Whirled together

When I was a kid, I adored leftovers. Stuffing and turkey spread over rolls after Thanksgiving? I'm on it. Pot roast transformed into sandwiches with Miracle Whip and bread? Sold. I even liked casserole dishes like Danish Shepherd's Pie, which exist mostly as an excuse to clean out the pantry and freezer.

My mother encouraged this behavior. She cleverly invented the Smorgasbord Dinner, a meal strung together from leftover pieces of dinners gone by. My sister, Kira, and I were tricked into believing a Smorgasbord Dinner was a rare treat! Perhaps it was. If a dish is delicious once, why not twice?

And if the original dish was sticky, squashy roasted tomatoes, it's practically a Crime Against Everything Culinary and Wonderful not to use leftovers.

My friend Ali agrees with me. She read my last post on roasted tomatoes and quickly shared that she just roasted a batch of her own. She'll soon have a recipe for roasted tomato soup on her blog, Gimme Some Oven. What a clever blog name for a clever gal.

This morning, I transformed my roasted tomatoes into a pasta sauce with only some onion, garlic, cream, and a magic wand of white wine.

Again I say, what's not to love about leftovers? So whipped into a leftover frenzy am I that tomorrow, I may use the rest of this tomato cream sauce to make pizzas. The possibilities are endless and delicious.

Spaghetti with roasted tomato cream sauce

serves 4-6

• 1/2 medium yellow onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 8 roasted tomato halves
• 1 Tb. extra-virgin olive oil
• 4-8 oz. plain canned tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup white wine
  
• 1/4 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. oregano
• a glug of heavy whipping cream
• 1/4 pound spaghetti noodles
• Parmesan cheese to taste
  

Smooth about a teaspoon of olive oil along the bottom of a cast iron skillet, and place the skillet on medium heat. Finely chop the onion and garlic, and cook them until the onions become translucent. When the onions are almost browned, toss on your roasted tomato halves and the rest of the olive oil.

Let all of your veggies warm thoroughly before you move the tomato halves to a blender. Before you add the onions and garlic, pour the white wine, oregano, and sea salt into the skillet. Stir the mixture for a minute, just long enough for the wine to sop up the last flavors of olive oil and garlic.

Pour the skillet contents, along with the tomato sauce, in the blender and puree the sauce until it's smooth. Return the sauce to your skillet, and turn the heat down low. Stir in a splash of cream and keep the sauce warm.

Bring a pan of water to a rolling boil, and cook the spaghetti for 7-10 minutes. Drain the pasta, toss liberally with the tomato cream sauce, and serve with Parmesan.

If you liked this recipe, you might also enjoy:

Slow-roasted tomatoes with cardamom and caraway

Rigatoni with red pepper cream sauce

Farfalle with mushroom cream sauce

You know, like "tuh-mater..."

I've been slow in sharing some news here on In a Pickle. There's no delicate way to break it:

Two weeks ago, I moved to Portland, Oregon.

There. I feel much better.

Most the people I love back in Wichita know the story. In early June, I applied to be a radio operations coordinator for Oregon Public Broadcasting. After a month and no call, I forgot about the whole deal. My husband lined up gigs with his band. I planted a pear tree named Ferdinand in our front yard and put roses in the flower bed.

Then, in the hostile and oppressive heat of July, a woman from OPB named Holly left me a voice mail, saying that she'd like to schedule an interview, and soon. Over the next week, I had two phone interviews, a dozen e-mails, and a technologically crippled Skype conversation with the people who now share an office with me. It's like heaven. It is heaven. Heaven with health coverage and occasional free cookies.

My husband and I had to plan so much, and so quickly, to get here. We took pictures and gave away our posessions. We sold most of our furniture, our bed, and my car. We gave away a microwave, a green plaid couch, two window air conditioners, and arm-loads of books, then we packed what was left into a Mazda truck and a U-Haul trailer. We drove across Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon with two kitties and a giant pile of CDs. It took us three days to arrive.

Our new home is beautiful. We have wood floors and kind neighbors. The kitchen has two ovens. We found it on Craigslist, of all places.

Counter space and a dose of light.

I'm still working out what the move means to In a Pickle, since at first, I intended to chronicle the life and times of a crazy Kansas foodie. What will I write now that I no longer live in the wheat-producing, beer-brewing, sandplum jam-filled Sunflower State? You are what you eat, and now that I am no longer a compilation of the Donut Whole/Whole Foods/Old Town Farmer's Market, I'm wondering what I, and my blog, will become. If that expression, "you are what you eat," is true, I'm probably becoming a blackberry. They're everywhere here. It's like candy...growing on bushes.

