roasted garlic | Adventures in Eating & Everything After

I had heard of this Italian dish and it always sounded nice. But we don’t eat a lot of bread so therefore we rarely have stale bread. It never came to be. And it seems silly to buy something just so it could get stale. We’ve made many tomato basil cheese etc salads but the stale, crusty bread hadn’t joined the party. So…..with the perfect storm of house guests last weekend who didn’t eat everything we bought (including a delicious, now hard as a shoe, Berkshire Mountain Bakery baguette), beautiful ripe Wolfe Spring Farm tomatoes bursting with juice, extra roasted WSF garlic sitting around, uneaten boiled WSF corn that was in the fridge for a day or two, fresh parsley, basil, and chives from our garden. I came to understand the true origin and beauty of this dish. Cut it all up, toss it all together with whatever vinegar turns you on (I used white balsamic the first time and it was a little timid. Then, good old supermarket red wine vinegar and it was just right), olive oil, salt and pepper (I also added little bit of minced WSF jalapeño for pizazz and some cubed pressed tofu for protein) let it sit for 10 minutes or so until the bread softens a little in the juices of the tomatoes , vinegar and oil, and BOOM, dinnuh! and lunch, and a snack. I was possessed by this fresh, quick, flavorful assembly of stuff lying around. I ate so much of it. I think it would be great with a little red onion, fresh cheese, anything you have left over that does’t seem too gross to put in. My guess is that the corn is not authentic but I adapted the dish to our region. Even though a dish may be common, tried and true, or part of the popular repertoire, it still feels new and exciting when we discover it, even “invent” it, for ourselves, doesn’t it? I think this is one of the great joys of cooking.

Got Bread?

I don’t think I’m the only one who loves a slice of leftover pizza for breakfast. What about a fresh, grilled pizza for breakfast? The thick meaty tomatoes from Wolfe Spring Farm prompted us to give it a try. Our weekend guest had brought a few cheeses. A buratta which we used on our bruschetta and a nice fresh mozzarella from Murray’s in Grand Central Terminal. Tomatoes, mozzarella? Fresh basil in the garden? Caprese salad? No, PIZZA! We had two crusts from Berkshire Mountain Bakery in the freezer and did this: Sliced the tomatoes, pushed out most of the seeds, salted them and let them drain for an hour or so in the sun. They got nice and tender and dried out a bit. Fortunately, I had roasted some garlic this week so we smeared a few cloves of roasted garlic on each crust, then rubbed some olive oil on them too. Sliced and layered on the mozzarella. ;aye red on the cheese, added a little salt and lots of freshly found black pepper, and grilled the whole thing for about 15 minutes. Then, we sprinkled one of them with fresh basil from the garden, and the other one with basil, fresh chopped oregano and some nasturtium flowers. I have to admit, the nasturtium flowers were for looks. Even though they are edible and have a delicate peppery taste, it was unnecessary and, frankly, weird. The pizza had a delicious blackened crust and a simple earthy taste from the garlic, tomatoes and cheese. Tonight, we’ll have leftover breakfast pizza for dinner!