Tomato Cobbler with Blue Cheese Biscuits

Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes
This is my favorite part of the summer growing season. I am experiencing a tomato explosion in my garden. It’s awesome. But I do tend to get tired of just popping the cherry tomatoes into my mouth, or eating the slicer tomatoes like apples. So when I saw this recipe for a tomato cobbler on one of my favorite blogs, I was intrigued and excited about making it. All my favorite flavors are there: tomatoes, basil, balsamic, and caramelized onions….and don’t forget the blue cheese!

I am fairly certain that the kids will go nowhere near it, but I also have a strong feeling that this will be served for dinner up at Tahoe next week to those of us who are over 5 feet tall, and have a more sophisticated palate than the chicken nugget crowd.

I encourage those of you who have the same backyard tomato largess to give it a try…
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Watermelon Gazpacho With Chile and Feta Cheese

That’s Usin’ Your Melon!
After an extended vacation and a lot of driving, we’re back home and I am looking for some good “real” food. It can be fun eating out, but eventually I get tired of shouting in a clown’s mouth and want to have a normal, family dinner around our kitchen table. I know. How very Norman Rockwell…

I gotta say, I’m pretty tired. So as much as I want a real meal, I also want it to be easy and perfect for the warm weather. Luckily, I have a recipe that covers both.

Last month at our Tyler Florence cookbook dinner, one of the recipes I went crazy for was the Watermelon Gazpacho with Chile and Feta Cheese. Just so you know, I don’t like watermelon—which makes my love of this recipe weird. But it’s good…really good. And it is made almost entirely in the blender. Nothing is easier than that. Add to that the fact that my tomatoes are abundant and melons are at the peak of their season, and you just can’t go wrong with this one. Read more…

Trout Meunière

Goin’ Fishin’? Yup…

You cannot catch trout with dry breeches.
~Spanish Proverb

As you read this post, I am wearing waders (It’s a really good look.), thigh-deep in the Yellowstone River—fly fishing for trout. Before you get too impressed, let me say that I am not a fly fisherman. My first and only encounter with the sport (?) occurred right after college when my then-boyfriend tried to teach me the art of the cast in my driveway (’cause doesn’t everyone do that?). I never got it right, but it did make for some serious comedy. And for 5 minutes I was an awesome girlfriend.

Fast forward a few years. (Actually, it’s almost 20, but I refuse to wrap my mind around that.) Here I am again trying to figure this whole thing out. The best part is we are in Yellowstone, which has been on my bucket list since I studied Geology and Volcanology at the U of O. (Geek alert! Obviously that career didn’t pan out.)

Despite visions of Chevy Chase and his station wagon (or maybe because of it) we decided to load up the kids and the car, and experience a real family vacation complete with plenty of whining, bathroom stops, and “Will you stop touching me!”. It’s all worth it because good or bad this will be a trip that we will remember for years to come.

Below is my favorite recipe for Trout Meunière adapted from James Peterson’s cookbook Fish & Shellfish. This book is another one of those must-haves for any cook’s library. It is a great reference for cooking anything and everything that comes from the water. I have included his intro…seems appropriate.

Trout Meunière
I must have been four or five when my mother took me and my brothers into the mountains of California for a week of camping. We’d pitch a tent big enough for the whole family, and my mother would be up at dawn, rod and reel in hand, to fish for our breakfast. The trout would end up sizzling in bacon fat over an open fire. No trout has ever again tasted quite the same, but this recipe is as close as it gets.
~James Peterson

Kitty’s Roasted Pepper, Tomato, and Salted Lemon Relish

Naughty Chickens

I have naughty chickens. It would be a reasonable assumption to think that I am referring to my kids, and while there are times you would be correct, in this instance I mean actual fowl.

About a week or two ago we decided that the chickens were old enough to be “free-ranging” in my garden. They were very excited. (Think Disneyland excited.) They ran around like crazy chickens and seemed content to frolic in the dirt, scratch the ground and eat the bugs. Then they discovered the vegetable plants.

While watering the other evening, my husband noticed that leaves on my sweet peppers were gone. I mean totally gone. Like the locusts of the eighth plaque had come and laid siege to the plant. The peppers were still on the branches but the plant was bald. Curiously, it was only the pepper plants that had been targeted. The tomatoes, melons, squash and beans were left untouched. So I put up a wire barrier and hoped that the peppers wouldn’t get scorched by the sun and that was that. Or so I thought.

Last night I came home to find the girls with guilty looks on their faces nestled in the soil between my zucchini and yellow squash plants with tell-tale beak sized pieces missing from the leaves. Now my garden looks like San Quentin with wire all around the plants in the hopes that we might get to eat, as well as our chickens…

If we’re lucky and the peppers survive, I plan to make this recipe. One of my favorite snacks is a great appetizer, a light lunch, or a just the thing for a panini. This recipe is courtesy of one of my favorite chef/teachers, Kitty Morse. Read more…