A Fresh Garden Meal

Thanks to our bees, we have been getting tons of great tomatoes!

As well as cucumbers and eggplants (made baa ghanouj from those!)

I’m SO proud of my eggplants!

And of course of the monstrous cucumbers too =)

So the first part of the meal was a yummy cucumber soup – the recipe is from emeril and can be found here.

I did edit the recipe and make it a little bit simpler.  I just threw everything in the blender – minimal prep.  I.e. I didn’t really chop things up much – epsecially the herbs.  I just threw them in.  I also didn’t bother measuring – just estimated.  I added some lemon juice, and lastly, the recipe calls for making an “essence” to add to the soup.  That seemed to time intensive for me, so I just through a little but of each of those ingredients into the blender as well.

The main entree was pasta pomodoro in classic italy style.  In fact, we used the recipe that we got from a chef at a cooking class in Italy a few month ago.  We didn’t make this pasta in the class, but I asked the chef for his recipe because pomodoro sauce was one of the main things we LOVED in italy!

Luckily, the recipe is really easy:

1) Blanch the tomatoes so you can peel them.  You want to use very red tomatoes, preferrably san marzano.  You can also use canned whole tomatoes for a faster option or if you don’t have fresh tomatoes!  To blanch the tomatoes, remove the stem, ad then cut a little x into the opposite end of the tomato.  Then put them in boiling water for about 1 minute. Remove them from the water into a bowl, and peel the tomatoes.  I kept the tomatoes in the bowl and just lifted the skin off and put it directly into my compost bowl.  That way all the tomato juice stayed in my bowl to use.  You can remove seeds if you like, but it is fine with them as well.  You may also want to remove the stem attachment part of the tomato.

2) Heat your pan over low heat, and once warm add a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil.  After a few minutes, add several cloves of smashed garlic (peel your garlic cloves, and then smash them with a meat tenderizer or the handle of a big knife).  Cook the garlic until it turns a golden color.  You can also add red chilli pepper flakes if you like.

3) Once the garlic is golden, add the tomatoes (first roughly chop them up) and  generous amount salt (to taste.  as the italian chef said, the bulk of the taste comes from the salt!).  Add some basil sprigs and STEMS.  The stems (as L’s cousin the chef informed us) have a ton of the flavor from the basil plant!  Then cover the pan and let it cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

4) Uncover, and if you like, add a small dash of sugar (after tasting it only.  you may not need the sugar!).  Remove the basil stems and add the rest of the roughly chopped basil leaves.  And that’s it! You’re done!  If the sauce is too liquidy, you can simmer it to reduce it a bit.

Enjoy!