Today’s lunch: grilled tomato, basil, and mozzarella sandwich — featuring roma tomatoes and sweet basil from our garden, Full Quiver Farms fresh mozzarella, and homemade sourdough bread. So good!
Sandwich assembly
Grilled Tomato, Mozzarella, Basil Sandwich on Sourdough Bread
We’ve been waiting and waiting for our Celebrity tomatoes to ripen, so I finally decided to pick some and make fried green tomatoes with them.
Celebrity Tomatoes
Cut tomatoes into 1/4″ slices.
Sliced Green Tomatoes
Put 1/4 cup milk in a bowl. In separate bowl, combine 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and a dash or two of cayenne. Heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet.
When oil is hot, dip tomato slices in milk, then in flour mixture. Add to skillet and fry on each side for 4-5 minutes.
Frying Green Tomatoes
Drain on paper towels and eat while they’re still hot.
Fried Green Tomatoes
Due to an enormous amount of reader mail I’ve decided to post my super infamous recipe for slow-smoked baby back ribs. Apologies to vegetarians up front. This recipe was developed and tweaked over the past four years by yours truly, failing and succeeding over and over again with a half-hundred racks of baby backs and more hot peppers than you can shake a twig at. The following is my casually archived, yet beloved, recipe. Enjoy!
Con Queso’s slow-smoked ribs
Everything you need except for smoke and fire.
1 rack of prime/natural choice baby-back ribs
1 large pepper, chopped (poblano or banana supreme work great)
2 serrano peppers, chopped (optional)
Tablespoon of fresh chili powder
Tablespoon of salt
1/2 tablespoon of pepper
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Tablespoon of toasted cumin seeds
Tablespoon of toasted coriander seeds
Quart of apple cider/juice, or distilled apple cider vinegar
Aluminum foil
All natural charcoal chunks (don’t use briquets)
Two handfuls of apple, pecan or oak chips, soaked in water or cider overnight
One gallon freezer bag
Grill thermometer
The night before:
Remove thin skin membrane from underside of ribs. This is tough to do, but worth it. Use a paper-towel to get a grip on the membrane and work a sharp knife underneath.
Removing the membrane
Cut rack in half (for easier handling on the grill), set aside.
Cut the rack in half for easier handling and whatnot
Toast cumin and coriander seeds in skillet on oven.
Toasting the cumin and coriander
Combine this with salt, chili powder, pepper and grind (I have a dedicated coffee grinder for this. If you use yr regular coffee grinder it will forever taste funky). Use this as a dry rub, applying roughly 3/4s of it on the tops of the ribs, the rest on the underside. My grinder is broken at the moment, so I’m using a traditional Molcajete – which might be better anyway.
adding cumin/coriander to the rest of the dry spices
finished dry rub
After working the dry rub into the ribs, combine poblano and Serrano peppers in small bowl with garlic. Rub this mixture evenly on ribs, doing your best to get it all adhered.
ribs with dry rub
Put ribs in plastic Ziploc freezer bag to sit overnight. Sometimes I add a couple tablespoons of apple cider in with the ribs to help moisten them up (and for good luck).
Prepare the grill. You will be grilling indirectly, with the coals on one side and the meat on the other. Grill temperature is ideal at 225, but it is imperative to keep between 200 and 250.
Preparing the grill, yo.
Fired Up!
Once grill is at right temperature (250 degrees) add ribs with the meaty side up and the bones on the grill. Add some of your soaked apple/pecan/oak chunks for smoke. Let those babies rock for about two and a half hours, rotating the meat once or twice during this process. You can also drizzle/mop the ribs a few times with yr apple cider.
Indirect heat
After 2 1/2 hours into cooking I wrap the ribs with foil. Sometimes I buy aluminum cake pans from dollar general and cover with foil, I find this method most effective. You’ll want to add about a cup of cider to the ribs/foil bowl – and then maintain that amount of moisture for the rest of the cooking process. Keep yr eye on the ribs and add cider as necessary…don’t let ‘em dry out! The more solid the bottom of yr foil container is, the less it will leak.
