The Amazing Tomato

I have recently written a few articles about cooking for an online website, and found one of the topics, tomato salad, fascinating! It was interesting because, for one, I really don’t like raw tomatoes all that much and two, I learned a little about tomatoes that got my mouth watering. Here are some really neat tidbits that I learned.

• There are over 7,500 different varieties of tomatoes. The tomato is indigenous to South America. The plant is a member of the nightshade family, which is a poisonous plant. No wonder Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous! (I sure did as a kid and my dad forced me to eat them, YUK).
• The yellow tomato variety is milder. The green tomato is crunchy and tangy.
• Smaller tomatoes like the Roma, Campari, grape and cherry varieties make the best raw salad tomato. They are less watery and have better flavor.

• Never store tomatoes in the refrigerator. Cool temperatures cause the tomato to turn its flavorful linolenic acid to the bland and grainy Z-3 hexenel. If you must have a cold tomato, place it in the fridge about an hour before serving.
• Basil sweetens the tomato and the mild and cool cucumber balances the tomatoey zing. That’s why so many tomatoe salads have basil and cucumber. For best results, use fresh basil, coarsely chopped.
• Fresh tomatoes picked STRAIGHT from the plant are the freshest. Grocery stores often stock tomatoes that have been picked while green, and allowed to ripen in a hot house or in the sun. These tomatoes just aren’t as flavorful. Even the “vine-ripened” tomatoes are blander then their garden counterparts. It pays to have a tomato plant in the garden!

Unfortunately, I am writing this in October, when all the tomato plants have turned to dust, lol. Still, the store-bought grape tomatoes are better than no tomatoes. So if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go munch on a few and then puter with my wii remote controller! Have a great week.

Using Coconut Oil

We got a free quart of coconut oil from Tropical Traditions (see my review at Freaky Frugalite) and the stuff is pretty good! In the review, I mentioned that we’ve used the oil predominantly for cookies. Well, my daughter recently used the oil to grease the skillet for making scrambled eggs. Talk about creative, huh? Theegs had a light coconut taste, but the results were pretty tasty! I don’t like coconut very much (except fresh coconut– I love the fresh stuff), so I think she wondered what I’d think. It wasn’t bad at all. I’ll have to send her a flurry of thank you cards for all the cooking she’s done this summer.

I recommend that you check out my review of the oil. When I first got the oil to review, I wondered what I’d do with the stuff. I never cooked with anything so exotic. But we’ve been using it on bagels and etc, and it’s really pretty good. And after I did a little research into the company, I am very impressed. They have dedicated their business to ofering natural, healthful products. They even have organic foods and grass-fed meat! Worth a look. The website is Tropical Traditions. I’m going to give them my business regularly.

Perfect Meat Spaghetti Sauce

I recently wrote an article about tips for making the perfect spaghetti sauce with ground beef. I used to make this kind of sauce all the time (I cook mostly Italian dishes) and my sauce is sooooo good. While this kind of sauce is pretty easy to make, there are a few tips that will make it even more luscious.

photo credit: mrjoro

• If you want a low-fat sauce, pre-cook the ground beef and drain it. But realize that by draining the fat, you are removing most of the flavor. It’s true! Ground beef is pretty bland without the savory fat. You can drain MOST of the fat as a nice compromise.
• Use ground chuck, not ground sirloin or ground round. Ground chuck has a bit more fat in it, giving the beef more flavor.
• If you want to leave the fat in the sauce but not have TOO MUCH fat, use a lean beef and do not pre-cook the meat. Instead, shred the ground beef and put it in the tomato sauce and let it cook. Yep, it’s fattier and has more calories, but it’s SOOOOOO good.
• Use only fresh ingredients: fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh garlic, etc.
• Use Roma (plum) tomatoes, not those big round beefsteak tomatoes. Roma are the best tomatoes for sauces, as they are thick and savory. The big beefsteak tomatoes are great for slices on hamburgers, but they are too soupy and flavorless for sauce.
• Pre-cook white onions before you add them to the sauce. When you pre-cook the onions, the heating process caramelizes the onions, drawing out their sweetness and adding flavor.
• Cook the sauce on LOW heat and stir constantly.
• Don’t serve the sauce right away. Allow the sauce to sit in the refrigerator for a day or two, to ripen. This is true for all tomato recipes (especially Manhattan Clam Chowder). For some reason, allowing the sauce to mature for a day or two allows the ingredients to mellow and blend together. Yum.
• Add little touches to the sauce, like freshly grated Parmesan cheese or a drop of Worchestershire sauce. I also add green peppers for color and a little panache.

Italians make the finest foods, don’t you think?! I love Italian cooking and I learned some really good tips growing up in an Italian home. I’m not Italian, though (and I couldn’t even pass as one, not even with some good costume kingdom coupons and a slick disguise). But I can cook like one!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make some sauce! Manja! Manja!

Fall and Fish

Well, fall has only just begun. I haven’t yet kicked into high gear with my cooking. My daughter made a delicious black bean and ham soup yesterday, though. And cookies. And she made apple pie! And we’ve already made beef and barley stew…. but I’m really not going hog wild cooking, just yet. Part of the reason is that my jobs keep me pretty busy. Another reason is that I’m not terribly motivated to cook just yet. However, I picked up a frozen turkey at WalMart today, on sale, so we all know what that means. And cinnamon was on sale, too— oooooh the smells of roasting turkey and baked goods with cinnamon– yum! I think once I made that turkey, I will suddenly enter the “cooking season” until April, lol.

When at WalMart, I purchased a ton of frozen fish. For the FIRST TIME EVER (that I have experienced), fish is less expensive than red meat, pork, and most chicken cuts. I was shocked. Red meat is $4 or more a pound! Frozen salmon was just under that, as was flounder and tilapia. I bought a ton of fish and now my freezer is stuffed like a bank vault full of scott kay jewelry.

I haven’t posted very many recipes here lately. Like I said, my work and the lack of inspiration has cooled my cooking jets. I will have to be investigating some new recipes, however, because the old ones are boring now. And I have NO IDEA how to cook the fish, besides broiling it (boooooring).

If you have any fish recipes or ideas– let me know!