Category Archives: French Fridays with Dorie
French Fridays with Dorie: Slow-Roasted Tomatoes
This week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie has the most benign name: Slow-Roasted Tomatoes. Sounds innocuous, right? It’s peak tomato season, so it sounds like an excellent choice to try this week. The name, though, slow-roasted tomatoes, makes it sound like nothing special. So misleading…
Before
After
Dorie suggests these can be served as a condiment. I used mine in an orzo salad where I usually use sun-dried tomatoes. The slow-roasted tomato morsels give it a different twist – a much brighter summery flavor.
Needless to say, I loved this recipe. It’s a winner in every way. Though cherry tomato season is fleeting, I can imagine that the ever-present grape tomatoes, available year-round, will be transformed by this treatment. That means, I can slow roast tomatoes all year long!
You can find recipe for this and other delicious dishes in Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. I make a new recipe from the book each week along with a wonderful group of intrepid bloggers from French Fridays with Dorie. You can check the LYL (Leave Your Link) post for Slow-Roasted Tomatoes on the FFwD site to see what they thought about this week’s recipe.
Here’s my recipe for orzo salad. I recommend chopping the red onion first and soaking it in cold water in the fridge while you prepare everything else. Drain right before adding to the bowl. It cuts the sharpness of the raw onion. (A little tip I learned from Dorie!)
Orzo Salad
½ lb orzo
½ cup finely chopped red onion
½ cup olives, pitted and coarsely chopped (I used Picholine, use whatever you like. I’ve also made this with Nicoise and Kalamata)
½ cup slow-roasted tomatoes
1½ Tbsp drained capers
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt & pepper to taste
Cook the orzo according the package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water.
Combine orzo, onion, olives, tomatoes, and capers in a large bowl. Whisk together oil and vinegar. Stir dressing into pasta salad and season with salt and pepper to taste. It might not need any salt because of the olives and capers.
French Fridays with Dorie: Citrus-Berry Terrine
Friday again. Last week’s heat bubble popped, and the weather is back to normal summer instead of summer in hell. It’s 20 to 30 degrees cooler.
This week’s recipe for French Fridays with Dorie was a dessert called Citrus-Berry Terrine, which is a fancy name for French Jello Mold. OK, it wasn’t exactly French jello, as opposed to American jello. It was much more elegant. The terrine was based on “homemade” jello, made from gelatin and fruit juice, rather than an artificially flavored, heavily-sweetened box of Jell-O. Plus, the terrine was studded with fresh fruit: orange, grapefruit, and freshly picked berries.
I am a child of the 60’s and 70’s, so as most children raised in American suburbs during that time frame did, we ate plenty of Jell-O at our house. Cups of regular jello were a frequent snack. Then, there was the special occasion jello mold that appeared on the table for all holidays and special family dinners. My family’s was a strawberry-flavored Pink Jello Mold, which I still make (and enjoy) today.
The concept of homemade jello never occurred to me until I read a column in Gourmet magazine by Laurie Colwin. “Desserts that Quiver” made a real impression on me. Like she did, I brought home different kinds of fruit juice and boxes of Knox gelatin from the store and went to town. This essay can be found in her collection, More Home Cooking. (Sadly, Laurie Colwin passed away in 1992. She’s one of my favorite food writers.)
Back to the terrine… This was a lovely, refreshing dessert. The citrus was tart, and the berries were sweet, giving it a nice contrast. I made a half recipe, using a 5-inch square container. After supreming the orange and grapefruit, I squeezed the juice from the remaining membranes. Then, I made up the difference with grapefruit juice, which is our usual morning juice. Dorie said it would take about 2 hours for the gelatin to get to the consistency of egg whites. I missed the actual point of egg whites, and after 45 minutes, it was way past that. I added the fruit anyway, though I think the fruit would have mixed in better if the consistency had been a little runnier.
Last night, my friend Laury and I went to a delicious Persian restaurant for dinner. We passed on ordering dessert, and I served the terrine when we came back to my house. Howard declined to try it, but that was his loss. It was beautiful to look at (though difficult to photograph). Laury and I both enjoyed it. I think it could have been a tad sweeter, so when I make it next time, I would either add a little more sugar (there wasn’t much in the recipe) or use orange juice, which would definitely be sweeter than the grapefruit. I will also experiment with other fruits and juice flavors.
The Doristas are a creative bunch. I’m sure some of them experimented with the basic formula here, and I can’t wait to read about what they tried. You can check out their links at French Fridays with Dorie. We don’t post the recipes, but all the recipes are in the book, Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table. It’s well worth adding to your bookshelf. (From someone with hundreds of cookbooks, this is a hearty recommendation.)
Next Friday: Slow-Roasted Tomatoes. Perfect for the season.
A Plateful of Happiness 