Summer Eats

Fresh summer tomatoes are the best! Photo: HuffPost 

I post more recipes in summer on THE SAVVY SHOPPER than at other times of the year. Why? I have more time to cook and play. In summer, real food -- not junk food -- that doesn't take hours to prepare or cook also catches my eye. I slap it up here if I wish to share or find it again myself.

Fresh food I don't have to cook is one of the many things I love about summer. Last night I cut up an avocado, tomato, and onion, tossed them into a bowl, and seasoned them with cider vinegar (a friend gave me cider vinegar with a "mother" in it), salt, pepper, garlic and parsley. Mmm!

If you mash the ingredients, you'll have guacamole, more traditionally made with lime, but I prefer good vinegar.

In summer I love a late-night dinner of red wine and extra-sharp cheddar cheese on grainy rye bread. It's umami tasty! I could eat it as a supper 7 days a week, but I don't let myself! Only one day a week is my rule. I add cruditès of raw vegetables and fruit to balance out the meal. Another summer love is it stays daylight until 9 PM!

When you don't cook a meal what is your favorite at-home summer dinner? If reading this blog, you're looking at mine.

You may also enjoy:

American Potato Salad

Barbecue Franks And Beans

Stove Top Roast Chicken With Gravy

Bean, Avocado, Corn, Onion And Tomato

Pilfered From The Internet: Pico De Gallo & Joy Bauer's Buffalo Dip

Photo credit: All over social media - You figure it out.

Recently this recipe popped up on my Facebook feed, piquing my interest and appetite. I must eat some! The Mexican-inspired recipe is all over the internet and seems to have been around since the 1950s so I have no idea who to give credit to, and there's a debate going on that it's plain ole salsa. 

I agree with the camp who thinks the recipe needs lemon juice, salt, and pepper, so below is the recipe I'll make. Be sure to give the recipe that was on my Facebook feed below, over to the right, a glance too. It looks to be one of those dishes everyone can improvise and adjust to his/her own tastes and spice tolerance. I can also see tossing some fresh or frozen cooked corn and/or celery into the mix.

Pico De Gallo

Ingredients:

6 tomatoes - I often buy plum tomatoes so I'll likely use 10 to 12.

3 jalapeno peppers - I like hot (although they will be less hot if you remove the seeds and aren't cooking them). Also, feel free to use fewer jalapenos for milder heat. In variations of this recipe, people substitute banana peppers, poblano chiles, or serrano peppers, listed in order of their hotness. Jalapenos fall after poblano chiles in hotness on the list.

1 large onion, chopped - I'll eyeball the amount as I like onions and might use more.

1 cup cilantro, chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped, or 1 tablespoon dried garlic

1 tablespoon cumin - I'll reduce the cumin to 1 teaspoon. I like it, but a little goes a long way.

3 lemons or limes, juiced

1 teaspoon salt to start with, then taste if more is needed.

1 teaspoon pepper = 24 turns of the peppermill (or chili powder)

Directions:

1) With a sharp knife, dice all the ingredients medium fine (eyeball them, not too big or too small) and toss them into a mixing bowl. 

2) Spice, mix, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

If you're lucky enough to have a tomato garden, this recipe is for you! You'll know exactly what to do with your abundance of tomatoes in late summer.

After making the Pico de Gallo if you desire to keep it for longer than a week, I suppose it could be tossed into a stockpot to blanch for 5 minutes to can in Mason jars. Although far from an expert, I don't see why not.

Golly, I'd love to dip my spoon into the overflowing jar at the top of the blog! It's waiting to be eaten!!!😋

🌶🍅🍽🍽🍽🍽🌶🍅🍽🍽🍽🍽🌶🍅🍽🍽🍽🍽🌶🍅🍽🍽🍽🍽🌶🍅

This weekend I made Joy Bauer's Buffalo Cottage Cheese Yogurt Dip, a healthy condiment you can use as a vegetable/chip dip, sandwich spread, or to flavor chicken. Usually, I use low-fat mayonnaise, or hummus as a sandwich spread with ham, beef, or turkey, but this is cheaper and packed with protein, so in the future, I might keep a batch of it in the refrigerator. I'll save the more costly hummus for snacking on crackers. If you're curious, Buffalo sauce derives its name from Buffalo, New York.

Buffalo Cottage Cheese Yogurt Dip

Ingredients:

1 cup low-fat cottage cheese

Photo: Joy Bauer's website

1/2 cup non-fat plain Greek yogurt

3 tablespoons hot sauce

2 1/4 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

Optional ingredients - what I added to Joy Bauer's original recipe: 

1 teaspoon dried garlic

1/2 of teaspoon onion powder

a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar, next time I'll use white vinegar

A sprinkle of Worscheshire sauce

A sprinkle of cayenne pepper

Extra salt to taste

Directions:

Toss all the ingredients into a food processor and blend.

