Tomater Dei

I wait all year for tomatoes. Real tomatoes. From PA, Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. Red, ripe, juicy and delicious. I feel sorry for those of you that have never experienced the glory of one of these beauties. From the fancy trappings of a Caprese salad, with fresh basil and locally made fresh mozzarella, to the simple perfection of a tomato sandwich, the bread of your choice, a light smear of mayo, big slices of tomato and salt. Ahhhh…

If you grow your own maters, you know that quite often you are faced with some big green ones. Yes, you can wait for them to ripen, but why not pick them now, and make yourself a special treat-

Fried Green Tomatoes. Yes, they are real, not just the title of a movie. And you don't have to go down south to have them. Although you can't find green tomatoes at the supermarket, you can ask for them at your local farm market or stand. (or your neighbor's garden)

Fried Green Tomatoes are easy to make, but do require some prep time. Wash them, then slice them. Not too thinly, though, or they will turn to mush when you cook them.
Then you need to set up what we in the business call the dredging station. Flour, egg, crumb. I use King Arthur Flour, but that's a story for another day, another post. I don't season my flour. I season the egg. I use sea salt, pepper and chopped basil in my egg mix. When you bite into the tomato, you get that little surprise of basil flavor. The bread crumbs are just plain. No seasoned, and no Panko crumbs here. Here's what the setup looks like:

Now here's the big secret about dredging: Use one hand for the wet, and one for the dry. So, here's how I do it. I pick up a tomato slice with my left hand and put it into the flour. With my right hand, I sprinkle some flour on the top, then flip it over so both sides are coated with flour. I pick it up with my right hand, then place it into the egg mix, being careful not to get my fingers in the egg. Using my left hand now, I flip the slice to coat it with egg, then pick it up and place it into the crumbs, again, attempting to not get crumbs onto my eggy fingers. Right hand now- put some crumbs on the top, then flip it over to get all coated with crumb, then gently put onto a waiting tray or plate. If you're lucky, you can get all of your tomatoes breaded without forgetting which hand is wet, and which is dry. Yeah, good luck with that. Most likely, you'll have goop stuck to both hands. It's all good. No judgement here. Remember, it's just food.

Now, it's time to fry. And by that, I mean pan fry, not deep fry. If you have a cast iron pan, now's the time to break that sucker out. They heat so evenly. They're wonderful. Unfortunately, mine is not big enough for this task. I would be frying for hours, so I used my super duper nothing sticks to me I got it on the internet pan. I use grapeseed oil to fry. It heats nicely, and has no taste. You can use an olive oil if you want, but not extra virgin. It will smoke if you get it too hot and turn bitter on you. Save it for drizzling over the tomatoes when they're done, if you want the flavor. As for canola oil, well, read my post about that. Blechhhh.

Let them get nice and brown and crispy. If you are making a bunch of them, you can reheat them right before you serve. But not for too long. You want them to stay a little crunchy on the inside.

As for serving them, well, there are myriad ways. You can do a mayo/aioli type sauce, a drizzle of good olive oil and aged balsamic, or pretty much anything else. I had some really nice, locally made fresh mozz in the fridge, so I sliced it and layered it between the tomatoes, then drizzled with some homemade pesto. It could have been a meal in itself, but I used them as a side for our Beyond burgers. I think I'll write about them next...

Don't let tomato season pass you by without trying Fried Green Tomatoes. Have I steered you wrong yet?

Until next time-enjoy summer. Corn, tomatoes, fresh produce. MMMMM...

Cope with This

Any of you ever seen this stuff before? My guess is no. But if you have, yay for you!

This, my friends, is Cope's Corn. It comes two ways: canned (rehydrated) or bagged (see above).

I was introduced to this corny wonder by my first boss, who, incidentally, looks a bit like the dude on the bag. (Tracey, you know who I'm talking about!)

Ok, ok, I'll explain it to you now. As the bag says, this is toasted dried sweet corn. It tastes different than any other corn you have ever eaten. This is Lancaster County, PA corn. At the moment it hits the height of its sugar content, it is picked and then immediately dried. Those sugars caramelize in the heat, and that is what gives it the unique brown color you'll see. Once you reconstitute the kernels, the corn has a nutty, sweet flavor. 

The Cope's Corn Company was founded by Martin Cope in Manheim, PA (near Lancaster) in 1900, when the first batch of corn was dried over a coal burning stove. Martin named the product for his grandson, John. For over 100 years, the company stayed in the family, but in 2006, was sold to Hanover Foods. 

Cope's Corn, for those who love it, is a family tradition for holiday meals, especially Thanksgiving. Brand loyalty is easy-they are the only game in town! Most of the traditional recipes are for corn puddings, creamed, baked and stewed corn. It can also be reconstituted and used in cornbread.

