Currently browsing tag

tomato, Page 2

ingredient

Happiness is stuffed vegetables when it’s raining

Nothing like a cold, rainy day to make me want to turn on the oven and whip up a massive tray of stuffed vegetables of all shapes and sizes. It takes about an hour to bake, and you’ll find me here, huddled next to the oven door the entire time. …

Tangy tomato okra soup

If you’re like me, and you don’t see 33-degree Celsius weather as a reason not to indulge in a hot bowl of soup, this recipe is for you. It’s simple, and it doesn’t have too many seasonings. It doesn’t need to — summer’s fresh bounty adds flavor enough. One thing …

Simple eggplant tomato stew

This is somewhat of a classic dish in these parts, and super-simple: Fresh tomatoes meet an interestingly shaped baladi eggplant, and all of the above are in season right now. You’ll find a version of this eggplant salad just about everywhere here, sometimes served cold, sometimes spicy, and frequently made …

Cross-Mediterranean caprese with fried onions and sumac

This version of a caprese salad takes a trip around the Mediterranean: The classic Italian mozzarella and tomatoes, plus Middle Eastern seasonings — fried onions, sumac and cumin. I used cherry tomatoes (plum cherry tomatoes, to be precise), which tend to be sweeter than regular tomatoes, and thus work very …

Authentic Spanish gazpacho

This recipe made half a dozen grown Spanish men swoon. It’s another recipe I learned from my time in Madrid, in Sra. Pilar’s kitchen. Summer was at its peak, the days were regularly 40 degrees Celsius, and she’d keep a big, glass bowl of cool gazpacho in the fridge. We’d …

Pumpkin stew

I made this pumpkin stew because I had a block of pumpkin sitting in my fridge for close to a week, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I bought it out of habit, since all winter long I’d been making pumpkin soup — nearly a batch a …

Tabouleh — chopped parsley salad

Tabouleh is parsley salad worth its weight in gold. Each individual ingredient needs personal, painstaking preparation. Cutting the vegetables is an art form. This is another dish I learned during my time in Haifa, from my roommate Naifeh. We would have tabouleh days, and the girls would sit around together, …

Patatas bravas with vitelotte potatoes

I fondly remember my time in Madrid, which was marked by many a visit to various tapas bars, frequently for the ubiquitous patatas bravas — gently crispy potatoes in a hot tomato sauce. In fact, I liked the dish so much that I still have a bottle of salsa brava …

Tomato sauce with spinach, wine and pine nuts

This is a simple tomato-based pasta sauce with wine, spinach and pine nuts. We tend to have open bottles of wine around, since we never finish them. One word of caution regarding the tomatoes: Since the sauce is based on them, they need to be ripe and sweet; otherwise the …

Bean spinach soup with a tomato base

I wasn’t going to post another soup, since they all kind of look the same, but this one came out really well. The cinnamon adds a nice touch, and all that spinach adds good flavor. In any case, I think it’s great to show what you can do without soup …