I love how healthy the dip is, however, when I tasted it finished, it was too bland. The hint of heat was fine, but to give it more zest I experimented by adding the above optional ingredients. After you make the original recipe, taste and adjust it to your own liking. 

Next time I prepare the dip, I'll replace the lemon juice with white vinegar because it's traditional in real Buffalo sauce. Frankly, Joy's Buffalo dip doesn't taste as good as hummus or low-fat mayonnaise but it's certainly healthy and packed with protein. I think the dip is worth keeping and experimenting with to improve its flavor. Perhaps adding a little low-fat mayonnaise and Dijon mustard or Wasabi or American horseradish to the mix is the answer (reduce if you can't eliminate the mayonnaise).

Now that these condiment recipes are on THE SAVVY SHOPPER we can return here instead of searching all over the internet to make them time and again.

You may also enjoy:

Umami: A Sense Of Taste

Homemade Vanilla Extract

Baked "Fried" Fish And Chips

Homemade Hoisin Sauce And Sweetened Condensed Milk Are Cheap

America's Test Kitchen's Upside-Down Plum Tomato Tart

All photos courtesy of Test Kitchen -The lovely hands of Test Kitchen Cook Elle Simone 

America's Test Kitchen has perfected yet another delicious recipe and since they publish it for free, I feel I can share it with my readers, and I also link it back to the episode. My role is to give you (myself included!) a cheat sheet, namely, the written ingredients and directions, and a place to return to make it whenever you like. This savory tomato tart recipe mimics the same method used to make apple tarts, and it turns out that once upon a time tomatoes were called love apples.🍎🍏🍅 Watch the episode and see the recipe below:

Upside Down Tomato Tart

Ingredients:

2 lbs plum tomatoes, cut in half with seeds and juice removed

1/3 cup sherry vinegar

 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 medium shallot, finely diced

1 tablespoon butter

2 teaspoons thyme, minced

Extra 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper

1 store-bought puff pastry or make the tart dough yourself from this recipe.

Directions:

1) Into a 10-inch skillet pour the sherry vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook for about 2 minutes, swirling the pan to dissolve the sugar. 

2) Once the liquid is reduced to resemble caramelized syrup, add the shallot, butter, and thyme.

3) Next turn the heat off and add the prepared tomatoes. Distribute them evenly in the pan and coat the tamhatoes with the caramelized vinegar mixture. Finish off with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. 🍽

4) Bake in the oven at 400 degrees F for 1 hour.

5) Take your tart pastry dough out and on a floured surface roll it out 10 inches. Use a 10" plate as a measure to cut a 10" circle of dough. Chill the dough in the refrigerator while the tomatoes are baking in the oven.

6) After 1 hour, remove the roasted tomatoes and cover the skillet evenly with the chilled tart dough. Press the dough in at the edges of the skillet.

7) Return to the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then turn the skillet around to bake for another 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, the dough should turn golden brown.

8) Remove from the oven, and wait about 8 minutes before topping with an inverted 10-inch plate over the tart sitting inside the skillet. Quickly flip the plate and skillet over so the tomato side of the tart is face up.

9) Wait another 10 minutes for the tart to cool ... the toughest part of all as you smell the tomato tart aroma!

Sprinkle with more dried thyme. Cut into slices, serve and enjoy! 

We gratefully thank Test Kitchen Cook Elle Simone for perfecting this luscious and savory tomato tart recipe, always the best of the best, since as stated in the show's name, it's tested (and perfected!) for all of us to make at home!

This piece has my name on it. Where are my bite marks?

You may also enjoy:

Pasta e Fagioli

Easy French Onion Soup

Summer Skillet Cornbread

Emeril's Virgin Or Bloody Mary

Tomato Salad, A Summer Favorite

Photo: The Rachael Ray Show

One of the many things I love about August is how big, juicy tomatoes are falling off their vines. If you have a few plants and a green thumb, you have more ripe tomatoes then you can possibly eat about now. 

It leads to neighborly sharing in some communities. There is a rural town in Kentucky, where if you park your car, leaving the doors unlocked, you will find a basket of tomatoes (and other produce) in your front seat upon your return. If you can't eat tomatoes, locals will advise you to be certain to lock your car doors before leaving it unattended in the town.

I love tomato salad in August. The dish is easy, breezy to prepare. My recipe is so forgiving, you don't have to have all the ingredients all the time, and it will still be delicious: 

Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

fresh ripe tomatoes

purple onions, diced (or onion powder)

basil

celantro

extra virgin olive oil

vinegar (cider, or Balsamic, or your favorite)

water (add a 2 [water] to 1 [vinegar] ratio to dilute the vinegar)

salt

pepper (from a pepper mill)

garlic powder

Slice (or dice) the tomatoes and throw into a serving bowl, then eyeball and add the rest of the ingredients to taste. Mix. It's that simple. No real measuring required. Just sprinkle, taste and serve. It's a pull up a chair and grab a fork kind of dish.

