Category Archives: Cottage Cooking Club
Cottage Cooking Club: October 2015
After taking a hiatus for September, I’m back in the game for the Cottage Cooking Club, an on-line group working their way through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg. October is a month of transition. The weather makes a definite shift from summer to fall, and the harvest in my backyard garden and at local farms winds down. From the choices our group leader, Andrea, The Kitchen Lioness, selected for this month, I chose to make the most of the end-of-season tomatoes before wishing them farewell until next summer.
First up was the Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella Tart. Anyone who follows my cooking knows that tarts are one of my favorite kinds of food to make. This recipe starts with puff pastry which is my nemesis. Well, store-bought puff pastry causes me trouble. Homemade rough puff pastry is much easier for me to deal when I have time to make it, which I didn’t this month. Instead, I used my favorite pastry crust recipe as the base for my tart.
First, I sprinkled some slivered garlic on top of the partially-baked crust. Then, I covered it with halved cherry tomatoes fresh out of my garden, and scattered chunks of burrata on top. When the tart came out of the oven, I added the final touch: slivered basil leaves (the last of my garden crop). This tart screamed of all the best flavors of summer. Howard said it tasted like a pizza margherita, on pie crust. We also decided that I should have fully baked the crust before adding the toppings because the tomatoes’ juices make it a little bit soggy. This is a tart that I will revisit earlier in the season next year because I can’t wait to make it again.
The other recipe I made was the Oven-Dried Tomatoes. I had admired these when other CCC members made them last summer. I bought a big basket of the last tomatoes from Wilson Farm and slow roasted as many tomatoes as fit on one large pan. A friend had just given me a big bunch of thyme to dry, so I scattered a few on top of the tomatoes along with some broken bay leaves, olive oil, and salt and pepper. The recipe suggested they roast for 4 to 5 hours to be moistly dry. I opted not to remove the seeds, so for me, with all the extra moisture attached to the seeds and their gel, it took closer to 7 hours to get them to the right level of moist dryness. The long slow roast concentrated the tomato flavor, and they tasted (and smelled) amazing. Not having a plan on how to use them, I tossed them in more olive oil and put them in the fridge while I decided.
After much thought, I decided to use my oven-dried tomatoes in a pan of baked ziti. Typically, cooked ziti is tossed with a marinara or other tomato sauce and them layered with mozzarella cheese before baking. Because I was using tomatoes instead of sauce, I took a slightly different approach. I tossed cooked ziti with a mixture of ricotta and pesto, then layered the noodles with coarsely chopped oven-dried tomatoes and a blend of mozzarella and Parmesan. We loved it!
Baked Ziti made with Oven-Dried Tomatoes
With this pair of tomato recipes behind me, I’m feeling ready to let the summer go and move on to winter squash, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoli. I’m glad to be back with the Cottage Cooking Club, and I’m excited for Andrea to reveal her delicious choices for enjoying autumn’s vegetables as we move into November.
Baked Ziti with Ricotta
Serves 8
1 lb ziti
1 lb ricotta cheese
½ cup pesto (purchased or made from your favorite recipe)
1 recipe of Hugh’s Oven-Dried Tomatoes (made from about 2½ lbs tomatoes)
½ lb mozzarella cheese, shredded
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Preheat the oven to 400F.
Boil a large pot of water, add about 1 Tbsp salt, and cook the pasta to just shy of al dente (about 9 minutes), then drain.
While the pasta is cooking, prepare the other ingredients:
- Whisk together the ricotta and pesto until well blended.
- Coarsely chop the tomatoes.
- Combine the mozzarella and Parmesan.
Stir the ricotta mixture into the drained pasta to coat evenly.
In a large baking pan, layer half the pasta, half the tomatoes, and half the mozzarella/Parmesan. Repeat for a second layer.
Bake for 30 minutes, until everything is bubbly.
Cottage Cooking Club: August 2015
Wow! I’ve definitely fallen out of the blogosphere. I haven’t posted since last month’s Cottage Cooking Club. I need to get with the program. There’s plenty of cooking happening in my kitchen, but clearly not a lot of writing at the computer. I am sorely out of practice. I will try to get back into the game this fall.
Fall? It’s the end of August, so that means that summer is almost over. I feel it in the air with slightly chilly mornings and gradually shortening days. Fortunately, the harvest is still going strong, and we’ve been enjoying wonderful local produce from the local farms and farmers markets, and a few things from our backyard garden. Tomatoes and corn are always at the table right now and will be until the season is over.
For this month’s Cottage Cooking Club, the on-line group cooking through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg, our inspiring leader Andrea from The Kitchen Lioness chose a menu of recipes that were hard to choose from. Here’s the rundown on what I picked, in the order I made them.
With the earliest of tomatoes, I threw together Tomatoes with Thai Dressing. This, like so many of the recipes in this book, showcases top-notch vegetables with just the simplest of accompaniments, here, a light Asian-flavored dressing. I wouldn’t say the dressing tasted very Thai to me, or all that Asian. It was refreshing, and I did like the fresh mint sprinkled on top. This quick salad was nice enough, though not interesting enough for me to make again.
Next up was the Leek and Cheese Toasties. This open-faced sandwich has the most amazing topping: sautéed leeks combined with thyme, cream, and Cheddar cheese. A lightly-toasted slice of bread is slathered with the cheesy leek spread, sprinkled with more cheese, and broiled until bubbling and browned. This was my favorite recipe this month. I made a double batch and ate it for lunch every day for a week. The topping is probably a bit too heavy for the hot dog days of summer, but I’ll remember this for the cooler weather and make this one again and again. Plus it reminded of my mother’s special sandwich, a “Bunni special”, the lunch we often requested or she made without us asking because it was so good and easy to put together. My mom’s sandwich was different, sliced cheese and tomato sprinkled with dried Italian herbs and broiled, but they were similar enough to make me smile.
Finally, I made Summer Garden Lentils Niçoise. If I haven’t mentioned it before, lentils are my favorite of all beans and legumes. I’ve seldom met a lentil dish I didn’t like. This lentil salad, which can be served warm or cold, includes my favorite flavors of summer: cherry tomatoes, olives, green beans, and red onion, pulled together with a mustardy vinaigrette. The cherry tomatoes were from my garden and the green beans from a local farm. Eggs transforms the salad to a meal. The first night, I chose to serve it warm with poached eggs on top. Yum! And, then the next day, eggless, this was the perfect side to the zucchini tart I had for lunch. I also liked adding herb stems to the lentils as they cooked. I threw in some basil because I picked too much from the garden. I will definitely make this combination again.
My favorite part of this group is checking out everyone else’s posts to both compare notes on the recipes I made and to figure which other recipes to add to my “must make” list. You can check out everyone’s links here.
A Plateful of Happiness 