Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food staffer Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."
The time-honored Italian dish, saltimbocca, traditionally calls for veal cutlets, but the classic is easier and more practical for singletons to make with commonplace chicken breasts.
Saltimbocca, roughly translated, means to "jump into your mouth" -- and with thin slices of chicken wrapped in savory prosciutto and autumn sage, the translation seems fitting. Paired with roasted tomatoes on the vine, this 10-minute, one-pot meal yearns for a table under the Tuscan sun. In a concrete jungle, fresh sunflowers will have to suffice.
The beauty of this variation is that everything is cooked in the oven, at one temperature, in one pan. After all, when it's just one person doing the cooking, that same person has to do the cleaning too.
Fall is officially here, but that doesn't mean you can't still snag a few good tomatoes here and there. While they're best fresh, tomatoes can also survive a stint in the freezer ... as long as you do something with them afterward.
These scarlet slices are from Flickr user maggiephotos -- who encourages freezing the ruby reds for colder months -- and explains on her blog Pithy and Clever that she roasted them with herbs, salt and "a few cloves of garlic." Roasted low and slow, they managed to maintain their beautiful color and look just as lush as fresh tomatoes.
Here's a little restaurant technique to make the rich, sweet, tangy, roasted tomatoes that many restaurants use to add a flavor and dimension to various dishes.
I like them best with pasta and although they do take time to cook, they are well worth the wait.
Making tomato confit isn't hard but it can heat up the house and seem wasteful to run the oven for hours -- so why not use an energy-saving toaster oven?
I'm on vacation this week, traveling around Southern California visiting family (with a stop in Las Vegas over the weekend). When I was getting ready to leave, in addition to packing and cleaning the apartment a bit so that I didn't return to a total mess, I also had to make sure to use up any food that wasn't going to keep while we were away. I did a final, abbreviated grocery shop last Sunday and then set out to create meals that used only what I had (actually, not much of a challenge given the stocked state of my kitchen).
I made scrambled eggs and toast one night and another did hamburgers with a random veggie medley along side. I also roasted a huge sheet pan of tomatoes, as I had been given a bounty by a friend's mother. I used half of them in a baked pasta dish and then poured what remained into a quart-sized container for the freezer.
This time of year, with the tomatoes as gorgeous and abundant as they are, it's a wonderful thing to tuck some away for future use. The food blogs have been abuzz lately with news of people canning and preserving those tomatoes. If the idea of jars, large pots and hot water baths give you the shakes, just remember your freezer. My roasted tomatoes were simply tomato wedges spread out on a rimmed cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper. Baked for 45 minutes at 375 degrees, they were wonderful with the pasta and sauteed veggies I tossed them with, and they'll be even better when I pull the rest of the freezer in a few months.
There were amazing tomatoes everywhere I turned today while strolling the Sunday Headhouse Square Farmers Market. I picked up a huge heirloom 'mater, and ogled many others. This picture, from Renata Damasio, is a great example of one way to use the abundance of tomatoes that are now ripe (although I must admit that rarely get tired of eating them raw, sliced and with a sprinkle of salt). However, when your fingers start to pucker from the acid, stuffing and roasting them is a terrific way to incorporate a little variety.
My Slashfood friends, I am a sadist. Or is it masochist? I never knew the difference between the two.
Either way, for some reason known only to, well, to no one, I decided to do the most punishing thing ever on a hot summer day: turn on the oven. I know, I must be crazy. The inexplicable thing is, however, that I turned it on to roast something that doesn't need to be roasted. If I needed to make a roasted garlic puree, I could justify it. If I felt like roasting a lemon herb chicken for Sunday supper, it would make sense.
My friends, I roasted tomatoes. Tomatoes! At this point in the season, there is absolutely no need to roast produce that is practically dripping with fresh flavor right off the vine!
However, I couldn't resist after I came across a recipe for Roasted Tomato Soup while flipping lazily through Marcus Wareing's Cook the Perfect cookbook.
Despite the fact that is summer, and the temperatures are going to climb back into the 90's by the middle of the week (at least here in Philadelphia), I have soup on the brain. Since I'm also obsessed with the summer crop of Jersey tomatoes that are rolling into the stores and farmers' markets around here, I thought I would share my very favorite Roasted Tomato Basil soup recipe.
Sadly, I have absolutely no claim on this one, it belongs to the Barefoot Contessa. I tend to have difficulties with many of her recipes (I can't handle the idea of putting a large pat of butter on the inside of a hamburger patty), but this one is foolproof and bowl-lickingly good.
The clock is counting down slowly, but surely, on tomato season, making fresh tomatoes something of a precious commodity. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Bea, of La Tartine Gourmande, referred to her Roasted Tomato, Red Onion and Arugula Tart as the jewel of summer. The tart is a simple one to make, so you won't have to expend much energy in making it before you get to enjoy it. It uses a sheet of puff pastry as the base and is topped with slow-roasted cherry tomatoes and garlic, sauteed onions and mozzarella cheese. The finished dish is topped with a bit of parmesan cheese and some arugula, to provide a sharp contrast to the relative richness of the tart. If you opt not to make the whole tart, at least consider just making the roasted tomatoes, which would be lovely on a sandwich or as part of a pasta dish.
The turkey turned out perfectly, but the gravy's a different story. Avoid botching the one recipe that guests pour over their entire Thanksgiving plates with these quick fixes.
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