Tomato Bisque with Red Onion Focaccia

This was quite the tasty dinner. I really liked both the Tomato Bisque soup and the focaccia recipe from The Conscious Cook by Tal Ronnen. That being said, I do have some changes next time. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is a good cookbook if you follow your instincts and not the exact recipe.



For the Tomato Bisque recipe, the cashew cream rocked. But, Mike and I both agreed that we wanted more tomato and less stock. I would suggest doubling the tomatoes and reducing the stock but the same amount. We did use the Vita-mix to blend this but gave up on sending the blended mixture through a sieve (it was fine without straining the blended mixture).

For the Focaccia, all our salt and hot pepper wound up in one spot so I would just change the way it was added. I would sprinkle on the salt, pepper, red pepper, and rosemary, and then brush over the olive oil. Also, we cooked ours about 10-15 min longer than called for (maybe a typo in the book), which is why the onions got so brown.

Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes from the SLC Farmer's Market

Look at these beautiful heirloom cherry tomatoes we picked up yesterday at the Salt Lake Farmer's Market.



We had never been down to the Farmer's Market before and wanted to check it out before the season ended. We normally don't go because we are overflowing with vegetables from our CSA. Even though we have had a lot of food from our CSA we have been generally unhappy with this new CSA and had planned to switch to a CSA in Park City next year. After seeing the farmer's market yesterday we are re-thinking our plan. The farmer's market was huge and wonderful. It's so nice to be able to walk around and pick the best of the lot and still be buying locally direct from the farmer. At the farmer's market we can get what is in season, but at the amounts that are right for us. I just don't think I can take another week of summer squash and zucchini this year. We are considering making a commitment to drive down to Salt Lake every saturday morning (or every other) and go to the farmer's market instead. While it is 30 miles for us, it is still considerably less than the mileage that grocery store veg are shipped. We also have a much smaller Park City farmer's market that would also provide some food. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this if you've struggled with a similar dilemma (CSA vs Farmer's market).

I bet you want to know what I did with those tomatoes! I sliced them in halves or quarters depending on size and added some sliced basil. Then I mixed up a vinaigrette from olive oil, balsamic, garlic, salt, and pepper and added some of the dressing to the tomatoes and then gave them an extra little sprinkle of salt. Here is the tomato salad:

Tomato Spinach Bread Pudding

We got 7 lbs of Tomatoes from the CSA this week AND 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes. This weeks menu kind of sounds like Forest Gump talking about tomatoes: Cherry Tomato Sauce with Orzo, Tomato Soup, and Tomato Bread pudding. This is the tomato bread pudding:



Tomato Bread Pudding

5 medium tomatoes or 3 large (~2 lbs - peeled, halved, cored, and seeded) *
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
pepper
2/3 Whole wheat baguette (cut into 1 to 1 1/2 in cubes)
2-3 Tbsp vegan margarine, melted
1/4 cup vegan parmesan replacement **
1 bunch of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
fresh thyme, minced (~4-5 sprigs)
1-2 Tbsp fresh basil, roughly chopped
1 tsp balsamic

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Grease a 1 1/2 qt shallow casserole dish.

Place the tomatoes in a food processor with salt, pepper, and sugar. Pulse 4-5 times until the tomatoes are nearly pureed, but still have some recognizable tomato chunks. Set aside.

Toss the bread cubes in a bowl with the margarine. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for about a minute until the garlic is fragrant. Add the spinach and stir. If there is no water clinging to the spinach from washing, you might need to add a teaspoon. Cover and cook for about 30 seconds. Stir. Cover and cook for about another 30 seconds. You basically want to cook it until it is just wilted. Add the balsamic.

Place 1/2 the bread cubes in the casserole dish. Top with the spinach mixture. Sprinkle the basil over the spinach. Add the rest of the bread cubes. Top with the tomato puree and gently stir around a little to incorporate the tomatoes (just a little stir/poke).

Bake for about 30 minutes until browned. Top with the vegan parmesan replacement. Cook for about another 4 minutes.

----

* Invest in an Oxo tomato peeler. These are great if you only have a few tomatoes to peel. If I need to peel a lot, I'll resort to the old boiling water trick, but for a few this peeler is very handy. It also works well on peaches.

** We make our own vegan parmesan replacement from a recipe in the uncheese cookbook. In the picture above, you can see that I didn't grind it enough in the food processor when I made this batch, but it is really tasty anyway. It is made from miso, blanched almonds, nutiritional yeast, and salt. You can find this recipe if you go to this google book search page and scroll to the bottom right of the page and search for "parmesan". It should be around the 3rd hit. It is also a good book to have, so I would recommed ordering the book. I have made this "parmesan" with both white mellow miso and with the darker barley miso. I liked the taste of the barley miso better, but it looks funny. The white miso looks better as a parmesan topping and has a milder taste.