What is cooler than Classic Martinis, I hear you ask?
It's this--here I was, sitting out on the deck, drinking black coffee and eating fried rice (thank you Ruth for that great suggestion, and don't be sad peeplz--it's not mysterious, it's just leftover rice w/ an egg, scallions, and dark sesame oil and it's great for breakfast) flipping through the new cookbook...actually really READING it instead of flipping through it, when this caught my eye:
Do you see that? A free subscription to Gourmet! I love free things! That's how I got into karate--two free months and now look at me--a brown belt, almost as dangerous to others as I am to myself. I have to admit I've never subscribed to Gourmet (I was always more of a cookbook gal) but how can I pass this up? I can't. And frankly I'm curious to see how it's changed under Ruth's editorship.
Cool stuff!
OK, on to the featured recipes...
My friend Elizabeth (she of the kittens and the Bombay gin) got even more ambitious with her backyard garden this year and added twice as many raised beds, and as a result has been awash with vegetables...some of which she has sold at the farmer's market, but many of which have found their happy way to my kitchen. And when we were invited to a Labor Day potluck, I thought--here's the perfect opportunity to help Elizabeth move some of those tomatoes out of there--every time I walk in to her house (hello kittens!!!) she has bushels and pint boxes and pie plates of plum and cherry and heirloom tomatoes hanging about--by making Slow-Roasted Tomato Bruschetta.
Lots o tomatoes!
Cut them up and distribute them on two baking sheets and drizzle with 5 tbsp olive oil + 5 minced garlic cloves, salt and pepper:
Roast in a 200 oven for 6 hours. Yup, six hours! When they're done, they'll look like this:
See that bread? When I took the picture I was toasting slices of it in the oven, which is how I served it at the party.
And people FLIPPED over this dish. So simple! I must have told ten people how it's made (including my mother, who called this morning to write down the instructions). And by the way, this is from The Gourmet Cookbook, not Gourmet Today, should you be looking for this one (it's not on Epicurious either).
*****************************************************************************
Next--Classic Martinis!
I told you last post that we couldn't decide between Gin Rickeys and Classic Martinis, and tonight we went with the martinis. In the intro to the chapter, Ruth writes that the food editors spent a ridiculous amount of time counting how many times they stirred drinks, testing different types of ice cubes, etc--only to discover that the devil really IS in the details or rather that very small differences make the difference between a good cocktail and a great one.
So I paid close attention to things like how much ice, noted that the martini was stirred, not shaken (sorry James Bond) and put the glasses in the freezer ahead of time to get them nice and chilled.
And, it was good! But I'm thinking that those bartenders at bars must keep some gin in the fridge or something--I would have liked it colder and ended up putting in some of the ice from the shaker. And I put a little olive juice in mine too, which makes it a "dirty" martini (not too long ago I had a Hot and Dirty Martini at Alchemy, which was a damn good martini!!)
I noted that the bruschetta was from The Gourmet Cookbook--the martini is obviously from Gourmet Today, the new book. I'm going to have to think of a way to state that elegantly in the future without going to the bother of typing out the titles over and over. Hmmm. Thinking....
No comments:
Post a Comment