When I had my restaurant, State Street Café, back in the '90's, I knew I wanted to do something with this sweet, toasted wonder, but not the usual side dish. So I soaked it, then cooked it with vegetable stock, thyme sprigs and shallots, removed the aromatics, pureed slightly and finished with a little butter to make a sweet corn sauce. I served this under my famous (well, in certain circles they are, and that's only because YOU haven't tried them yet) Crab Cakes. 

Mmmm….I can taste it now....

You  can find Cope's Corn in most supermarkets in PA, but it's also available online from various retailers. If you are a corn lover, give it a try. I promise, it will be like no corn you've ever had. 

Enjoy, and let me know what you think. Until next time...

Penne For Your Thoughts

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between the pasta on the market shelf that costs $1.00 and the one that costs $3.00? Oh go ahead, say it, you know you want to. Duh, Jen...price.
Well, yes, my little Mensa friends, but WHY does one pasta cost significantly more than the other?
Is it the packaging? The name brand? The number of curlicues per square foot?

It's two things, actually: the wheat used to make the flour, and the machinery on which it is cut. Let's look at both of these factors individually.


Every heard of Durum wheat? It's what's called a "hard" wheat, which means it contains more proteins than soft wheat, especially gluten. When ground, durum wheat becomes semolina, and durum flour, the only two dry ingredients used in Italian pasta. Semolina flour helps the pasta stay firm when cooked, and is also higher in protein than all-purpose flour.

Good flour and pure, clean water. These are the first two ingredients to high quality pasta.

Now, let's talk about cutting this good quality pasta dough. Pasta is cut by machine, using "die".
Remember that Play-Doh set with the extruder? You could change the plates and make different shapes. Well, pasta machines do pretty much the same thing. Each die produces a different shape, when the pasta dough is pushed through them. As the shape comes out, a blade spins and cuts the noodle at the desired length. Long cuts, like spaghetti or linguini, are great for olive oil based sauces, or full-bodied tomato sauces. Short cuts, like penne, rotini, or farfalle, are better for chunky ragus or vegetable sauces. The last group are the soup cuts. These are the little guys, like ditalini, or acini di pepe. They go best in soup, or as a side dish.

So now, we've got the good pasta dough, and the machine with the die. But wait, there's more. There are two types of die; those that are made with a Teflon coating, and those that are made of bronze. And here, dear readers, is where the main difference in quality comes in.

Teflon, as we all know, is a nonstick surface. When die are coated with Teflon, the pasta dough slides through quickly, easily, and cleanly, which makes it ideal to produce massive amounts of macaroni in less time. However, because it slides through so easily, the surface of the noodle is smooth. Now, that looks nice, but when the pasta is cooked and tossed with sauce, the sauce won't cling to the noodle. It just slides off. (This is where you conjure up memories of the spaghetti you had in the school cafeteria when you were a kid.) Are you now saying to yourself "wow, now I know why I can't get the sauce to cling to my pasta?" Good for you!

Now, pasta that is pushed through the bronze die takes more time to produce, since it has to go through more slowly than if it was passing through the Teflon. Going through bronze leaves a rough surface on the noodle. When cooked, these little nicks on the surface hold the sauce onto the pasta.
Voila!

Oh...you thought I was finished with the story? NOPE. One more piece to the puzzle. THEN I'll stop talking.

Let's review: Quality ingredients=better pasta. Teflon=slippery noodle. Bronze=rough surface, holds sauce. Got that so far?

 The last, but not least, important factor to quality pasta is how the noodle is dried after it is produced. Most of the mass produced, Teflon extruded, lower quality pasta is dried quickly, at hotter temperatures, usually between 140-190 degrees. At 140, the starch molecules open, and you get what is called the "Maillard Reaction". This is a culinary term for the chemical reaction that happens when food begins to brown or toast. This is why the cheaper pasta often looks more yellow.  This  makes it attractive to the eye, but, when cooked. loses flavor, and because some of the original water is left in the noodle, overcooks more easily. (Again, cafeteria spaghetti)

Bronze cut pasta is more likely to be slow dried, at temperatures closer to 104 degrees. This takes much longer, up to 30 hours, but the pasta retains more of the nutty flavor and aroma of the durum wheat. It's also much lighter in color than the quick dried stuff, but it makes it much harder to overcook. If properly cooked (al dente), you will get a tiny white spot, right at the center of the noodle, which is sometimes called the "white ghost". The pasta remains firm, the sauce clings to the surface, and all is right with the world.

Let's tie this whole thing up, shall we? Seems like an awful lot of talking about macaroni!

Good pasta begins with quality ingredients, is pushed through bronze die, and is dried slowly. Ergo, it tends to cost more. Have you tried any? It's totally worth it. Give it a go sometime.

Thanks for your time. Hope you learned something useful. I mean, that's what I strive for here on these pages. I'm going to get back into posting more often. It feels good to write again.

Now go get some good pasta and get cooking!