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City Gardener Extraordinaire

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Savor The Salt Of The Earth

Greenmarkets, Community Gardens And CSA's

The Fruits of Fall, Is It Time For A Change?

When selecting food, most of us prefer the familiar. Too often we resist new dishes and taste sensations. What are we afraid of exactly? If we stick to the tired same old fare, time and again, we'll never expand our horizons, right? So this week while at the fruit market, I bought a pomegranate and an eggplant. I bought them partly because I did not grow up eating them. Not only are they fresh, they are exotic, colorful and at $1.00 each, a very good value this time of year. And the owner of the fruit market gave me a surprisingly easy eggplant recipe to try.

Though commonly thought of as a vegetable, an eggplant is actually a fruit. Specifically, it's a gigantic berry that has folic acid, potassium and the ability to block the formation of free radicals.

Pomegranates are rich in antioxidants and vitamin B5. They block free radicals too. To eat one, simply cut it in half and pull or pound out the kernel-like seeds. {Watch to learn how.}

Here is the recipe for the deep purple fruit that you eat like a vegetable:

Eggplant Medley

1 large eggplant

14 oz can whole tomatoes

1 medium red or yellow onion

Season to taste: salt, pepper, garlic, basil, bay leaf, bullion cube

Dice the first three ingredients into large cubes, and threw everything into a pot. Season to taste, cover and bring to a boil. Simmer until tender (approximately 10 minutes). I refrigerate the eggplant medley. It's delicious cold. Bon appétite!

City Gardener Extraordinaire

I work for a magazine. In early May I brought home a tiny bell pepper plant from a photo shoot, transferred it into a big flower pot, began watering it, added a weekly fertilizer and sat it in my windowsill just to see what would happen.

Later I bought sweet basil because herbs are like weeds, easy to grow. Than I received two free tomato plants [which I know] require a lot of sun to produce tomatoes. Still nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I transplanted both -- a male and female -- into a single large pot and tended to them too.

Now I have enough basil to make a pesto sauce and three bell peppers that are getting surprisingly big, mature enough to pick soon. The tomato plants have tripled in size. A dozen little yellow flowers have blossomed on each one, and I understand those turn into tomatoes. Had they been outside receiving 6-8 hours of full sun each day, tomatoes would be falling off the vines already. Regardless, I'm thrilled they're doing so well indoors. And plants are pretty. Even without the produce, all the greenery spruces up the apartment. So my experiment of growing the unlikely in flower pots is paying off. With a minimum of time, effort and experience, I'll actually serve fresh picked “garden” peppers, tomatoes and basil for dinner. And straight from my windowsill, I'll savor the sweet taste of success.

Update: Other easy to grow herbs include: mint, oregano, chives, sage, parsley and lavender. The red peppers and tomatoes were delicious! Another way to pollenate tomato plants -- and as it turns out all plants like air -- is to turn a fan on them. Most herbs need 4 hours of direct sunlight to live, but you can use an inexpensive fluorescent light to make up for not having enough sun.

What Do You Stock In Your Freezer?

Down in New Orleans, they’re called the Holy Trinity – onions, celery, and bell peppers. They are staples in many of the dishes I prepare at home, and to the Holy Trinity I often add diced tomatoes. That’s why when there's a sale on any of the four ingredients* at the supermarket, I buy extra. Onions keep for a long time, so I usually just store them in a cool, dry place. The rest, I cut up and freeze in Ziploc bags. Later I use what I’ve put away in my freezer to whip up quick and easy stews and vegetable medleys –- all cooked in one pot -- making cleaning up a breeze too.

On nights when I arrive home at 7:30 -- starving-to-death -- I can throw together diced potatoes, carrots, green beans, tomatoes and a protein of my choice in a pot to simmer on top of my stove. I add the Holy Trinity, a bay leaf, beef bouillon, seasonings, a cup of water and whatever else I have on hand. Sometimes it’s cauliflower, corn, or lima beans. At other times I may cut up a hot, spicy Oscar Meyer hotdog, or use pinto, pink, or red beans. And, I’ve also used firm, diced tofu as the protein.

The possibilities of what goes into the pot are endless … determined by what you’re in the mood for and have in your cupboards. After you simmer your vegetable medley for approximately 10 minutes … voilà … you have a hot, nutritious meal resting in a delicious red sauce that you’ve prepared and cooked in 20 minutes flat. Add some crusty bread and a decent wine, and bon appetit!
*Blanch the tomatoes before freezing.  Green & red peppers and celery can be frozen without blanching.