No longer updating, but hope you enjoy the recipes!
Unfortunately, I got too busy to go back to blogging, after I was forced to take a break from it in 2015 because of tendonitis.
But you can still follow my cooking, eating, and travels on instagram: (@spontaneoustomato)
Heirloom Tomato Goat Cheese Tart
It’s officially fall, and I’m still talking about tomatoes.
Not just talking about tomatoes; slicing them up to eat fresh, blending them up into curry sauces, slow-roasting them to put on salads and pizzas, and even occasionally baking them.
My summer CSA share of bulbs upon bulbs of fennel and baskets upon baskets of peppers has ended. But it went out with a bang. Finally, the last few weeks granted me pounds of giant, weirdly shaped, and brightly colored heirloom tomatoes.
Avocado Lemon Pesto
I made pesto more times this summer than in all (30) previous years of my life combined.
And no, it’s not because my CSA has been showering me in fresh basil.
On the contrary: the one week the list of items in our CSA box included basil– and I got all excited about it– there were THREE sprigs of basil. I was so disappointed, I actually stopped at a local produce market on my way home just to buy enough additional basil to make pesto.
Almond Cinnamon Baklava & a Giveaway!
My girlfriend jokes that Santa Barbara has a festival every weekend.
I’m beginning to think that she is right.*
A few weeks back we went to the Greek Festival (to eat!) and we couldn’t pass up the chance to tack a little triangle of honeyed baklava heaven onto our savory Greek lunch feast.
I always get excited about baklava– after all it’s one of those fancy desserts that you can justify splurging on now and then, since it’s too complicated to make at home… or so I thought!– but this baklava was something else entirely: it was practically oozing with cinnamon! (My girlfriend nearly swooned.)
So that settled it. It was time to make baklava, and not just any old baklava; a giant flaky vessel for gooey cinnamon. And chunks of fresh raw almonds. Did you think I would forget to mention the almonds?
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Slow-Roasted Tomato Bruschetta
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You knew it was coming.
Yet another post about what to do with all of the summer tomatoes you’ve been plucking from your garden (or your friend’s garden) besides using them to decorate your tables and your countertops…
This recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes comes straight from the genius that is smitten kitchen. I’ve basically changed nothing from the original recipe except the roasting time (it’s that good).
What I have done is roast batches and batches of mini tomatoes using this method– too many times to count– so the inevitable has happened and I’ve found countless ways to eat them and favorite dishes to put them in. (Though just like Deb from smitten kitchen, I mostly put them in my mouth.)
I love the idea of roasting the tomatoes face-up, both for prettiness, and for maintaining more of their moisture. For all the comparisons these get to sun-dried tomatoes across the food blog world, I’d have to contend that these are only distance cousins of sun-dried tomatoes; they are far less bitter and far more juicy!
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Canning 102: Fig Jam
I live in a second floor apartment with no yard of my own to garden.
This is just my convenient excuse, though, since the truth is that I’m also lacking in the Green Thumb Department.
(What color is a thumb that’s pretty good at cooking but pretty hopeless at gardening? Aubergine? Sage? Burnt Sugar? Wine? I’ll stop now.)
My landlord, who’s hired a gardener to take care of his landscaping and fruit trees (!), lives below me on the first floor. (It’s really not as awkward as it sounds.)
He’s mentioned several times that I should feel free to help myself to some of the fruit. But I feel too guilty plundering the limited supply from his small fruit trees to really take him up on the offer. I think I’ve snacked on one guava, one clementine, and five figs since I moved in four years ago.
Squash Blossom Quesadillas with Saffron Charred Tomato Salsa
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Have you ever prepared an elaborate entrée only to have some side dish that you just threw together steal the show?
That’s how I felt about these squash blossoms and this salsa.
I was so excited to get squash blossoms in my summer CSA share. I was so determined to take good care of them, to cook them before they’d wilted, to fry them up* in a bit of olive oil and garlic, and to taste the enticing edible flowers that can make even a quesadilla seem fancy.
The flowers tasted fine. I mean, they cooked down quite a bit in their two minutes of frying, so there wasn’t much of them to taste, but they didn’t taste bad; I just wasn’t blown away.
Meanwhile, the salsa that I concocted just to smother over the quesadillas was exquisite!
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spontaneous tomato 