Flippin' Nora I have sooooo many reviews to read!!! Kate x
Flippin' Nora I have sooooo many reviews to read!!! Kate x
Member since:17.07.2006
Reviews:148
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Tomatoes
Tomatoes make me happy. Their rosy hues and delicate aroma as they hang on furry green stems fills my heart with happiness. There is nothing in the world I like more than sliced beef tomatoes, full of flavour, sprinkled with a little salt, a little fresh ground black pepper, and a few ripped basil leaves. Mmmm. Delicious. Cherry tomatoes I could eat like they were sweeties, and invariably do! This week, in our fortnightly veg bag (we do an organic veg box scheme with a local farm) we got a little box filled with tiny, juicy, cherry tomatoes which are so sweet and full of flavour that you really can pop them in like sweets and feel the juicy sweetness explode. Not
even Willy Winka could create a better taste sensation!
Tomatoes have incredibly good health benefits, many of which are not really talked all that much about. But one of the reasons that the Italians, for example, are so healthy is their consumption of tomatoes. Lycopene is a disease fighting anti-oxidant which is in tomatoes in bucket-loads, and is the reason that tomatoes have their glorious red colour. as lycopene levels in you blood increase, your chance of getting heart disease, or having a stroke, go down. Low Lycopene levels have been linked by doctors and scientists with several types of cancer, including bowel and prostrate. Even the jelly like substance round the seeds has benefits - it contains something which makes blood less prone to clotting. And because heating the tomatoes up actually increases the levels of lycopene, the Italian mama's way of cooking sauce (where you boil up your tomatoes for hours to get the sauce thinck and sweet - see my special tomato sauce recipe below for more details!) makes for a healthier end product!
If I had to choose my favourite tomato for eating, it would probably be the beef tomato. For salads, the cherry tomato can't be ebaten, and for sauces and relishes, the plum tomato is the king. I would love to be able to grow my own tomotoes, as my dad used to do, but while I manage to succeed in other gardening areas, tomatoes just don't like me much, and I always seem to loose them to greenfly or blight. Potatoes I can grow. Carrots and onions and asparagus are my friends in the garden, but tomatoes, despite my care and attention, don't ever play ball. Maybe one day I will succeed in bottling my very own tomato crop. I'll just have to keep trying!
Kate's Secret Sauce...
I learnt this recipe from a girl in college who ended up being my best friend, and we still reminisce about those lovely dinners! Recently she came up to stay and "look after" me after a spell in hospital with my pregnancy, and she made this again. There is nothing like it in the world! This is a pasta dish that can be thrown together in about ten minutes, or cooked for longer to sweeten up the sauce - delicious either way, though my advise is the longer you cook it, the sweeter it gets!
All you need for this dish:
(to feed max 4 people)
1 tin chopped tomatoes 1 large onion, chopped up small 3 cloves garlic, crushed salt and black pepper 1/2 stock cube. oil 1 tablespoon sugar
pasta.
So, you take your oil, heat it in a heavy bottomed saucepan, throw in your garlic and then your onion, and cook till soft and transparent (don't let it burn or the flavour will be affected) Next turn the heat right up and pour your tomatoes in, let them sizzle for a few minutes, and then fill up the empty can with water, and put that in too.
At this point, raid your fridge. If you have any red/green/yellow peppers, mushrooms, courgettes, anything like that, chop 'em up small and throw them in. Keep and eye on the sauce, and when it comes to the boil, add the stock cube, making sure it disolves. If you have any tomato puree, add this now for a richer flavour. Salt, black pepper (quite a lot in my case, got to love black pepper!) and sugar go in next. Keep stirring! Now, you can either reduce down the sauce (let it get thick) and cook your pasta seperately, or you can do what I do, which is add the dried pasta to the pan and cook it IN the sauce, so that the flavours get absorbed into the pasta. Makes for a lovely one-pot dish.
Serve with basil if you have it, and some grated cheese. Maybe a slice of garlic bread....
Perfectamundo!
Hope you enjoy it!
Thank you for reading! Kate x
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Advantages: Wonderful smell, taste and goes perfectly with tomatoes for a divine salad sensation! Disadvantages: It's an annual that likes a but of sun. And I live in The Dark North!!!
phoenixgreen 26.05.2007 (25.05.2007)
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