yes, yes, summer is the time for glorious stone fruit, blah, blah, blah … but unless it’s coming off your tree, you have limitless budget to make daily trips to whole foods, or you can haul your cookies to a farmers market every week, too often summer stone fruits — peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, etc,. — from the regular ol’ grocery store are disappointing … buy them when they are hard as rocks, let them “ripen” in the kitchen, and they go from inedible to mushy and tastless.
BUT there is a cure!
slow roasting tomatoes has long been a secret weapon against mealiness. (tomatoes are another fruit that, while lacking pits, are often heartbreakingly tasteless — all year round — from the grocery store.)
yesterday, we had to move it or lose it on tomatoes and fruit i had bought earlier in the week. i had white peaches, a mango, and a couple of tomatoes that needed immediate attention. to be fair, i got lucky on the peaches and the mango. they were pretty tasty, but i figured i could maximize taste if i roasted them with the tomatoes. the result was fan-freaking-tastic.
here’s a quickie (if you ignore the 3-1/2 hours of oven time) way to make mega-yummy fruit to spread onto sandwiches or serve chilled as a delicate side …
slow-roasted fruit
- 2-3 medium tomatoes (who cares what variety?! use a whole container of cherry tomatoes, cut in half, if you want), sliced fairly thick
- 3 peaches (that aren’t rock hard), pitted and sliced into 6-8 wedges
- 1 mango (the riper the fruit, the greater the yield versus pit size. i used a pretty ripe mango.) similarly sliced into relatively thick wedges/strips
- 4-5 garlic cloves (unpeeled)
- kosher salt & fresh ground pepper (and other dried herbs, if you wish: thyme, tarragon, rosemary) to taste
- olive oil for drizzling
- remember: you can use whatever combination of stone fruits you want
- on a parchment-lined (very important for easy removal of all yumminess) jelly-roll or cookie sheet, scatter the tomatoes, garlic, and other fruit. make sure to mix it up, so that tomatoes are next to mangos are next to peaches, and make sure the garlic cloves are evenly distributed. also, make sure to dump whatever juices are left over from cutting everything up onto the pan.
- season the slices with the salt, pepper, etc., but remember: slow roasting is going to evaporate the water in the fruit, highly condensing the sugars (flavors) … so a little salt, etc. goes a long way.
- lightly drizzle the slices with olive oil. (again, a little goes a long way. go easy!)
- stick the sheet in a preheated oven (225-degrees … if necessary, you can go to 250, but watch the slices after 2-1/2 hours).
- leave the whole thing alone for 3-1/2 to 4 hours. you are looking for shriveling and carmelization. there should be no liquid bubbling on the parchment.
so what to do with all of the deliciousness that abounds?
yesterday, we made a gourmet play on BLTs:
- after removing the fruit from the oven, crank up the temperature to 425 degrees. transfer the fruit to a plate and let sit. (make sure you get all of the carmelized pieces of juice, etc. off the parchment.) line the jelly-roll pan (gotta have something with edges all around) with foil and place a cooling rack on it. lay bacon strips (1 lb) on rack in pan. put the whole thing in oven and cook bacon to desired doneness. (personally, i have to have mega-crispy bacon. it’s in the oven for at least 20 minutes.) the benefits to doing bacon in the oven include (1) no grease splattering, and (2) no shriveling.
- cut open a couple of sandwich rolls (we have really tasty rosemary focaccia rolls.) and drizzle open sides with olive oil. in the last 10 minutes of bacon-cook time, put rolls in the oven to toast.
- remove rolls and bacon from oven. cut open an avocado and spread on toasted rolls. evenly distribute the fruit and bacon on the bread. squeeze the garlic cloves evenly on same. add thin slices of fresh mozzarella or thin layers of fromage blanc.
you can serve these open faced for four, or close them up as single sandwiches for two. you can also cut the rolls up in large-canape-size pieces before toasting and serve them as appetizers.
you can also forgo the bacon entirely. use grilled chicken instead. or go entirely meatless. add roasted cashews or almonds. (if you have unroasted nuts, throw some on the pan with the fruit.)
OR do bacon, chicken, AND nuts … who cares?!
you will NOT be disappointed no matter what variation!
and, yes, sartre could’ve dramatized last night’s decision by yours truly to cut d-man’s hair. the last haircut the child had wherein any appreciable length was removed was in december ‘08. he needed more than a trim, and i needed to get a grip on my inability to get it done. it all boiled down to my unwillingness to let anyone cut off the amazing curls on the kid’s head. if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be me.
on tuesday, last week, d-man and i hauled our cookies down to paramus, new jersey, to the nearest (67 mi!!!) ikea. over the weekend, i decided i wanted my son to have a real kid’s room, instead of a guest room (replete with sofa bed) that happened to have a crib in it.
