like our cheeseburgers pretty simple:  Ketchup, lettuce, mustard, pickles. Onions if we're feeling fancy.  

And we can't wait to try a cheeseburger topped with these Bread-and-Butter Zucchini Pickles.

For one thing, they combine two of our favorite cheeseburger toppings into one -- and goodness knows we appreciate convenience.

For another thing, these pickles are just plain delicious.

Pickled Watermelon Rind: Take Two

Bon Appétit (August 2014)

 

Five years ago this week, we published a recipe for Pickled Watermelon Rind.

If you're not famliar with watermelon pickles, we don't blame you. 

In the expanse of food writing, Pickled Watermelon Rind is widely described as a Southern delicacy. Is it so much that it's a delicacy, or that our Southern grandmamas and great-grandmamas were so poor that they had no choice but to find something to do with watermelon rinds. Delicacy, necessity, maybe a bit of both? 

Our take on the Pickled Watermelon Rind five years ago used cinnamon, cloves, and allspice to flavor a standard pickling liquid (salt, sugar, vinegar, water). We even processed the jars, which meant that we had Pickled Watermelon Rind on hand for years to trot out as a party trick.

A year after we first made the dish, we served our watermelon pickles with a Spicy Pork Loin. Three years later, in 2013, we served what was left of our pickles at a dinner party featuring Momofuku's Bo Ssam. (Nudge: Start planning your autumn Bo Ssam party now. You will be heralded as hero/role model/mythical creature after serving this dish.) 

Well, we're now all out of our original pickled watermelon rind. And this August we've been buying watermelons at the market to nosh on every chance we get. When we saw that  Bon Appétit's latest issue included a recipe for Pickled Watermelon Rind, we figured it was time to get back to pickling. 

Wine-Pickled Beets

Fine Cooking (July 2014)

 

Oh beets, it must be so hard to be you. 

You're loved, you're hated, you're worshipped, you're scorned. You're "sweet like candy" to some but "taste like dirt" to others. 

It's no secret that we're in the love camp when it comes to beets. And these Wine-Pickled Beets are more validation of our beet love. 

It turns out that a drunk beet is a good beet. 

Homemade Preserved Lemons in the Style of Rolf and Daughters

Okay, we know we said on Wednesday that we were done with the Cover to Cover Project. But here's one more post, and then we're on to new dishes.

Promise.

There were 38 recipes that we assigned reader-chefs to cook from the September issue of Bon Appetit. But really, there were 39 recipes in the issue. Because of time constraints, we felt that we couldn't assign anyone to cook the Homemade Preserved Lemons, since they cure in the refrigerator for two weeks. (We learned our lesson from 2012, when we assigned readers to make a cocktail that not only called for six weeks of aging, but also required an aged oak barrel. Whoops!)

So we made homemade preserved lemons ourselves.

Tomato Time Once Again

It's that time of year again -- tomato canning! 

Last Friday, we drove out to our CSA farm very early, picked more tomatoes than we ever thought possible, and then spent a big chunk of our weekend canning them.

We used the same canning method this year as we have for the past few years. That's all chronicled in a video we made three years ago.

This time, though, we had some special guests -- Zach's mom and stepdad were here, and they were excited to help out! (At least that's what we're telling ourselves.) Eight hands made the work much faster.

We thought you'd like to see some photos of our latest adventures in canning.

 

Like we said, it was early.

More Adventures in Tomato Canning

As we mentioned a couple weeks ago, we're in the middle of full-on canning season. About 10 days ago, our CSA added tomatoes to its unlimited U-pick list. And that was all we needed: We reserved a Zipcar for the next morning, and by 6 a.m. last Friday, we were standing in the middle of rows and rows of fragrant tomato plants.

You guys know the drill with canning tomatoes, and hopefully you've seen the (epic!) film. But we wanted to share some snapshots from our 2012 tomato-canning experience. It covered the better part of the weekend. (Thanks to a carbon monoxide alarm scare, we had to abort the process midway through and clear out while we waited for a technician to come check out the stove. It turned out to be a false alarm, which is what we'd figured. But when two different carbon monoxide detectors in your house start emitting warnings, well, you pay attention.)

Anyway, enjoy all the action of our 2012 tomato-canning adventure. Come for the bloodbath!  Stay for the 29 quarts of successfully canned tomatoes!

Down to the Last Three Jars

Reflections on Canning Tomatoes, A Year Later

Canning season is upon us. We can tell because every time around this year, we start getting comments and notes from readers who are gearing up for their own canning projects. That's one of the things that thrills us most about sharing kitchen stories with you -- when you in turn tell us about your own experiences.   

Last year we canned tomatoes. It was our third time to do full-scale tomato canning, yielding about 30 quarts in one (very long) night's worth of work. We followed the same hot-packing method that we outlined in a 2010 video we think is pretty humorous. 

Well it looks like the timing of everything worked out pretty well: Just as canning season has come back around, we also happen to have eaten through almost all of the jars we canned last year. In fact, there are only 3 small pints left, the rest lost to soups, sauces, stews and any number of dishes that called for canned tomatoes. If a recipe this year called for tomatoes, we reached for a jar of our own handiwork.  

We often look at cooking in terms of, "Was this worth it?" We don't mean in terms of expense (though we try to watch that, too). We mean whether the end result justifies the time and effort involved. And just as we do with everything else, we think it's fair to ask: Is canning tomatoes worth it?  

Apple-Fennel Sauerkraut with Caraway (Part 2)

You may remember that we've been making our own sauerkraut for the past few weeks. Following a recipe in the October Martha Stewart Living, we've been fermenting a cabbage-fennel-apple sauerkraut, duly opening the jars every five days to release the pressure.

It's been 30 days, and we finally sampled the sauerkraut this weekend.

What was the verdict?