The ribs turn out best when you let them cook for 8-14 hours on the grill. I usually go 10. If you get tired of maintaining a 225-degree grill fire after 4 hours, you may finish them off in the oven. I usually do this, but it is important they get at least 4 hours of real smoke on the grill. The last couple times I’ve done this, I’ve done slow and low on the grill for 3-4 hours, then put them in the oven at 225 for another 12-16 hours. Make sure the cake pans never go dry – keep ’em about an 1/8 inch deep with apple cider or apple juice. I’ve never had better ribs. Geeez!
Also important: after removing ribs from grill/oven, let them rest for a good 10 or 12 minutes before you touch them. This will allow the displaced moisture to find its way back into the meat. Good luck!
Slow and Low
For dinner last night we had Spaghetti with Basil Pesto and Tomato Salad, made with freshly picked sweet basil and Matt’s wild cherry tomatoes. They are the tiniest cherry tomatoes I’ve every seen, but they’re juicy, flavorful, and abundant.
Bowl full of cherry tomatoes
It was a wonderful summer meal, complete with homemade sourdough bread, Holy Cow chardonnay, and peach crisp made with farmers market peaches from nearby Caskey Orchards.
Spaghetti with pesto and tomato salad
Sourdough Bread
The April 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times had a recipe for Thai Red Curry with Green Beans and Eggplant that I’ve been anxiously waiting to make with produce from our garden. This week, everything I needed was ready to pick: Japanese long eggplant, snap bush beans, 1015 onions (used instead of the red onion called for in the recipe), and Thai basil.
Eggplants, Green Beans, Onions, Thai Basil
We served this with jasmine rice, and it was delicious. Made tasty leftovers for lunch today, too. The full recipe is available here.
Thai Red Curry with Green Beans and Eggplant
For a quick and easy snack, I sliced some carrots, lemon cucumbers, and marketmore cucumbers from the garden to eat with a freshly made batch of hummus.
Lemon Cucumber, Marketmore Cucumber
Hummus Recipe:
2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup tahini
juice of one lemon
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt
1/4 cup yogurt or water
1 serrano pepper, finely diced
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
cayenne
Puree chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, and salt in food processor. Add yogurt or water and puree for a smoother consistency. Add serrano and pulse a few times until mixed in. Pour into serving bowl, stir in cumin and a dash of cayenne.
Lemon Cucumbers, Nantes Coreless Carrots, Marketmore Cucumber
Dinner from the garden tonight:
Roasted Red Potatoes with Fresh Rosemary (Tossed potato wedges with just enough olive oil to coat. Added chopped rosemary, salt, and pepper. Baked in covered dish for 25-30 minutes (375 degrees), stirring occasionally. Removed cover and baked 10 more minutes. ) and Dramatically Seared Green Beans with Garlic and Chili. (Recipe from Mollie Katzen.)
I made my own yogurt today. It was so easy; I can’t believe I hadn’t done this before! There are several different ways to make it—I used the oven method described in The Backyard Homestead as my guide.
Step 1: Heat one quart of milk and 1/3 cup dry milk in saucepan until it reaches 100-110 degrees. I used whole milk but have read that any will work.
Step 2: Pour warmed milk into covered casserole dish.
Step 3: Add three tablespoons plain yogurt to the milk and stir well. (Make sure the yogurt has live active cultures in it – check the label. In the future, I’ll use yogurt from my last homemade batch.)
Step 4: Place in warm oven (heat to 100 degrees, then turn off) and let sit for six to eight hours. (Oven too dirty to post a picture.)
Step 5: Remove from oven and store in refrigerator.
Step 6: Eat topped with fresh fruit or homemade granola. Yum!
Planted and Enchanted 