Still, I miss my kitchen garden in Wichita. I miss my spearmint, which refuses to die even in the icy grip of January. I miss my basil: the lemon, the cinnamon, and the Italian varieties. I wonder if my pear tree will bear fruit this year, and I really miss my tomatoes. They were just getting good. Hopefully, the next person who rents our old house likes to garden.

Until I have a yard of my own again, I'll have to enjoy tomatoes from the Barbur World Foods market up the street. Tomatoes for 99 cents a pound can't be beat. With a stick even.

Lebinz, chocolate, and tomatoes. I'm set.

I'm already in love with Barbur World Foods. Under the same roof, you can purchase local squash, fresh baklava, Snoqualmie Falls wine, rose hip juice, aged Gruyere, Yorkie bars, Yoo Hoo, and demerara sugar. That's my kind of store.

Though I may be the millionth person this summer to share a recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, you may find that slow-roasted tomatoes are worth a million mentions. They're chewy and sweet, like a savory taffy. And their easy-to-palm size makes them easy to sneak into a work lunch or a picnic. Now is the time to preserve the last hurrahs of summer, is it not?

I will miss my friends and family for a long time. Until that gets easier, there will always be something to cook. And cooking is what In a Pickle is about.

Slow-roasted tomatoes with cardamom and caraway

makes 22 tomato halves

• 11 medium tomatoes (Roma, hot house, or on the vine)
• 1 generous Tb. of extra virgin olive oil (I used Bertolli)
  
• 1 1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
• 1 tsp. caraway seeds
• 1 1/2 tsp. coarsely ground sea salt

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees and line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. (Trust me, it's less gooey this way.) Wash the tomatoes, then pat them dry with a tea towel. Slice each tomato in half lengthwise. Scoop the tomato halves into a large mixing bowl, then drizzle olive oil over them.

Use your hands to coat the tomatoes in olive oil, then place each tomato half --cut side up--on the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the sea salt, cardamom, and caraway seeds on the tops of the tomatoes. Bake the tomatoes for 6-8 hours, or until the edges of the tomato halves become ruffled and crispy and the tomatoes shrink to about half of their original size.

Eat them immediately from the sheet, while they're warm and gooey, or wait until they cool to room temperature. I like them plain, but they're also great smeared on a baguette with some cream cheese and basil. Mmmm. They're little red packets of sunshine.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy: 

Spaghetti with roasted tomato cream sauce

Easy tamale pie

Rigatoni with red pepper cream sauce

Warming hearts and bellies

I thank Summer for the array vegetables--yes, vegetables -- that she brings.

This time of year, most bloggers dreamily describe the fruits of summer -- the delicate blackberries, the sunny strawberries, the crimson raspberries. They write of dainty tarts and fruity parfaits, foods that are perfect for blistering summer afternoons. I love the fruits of summer. When the thermometer tops 100 degrees outside my under-air-conditioned home, I live almost solely on blueberries and coconut ice cream bars.

But on cool, sometimes rainy summer mornings, it's summer's less fancy fare that I crave. If I wake up early enough on one of those mornings, before the heat of the day hits, I brew some coffee, start frying new potatoes with onions, and cut a few broad leaves of chard from the kitchen garden.

Potatoes and onions aren't particular to summer. They produce from summer late in the fall, last over the winter, and start back strong in the spring, but I still love them in the summer, on sleepy mornings when there's nothing to do but listen to Weekend Edition and cook breakfast.

A breakfast of potatoes, onions, and chard is about as fussy as a game of jacks. It requires a knife, a pan, some patience, and butter.

Eat your veggies (cooked in butter)

New potatoes with onions with chard
serves two

• two medium (or three small) new potatoes
• 1/2 small yellow onion
• 1 cup sliced chard
• 2 Tb. butter
  
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• pinch red pepper flakes
• tsp(ish) fresh thyme
• fresh coffee with cream
  

Begin melting a tablespoon of butter in a small frying pan while you dice the potatoes and onions into 1/2-inch cubes. Once the butter is melted, toss in the onions and potatoes, and let them simmer softly until they're cooked clean through. The onions should be a little crispy on the sides and mushy in the middle.

Add the second tablespoon of butter when the vegetables begin to dry out, and then toss in the red pepper flakes, salt, and thyme. Toss in the chard a minute before the potatoes are finished, and cook the mess a minute more until the chard is wilted. Serve with coffee, cream, and comfort.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy: 
Pan-fried chickpeas with cabbage and potatoes
Fried potatoes
Butternut squash gratin