5 (or6) Tomato Pasta

This is a really simple recipe, one that I often prepare when we come home from the cinema or some such outing, it can be on a plate in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered.

Ingredients;
Sun dried tomatoes in oil (handful)
Sun dried tomatoes (handful)
Can of chopped tomatoes
Sun dried tomato paste
Tomato paste
Few fresh tomatoes
Glass red wine
Fresh Parmesan cheese
Chilli flakes (optional)


Olive oil

Penne

Method

Cut up2 x dried tomatoes into 2cm pieces


Place dry sun dried tomatoes in the wine


Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in heavy pan
Put other sun dried tomatoes & sun dried tomato paste into pan
(Add chillies at this point if using)


Stir for 1 to 2 minutes to heat through, do not allow to colour
Add sun dried tomatoes and wine all at once


Cook so that the wine reduces by half
Add tomato paste & stir through; this will thicken the sauce


Add chopped tomatoes, bring to boil & then reduce to simmer


Cook Penne, when ready remove from heat & drain.
Add chopped fresh tomatoes to sauce and stir through to heat but do not cook
Add penne to sauce and toss to mix thoroughly


Plate and grate fresh parmesan before serving


If you have some fresh basil, tear a couple of leaves & scatter them over dish

LN

beautiful, LN. i especially like the little bit of rehydrating in the wine. i'll keep that.

Spicy Citrus BBQ Lamb
Apologies for no pics but I can't be arsed at the moment. This is a home-grown recipe I've developed over the last couple of months. The receipe below will feed five or six people.

Ingredients:
-- Lamb leg (say a pound per person) with bone in;
-- Zest of one Lemon;
-- Juice of half a lemon;
-- Splash of Vinegar;
-- Cloves of One Garlic Bulb, peeled;
-- Olive Oil;
-- Lots and lots of Fresh Rosemary;
-- Crushed dried hot peppers;
-- Fresh Hot Peppers;
-- 1 Cup Stock (vegetable or meat stock);
-- Tablespoon of Flour;
-- Salt and Pepper.
-- 6 Potatoes (cubed)
-- 2 Onions (roughly chopped)

This recipe can easily be altered to suit your (and your guests') taste, but I'll list it the way I like it.

To make the marinade, place in a food processor the zest from the lemon, the lemon juice, a heaping handful of fresh rosemary leaves (save some leaves still on stocks for later) a couple of crushed dried hot peppers, a couple of fresh hot peppers, a couple glugs of olive oil and a splash of vinegar, the garlic cloves (you might want to peel the garlic first because zesting and squeezing the lemon will help remove the garlic smell from your hands), salt and pepper.
Let 'er rip until the concoction is well blended.

Taste. It should be spicy but shouldn't
completely overwhelm the rosemary. I find the spiciness subsides during cooking while the rosemary rises, so keep that in mind.

Get a large baggie, big enough to hold the leg (you can use a pan covered with cling wrap if you don't have one).

Score the meat two or three times on both sides with a knife and cut away any excess fat, leaving enough to keep the juices flowing during cooking.

Rub on the marinade. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. Make sure you have the leg well covered with marinade, including into the cuts you've made.

Place the marinaded meat in the fridge for at least a couple hours, preferably overnight. After you take it out, stick some full stocks of rosemary into the cuts.

Heat up the barbecue. I use a gas grill with some soaked mesquite wood ships to add flavor. A charcoal fire will taste better but you will need to work harder to get the temps right.
Basically, you want to be able to control the temps so that you have a high heat to sear the meat and a relatively low and steady heat to do the bulk of the cooking. (Again, I'll tell you how it works on my grill and you can alter the recipe to your own conditions.)

Place the leg directly on the grill at a medium high heat, turning to sear the meat on both sides. This should take about 20 minutes.

While it is searing, you can chop your onions and potatoes.

Remove the lamb from the grill and place it in a roasting pan. Add the cubed potatoes and onions to the pan around the meat.
Lower the heat to a medium-low setting.

After about an hour, remove the potatoes and onions and place in their own roasting pan, putting them back into the barbecue or into an oven, depending on the space you have available, to finish them off. I do this so that they roast instead of boil, since the cooking meat tends to throw off a lot of juices.

Let the lamb cook for an hour-and-a-half to two hours after you've seared it.
You may want to sear it again at the end. The lamb should be almost burned on the outside with just a hint of pink in the center of the thickest parts of the meat.

When the lamb is done, wrap it in tinfoil and set aside for 20 minutes or so.

Add about half an inch of stock to the pan and either leave it on the grill or place it on top of the stove, with the heat so that it just boils. Scrape the bottom of the pan as the liquid boils to capture all those nice caramelized garlic pieces stuck to the bottom.

Reduce the liquid, adding flour if you need it to thicken it (last time I made this the flour wasn't needed). Strain the gravy.

