a simple sandwich with tomatoes still warm from the sun

One of the great joys of gardening is eating the tasty fruits of your labor.  And one of the great joys of summer is the vine ripened tomato.  Put the two together and you have my favorite lunch.

At the moment, it's open faced, just showing off the gorgeous color of the tomatoes.  This particular sandwich has all my favorite tomatoes in it, Green Zebras are under all the baby Gem lettuce.   Green Zebra has the best flavor - slightly tart with a hint of acid but big bold tomato flavor and a certain richness.  The heaping pile in the foreground sees red Juliet, a large grape tomato with fabulous meaty flavor and wonderful disease resistance, and it's our favorite for sauce making as well.  (See this post for my sauce recipe.)  Cherry tomatoes top Juliet, both Sungold, an early prolific producer of sweet sort of tropical flavored tomatoes, and White Cherry, which isn't really white, but a blushed lemon color, and has a true tomato flavor with a nice juicy finish.  A beautiful collection, even if I do say so myself.  

The bread used here is a miche from Wegman's made with a nice sour starter and OG flour.  Crusty and relatively dense, it makes a nice sponge for all those juices.  To help prevent the bread from getting too soggy, I've shmushed an avocado with a little sea salt and used that as my schmear, something all good tomato sandwiches need.  Very often the schmear is mayonnaise.  Now we can debate the merits of mayo vs Miracle until the cows come home, each has their audience.  As long as there are tomatoes and good bread, in a pinch, I could go either way.  

The baby Gem lettuce is basically miniature romaine, and I cut it in thin slices the sort way to get more surface area.  This helps prevent the dreaded sandwich slide.  You know the one, where your sandwich  filling squirts out the bottom of your bread and you end up taking the next bite with your hands over your head?  The shreds create all sorts of nooks and crannies for the tomatoes to snuggle into and stay locked in place.  Have I sold you on the merits of the shred yet?

This simple sandwich benefits from a good amount of seasoning, so be generous with the salt and pepper.  Dousing the shred with a housemade balsamic dressing that the husband makes adds umami to the dish and really brightens up the acidity, something I love.  You could just as easily use a Green Goddess or something else creamy and tangy.  In fact, if you're so inclined, there are infinite variations to my tomato theme.  You could add or substitute:

-fresh mozzarella and basil

-bacon

-shmush some white beans and spread 

-arugula, feta and watermelon

-pesto

-prosciutto, salami, crispy pancetta

-simple drizzle of the best olive oil you can buy along with aged balsamic

Or for something a little outside the box, cube and toast your bread and mix with wedges of tomatoes and basil for a panzanella.  Add some butter or olive oil and garlic to that bread before toasting takes your panzanella to a whole new level. 

You can't go wrong with tomatoes and bread, enjoy!

A Healthy Cabbage and Bean Peasant Dish for Meatless Monday

Sometimes you just have to go with what you've got.

We've been very busy lately with yard projects (we're building a koi pond, getting our vegetable beds ready to plant, etc), so Meatless Monday kind of sneaked up on us this week. Late Sunday night, Cynthia asked me what I wanted for dinner on Monday. Our usually well stocked refrigerator and cupboard were a little lighter than usual, but there was a fresh head of cabbage staring back at me when I opened the fridge. We decided to make that the star of the next night's dinner. Twenty minutes of internet browsing later, we had our answer. On the New York Times Fitness and Nutrition site, we found a recipe by Martha Rose Schulman, the author of "The Very Best of Recipes for Health". Not only did it sound tasty, but we had all the required ingredients. She called the dish Baked Giant White Beans with Cabbage. Since we followed the recipe fairly closely, I'll simply link to the original here.

We love beans and we always have a good supply of them in the pantry. We also always have Parmesan rinds on hand. They end up in soups, stews and especially pasta e fagioli, very simply my favorite comfort food of all time. Carrots, onion, garlic and the herbs were all on hand so we were set to go.

As Ms. Shulman says in her recipe, the Parmesan rinds really do add an element to the dish that mimics the richness that a more classic version would have due to the addition of a ham bone or salt pork. The slow cooking method really sweetens the cabbage and "melts" it nicely, again adding to the overall body of the dish.  Finally, and this is a brilliant touch, the addition of the garlic in two stages, we believe, added a depth of flavor that we really liked.

During the preparation, Cyn, as usual, made a few, "on the fly" adjustments. A little of the Better than Bullion No Chicken stock was used instead of salt to season the dish, extra carrots and onion were added, and a bit more water than originally called for, so the final dish had more of a soup consistency.  The soup was also cooked in the oven, since no one was home to babysit it and Cyn was too lazy to haul out the slow cooker.  (Cyn is writing this paragraph, so it's okay if Cyn calls herself lazy.  This third person thing is weirding me out.)  6 hours in a 250 degree oven in a tightly covered stockpot.

 

The finished plate, served with a whole grain french miche bread for dipping, was as delicious as it looks.

 **NOTE - If you're following the original recipe, please soak your dried beans overnight before proceeding with the recipe as written.  It seems that step was missing from the original.