Stewed Tomatoes and Okra

It's my favorite time of the year for gardening. Unfortunately the extreme heat and drought are playing havoc with my harvests but today I picked a few tomatoes, hot peppers, green beans and okra. I usually fry the okra but today I making it in to another favorite dish: Stewed Tomatoes and Okra. It's a southern thang.

INGREDIENTS:

6 to 8 ripe tomatoes
2 cups okra, rinsed, trimmed and sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
3/4 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
3 tablespoons sugar (more or less)
1 small bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
Italian flat-leaf parsley to garnish
2 tablespoons bacon drippings

PREPARATION:

In a small cast iron skillet, sauté the onion in the bacon drippings over medium heat until softened, not browned. For a low fat version, dry sweat onions until barely carmalized.

Core tomatoes; place in boiling water for about 15 to 20 seconds, then into ice water to cool quickly; peel. Cut tomatoes in wedges, squeeze out seeds if desired.Combine all ingredients in a slower cooker (Crock Pot). Cover and cook on low 6-8 hours. Remove bay leaf (or omit entirely if you don't like the flavor of bay laurel.) Sprinkle top with parsley, if desired. Serve as a side dish or freeze in portions for soups or other recipes.

Flour Flour Flour, More on Flour

USDA equivqlents
Ingredient 1 cup 1 tablespoon 1 teaspoon
White flour 125 gm 7.8 gm 2.6 gm
Whole-wheat flour 120 gm 7.5 gm 2.5 gm
Strong white flour 140 gm 8.75 gm 2.9 gm
Rye flour 100 gm 6.25 gm 2.1 gm

I Go On Record

Hot Dogs are my favorite food. But not just any hot dog. Wimmer's weiners. Coarse grind, natural casing. When they go on sale I stock up because they are too expensive for my budget otherwise. I would rather have them than a sirloin steak.

Grill Mark Revisited

You can brand your food with your custom initialed branding iron and you won't have to worry about the cross hatch design or a conveyor belt and convection oven. It would make a terrific Father's Day gift from the boys. . .maybe you should hint a little. . .or a lot.

We haven't had the grill or the smoker out once this year. And I don't mean just this season, it hasn't been used for more than a year at all. Airport Guy and I haven't even been to judge a contest in at least two years, although he is talking about joining the KCBS judging class so he can judge at sanctioned events.

As if he has the time with working two jobs.

We had home-grown Italian Vegetable Marrow fritters last night. They were yummy. Any time you take a perfectly healthy veggie and fry it in hot oil, you make it A. not as healthy; B. twice as tasty.

Italian Vegetable Marrow Fritters

Ingredients:

Mix the 'wet' stuff in a large bowl:
2 cups well-drained shredded zucchini
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of half and half

Mix the 'dry' stuff in a smaller bowl:
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 cup All Purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons finely chopped Italian flat-leafed parsley

Pour dry stuff in to wet stuff and stir with a spatula.
All your ingredients need to be cold. Put the mix in the refrigerator until well chilled. It will absorb less oil when cold.
Using a scant number 8 scoop (a quarter cup size) drop in to hot oil and fry until golden brown. Serve with your favorite dipping sauce. (marinara, ketchup, mustard, ranch dressing, sweet and sour. . .all are good choices.)
Tarka loved them, too. Spoiled rotten dog.

Willing to Fake It

Ellie doesn't understand just how much of an obessions this has become: I want that machinery.

Other than that, I have nothing to say. Except that MLB sucks.

(Oh, and today's grilling went particularly well: some red peppers, some zucchini, some mushrooms and some garlic -- all roasted on the grill, then skinned and tossed togather. The meat was sausage and chicken thighs -- hot dogs for the boys. Very nice. I've gained 10 lbs in the last two months.)

Faking It

Forget geometry.

Forge your grill marks like nine out of ten of the top fast food chains do. (I worked for the now-defunk Rax. Our claim to fame was that our products were 'real' unlike the 'formed' products of our nearest competition.)

1. First, they drop the chicken breasts into a big pot full of salt, oil, sugar, extra chicken fat and chemicals so it can marinate. This process causes the chicken to swell up as it soaks in all those juices and flavors that make 'em taste like chicken. (Sort of like when the grocery stores make their hamburger. . .85% lean is a fat quantity not a water, salt and chemical quantity. . .no standards exist for how much water your butcher can add. Want good burgers/ Grind your own meat!)

2. Then they add artificial "fillers" to bring up the weight to the correct amount.

3. From there, they go on a conveyor belt ride for cooking and branding. This is the process known as "spreading." This is preparing the meat for fake chargrilling!

4. Now the chicken gets pressed down and cooked with jets of hot air blown over them in a convection oven so the extra ingredients added to the chicken are not removed by the cooking process and result in weight loss.

5. At this point, each chicken breast is given the fake "backyard grill" look with what are known as "char marks" from a branding wheel that burns artificial grill marks on the chicken.

6. Next the "grilled" chicken is frozen and shipped to your fast food restaurant where it is microwaved. Viola! Grilled chicken. Or beef burgers. Or pork 'riblets.'

Grill Marks

I really dig my new grill -- the one Alane got me for my birthday. Aside from feeling the need to use all the grill space (and it has quite a bit) I have also felt a compulsion to sear our burgers so as to leave perfect gill marks on both sides. Pointless, really, but there's something about the look of the "grate" on the face of a perfectly done burger. I am getting better at it (though sometimes I get my perpendicular all confused with the rest of my euclidian geometry and I stand there baffled for a few seconds at a time staring at the burger at the end of my spatula, lining up in my mind how I need to lay it back down -- burgers aren't supposed to be this puzzling).

Stuffed Italian Vegetable Marrow

Stuffed Italian Vegetable Marrow

8 small Italian vegetable marrow (smaller are more tender)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup of 4 or 5 cheese blend
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning (if using lamb use thyme alone)
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pound of ground veal or lamb

sauce, recipe follows
freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano cheese

Wash Italian vegetable marrow and trim ends.

Hollow about 3/4 inch from center of each Italian vegetable marrow squash. A cannoli tube will work or a piece as does a length of 3/4" to 1" clean copper pipe. (It works beautifully for stuffed cucumbers, too.)

Cover with boiling water, blanch 3 minutes, and drain well and allow to cool enough to handle.

Combine the egg, cheese, Italian spices and pepper in a bowl.

Mix in ground meat. Fill Italian vegetable marrow with meat mixture being careful not to over-stuff and rupture the tubes. If you suffer a "blow out" turn that side down in the bowl.

Arrange Italian vegetable marrow in a single layer in an oiled shallow 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Top with sauce and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesano Reggiano cheese. (Save leftover sauce for another dish.)

Bake at 350 degrees F until center of squash reaches 160 degress.

Serve hot. Makes 8 servings

Simple Sauce

1 cup of chopped sweet Spanish onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of finely snipped Italian flat-leafed parsley (no stems)
1/4 teaspoon of dried basil leaves, crushed
1/8 teaspoon of dried thyme leaves, crushed
1 pint homemade tomato sauce
1/2 cup of veal stock

Dry sweat onions until tender. Stir in the garlic and parsley, basil, thyme, tomato sauce and beef broth.

Simmer gently until flavors are blended about 30 minutes being careful not to scorch the sauce.