Chow down. Accompany with frosty cold lager or a strong red wine.

LN, stop causing me to salivate like Pavlov's dog.

Visual literature cooking semiotics poetry. :-)

Ingredients:
3 Sausages per person
500g seedless grapes
Balsamic Vinegar
Potatoes
Butter, salt, milk


Heat oven to 180ºC
Peel potatoes & slice 1cm thick, place in cold water add salt & put on heat

Carefully remove all small stems from grapes and place in one layer in oven proof dish.


Put in hot oven

Place sausages in boiling water, once the water returns to the boil reduce to a simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove sausages from water, remove grapes from oven.


Add 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar to grapes

Place sausages on top pf grapes return to oven.

This should take 15 to 20 minutes, turn them during this time to colour evenly



Make mashed potatoes as before.

The grapes should have softened & their juices mixed with the vinegar to produce a dark sweet sour sauce.



LN

Damn you. Lunch isn't for an hour and ten minutes.

Wipes up drool.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Damn you. Lunch isn't for an hour and ten minutes.

Wipes up drool.

Well; as it only takes 30 minutes to make...you have plenty of time left

LN

Grapes in the oven? I must try that sometime.

quote:

Originally posted by Wanderer:
Grapes in the oven? I must try that sometime.

Ironically, I came up with the idea for this after eating something similar in Belgium (but without the grapes/balsamic thing, which came from a meal I ate in Nappa years ago)

LN

Belgium, the place to go when you're in need of inspiration. Unless you actually live here, than you preferrable go some place else.

LN your're a freaging culinary genius. Bloody fantastic!

quote:

Originally posted by LeitzNoctilux:
5 (or6) Tomato Pasta

This is a really simple recipe, one that I often prepare when we come home from the cinema or some such outing, it can be on a plate in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered.

Ingredients;
Sun dried tomatoes in oil (handful)
Sun dried tomatoes (handful)
Can of chopped tomatoes
Sun dried tomato paste
Tomato paste
Few fresh tomatoes
Glass red wine
Fresh Parmesan cheese
Chilli flakes (optional)

LN

Looks good, but I think the recipe really could use more tomatoes and tomato products.

quote:

Originally posted by striv:
LN your're a freaging culinary genius. Bloody fantastic!

Hardly, Striv; I am only showing simple dishes that anyone could do in under 30 min. if you try.

I wish someone would try one of them & let me know how they get along.

I am lucky because I have a bunch of digital cameras I can keep one in the kitchen, so it is easy to document things as I go along.

Thanks again.
LN

Hey, LeitzNoctilux, does it matter what kind of seedless grapes you put in the recipe above? Do you have a preference?

Please let your fine readers know.

quote:

Originally posted by Meru:
Hey, LeitzNoctilux, does it matter what kind of seedless grapes you put in the recipe above? Do you have a preference?

Please let your fine readers know.

No, none at all, use anything you have handy just remember to make sure that you get rid of all the little stalks. The only criteria is that the grapes are juicy, as you need their juices to run & blend with the balsamic and the juices from the sausages to make a nice rich sauce.

LN

Oh yeah, I want some sausages in some nice rich sauce....
Food. I'm talking about food. I love sausages.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Damn you. Lunch isn't for an hour and ten minutes.

Wipes up drool.

Mm, LN has mysterious powers of psycic salivat creation.

He may be doming some kind of culinary media witchcraft.

'Bubble bubble..'

heh

Chicory Salad

• about half a kilo fresh chicory
• a lemon
• a tomato
• an onion
• some virgin olive oil
• your favorite salad spices

Wash the greens. Cut the root and throw them in the sink under lots of water to get rid of the mud.



Put some water in a pot and bring it to a boil. Those greens might look like much but they lose size pretty fast once you put them in the water.



That's all of them in there. Just put them in one bunch at a time and let them soak before you add the next one. Don't leave them in the water for more than 3 minutes. You don't want them to lose all the vitamins.



When you drain them try to just fork them out. Don't waste that water. My dad always has my mom save that water to drink afterwards.



Put the greens in your salad bowl and with a knife and fork cut them up. Also add a tomato. I add an onion too cause I put onion with everything.



After that I add grounded lemon pepper, touch of thyme and oregano. Top that with all the juice from the lemon (you can never add enough lemon for me. ) and some olive oil. (If you put too much olive oil one way to fix that is to cut another tomato in there.) Mix all that and serve.



It's sour and a little bitter in taste but I love it. I guess it might be an acquired taste.

Hi Striv;

Are the greens hot or cold when you throw in the rest of the salad?

LN

Hot. I like to eat them while they're still warm and it makes a nice contrast with the cold ones. But the salad gets cold fast anyway... so it doesn't really matter. You can easily preserve it in the fridge too. The lemony goodness in it makes all the difference.