Back with J and J and tomato cobbler

Greetings! Life has been busy, but I'm back with lots of inspiration from having seen Julie & Julia last night. I completely identified with Julie: her job frustrations, her discontentment over getting insufficient validation as a writer, her self-absorbed quest for meaning in her life, and most of all, her great romance with food. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, I'm now looking for a vegetarian equivalent to Julie's journey, cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, blogging all the while. To me, there's nothing like being completely consumed by a project, losing track of time while taking in every single aspect of it. If you have any suggestions for a J&J-type project, send them along.

Today, I'm sharing a recipe I almost didn't try, which would have been a shame because it's possibly the best thing I've eaten during the Summer '09 harvest. It's a savory tomato cobbler. The dish looks a lot like its fruit-cobbler cousins, but tastes like a compote of sweet tomatoes and basil with a biscuit on the side.

My husband and I ate it as a main dish with freshly picked green beans on the side. It would also be a pot luck show stopper. It's easy to make and, who knows, it could become your signature dish.

The recipe comes from The Full Belly Beet, the newsletter of Full Belly Farm's community sponsored agriculture project in Guinda, California.

Savory Tomato Cobbler

filling:

3 c fresh tomatoes, chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

1 c chopped basil (I used 1/2c pesto)

2 tsp sugar

Dash tabasco

1/2 T balsamic vinegar

Salt & pepper

topping:

1 T flour

1 c flour

1 c cornmeal

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 stick chilled butter, cubed

1 1/2 c gruyere cheese, grated (I used regular Swiss)

1/4 c water

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 c chopped parsley

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Saute onions and garlic in butter and let cool.

Mix tomatoes with 2 T flour, sugar, salt, pepper, vinegar, basil, and tabasco. Add onion and garlic mixture, stirring well. Transfer to a casserole dish.

In a large bowl, mix flour, cornmeal, and baking powder. Add butter and cut with a pastry cutter until you get a coarse meal. (I pulsed them in my food processor until I achieved that coarse meal look.) Add water and pulse until mixed, as drop-biscuit dough. Add more water if necessary. Fold in cheese and parsley.

Spoon topping over tomato mixture.

Bake 40 minutes or until crust is brown. Sprinkle parsley on top. Let cool before serving so that tomato juice settles.

Saturday morning's take

I love Saturday mornings because with them come a new box of produce from Full Belly Farm, the CSA we've belonged to for a couple of years. Here is this morning's glorious gleanings.

While this sort of windfall can be overwhelming, I divide and conquer, pairing up like vegetables and making several dishes over the course of a week. For this booty, I already have several things in mind: with the carrots and beets, I'll make carrot and beet juice (drink it as soon as you make it so that it doesn't separate).

The cabbage will be turned into a cabbage-ramen slaw-like salad we call Runner's World salad because the recipe originally came from Runner's World magazine. If I have a chance, I'll post the recipe.

With the green beans and potatoes, I'm going to try the potato-green bean salad with lemon and basil from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen. The carrot-beet juice will go really nicely with this.

For the second week in a row, Full Belly has sent a bag of baby apricots. They're about the size of a ping-pong ball, though much denser. Sweet like candy. I keep meaning to put them into a crisp or a cobbler, but in our house, stone fruit doesn't usually last long enough to be cooked into anything. If you've never had plums or nectarines or apricots from Northern California, put it on your to-do list.

A tip: to know when stone fruit is ripe, gently press the little cheeks on either side of the stem end. If they give slightly and have a beautiful, concentrated, unmistakable scent, it's ready. Eat it immediately or store in the fridge. Ah, summer!

Des asperges?

The hallmark of spring in California is the arrival of the year's first asparagus. I love the early-season crop with its bright green, pencil-thin stalks that are tender tip-to-tip. Our CSA, Full Belly Farm, has already sent asparagus several times and I can never get enough. For a beautiful, willowy bunch, no price is too high -- which is good, because even at season's peak, it isn't cheap.

For the most part, I believe that asparagus is best served au naturel, simply steamed in the microwave and served with a little Earth Balance, salt, and pepper. If your asparagus stems are on the thick side, pare them down with a vegetable peeler to expose the tender flesh underneath. (This is also a good way to handle broccoli stalks that you might otherwise throw away.)

When I was growing up in Michigan, I don't recall ever having eaten asparagus. Though I knew what it was, my depression-era grandparents, with whom I lived, almost never purchased fresh food because they saw it as an unnecessary luxury. Really. To their way of thinking, asparagus would probably have been the ring leader of superfluous vegetables.

When I was in college, I might have bought asparagus, but I don't remember it being available. 'Turns out that while Michigan is the third-largest producing state, only 25 percent of the crop is sold fresh. Processors buy the rest.

California, on the other hand, is the nation's top asparagus grower and it's available for nine glorious months each year. Springtime, though, is definitely the best time for it.

Question: Which fruit or vegetable signifies the end of winter for you?