Let Us Now Praise Famous Cherries

I am in love with cherries. Partially because of what they represent, the LA Times’ Russ Parsons notes that cherries mark the transition from spring to summer. Rewind to a few months and the sight of the neighborhood carpeted in cherry blossoms would normally be a portent of longer, drier warmer days but this year in Oregon, was a particularly brutal wet cold spring. The seasonal appearance of cherries coincided with a few sunny days, imbuing the fruit with more extra symbolic power this year.

Beyond the fruit’s weather changing powers, the flavor is pretty good. Benzaldehyde, linalool and eugenol are the prominent flavors that give a the fruit an bitter almond, flowery, clove flavor. While hints of the fruit’s cousins – peach and plum can also be detected. In order to develop these intense flavors, cherries have to be harvested ripe, they don’t mature after they are picked, making them fragile and hard to ship. Only a low percentage of the fruit is sold fresh, the rest is processed as jams, preserves and canned/frozen fruit.

Most preserved cherries are of the sour variety morellos, amarelles or Griottes, come from the Prunus cerasus trees. The Marasca cherry, variety of morello family, is the delivery vessel of the maraschino cherry. A process that Harold McGee states reduces the fruit to little more than its skeleton form after being bleached with sulfur dioxide, brined - preserved in sugar syrup and almond extract: A process that will never earn an organic label, but using the unnaturally red fruit in an occasional Old Fashion isn’t going to destroy the world.

Outside the maraschino-industrial-complex, cherries are viewed as being quite healthy with their antioxidant Kung Fu – particularly the dark red varieties. Packed with potassium, cherries have been valued as diuretic since Roman Days. And for the Neo-Galens reading, there is a current cleansing diet recommends eating about two pounds of cherries a day. Believing the cellulose in the fruit will eliminate toxins, this well-thought, clinically-researched plan will cause eliminations - since cherries can cause digestive fermentations, expanding the pulp and resulting in a swollen stomach and intestine before it all goes south from there. 

Or the same 2 pounds can be distilled into about 3oz of Kirschwasser, a cherry brandy made from the aforementioned morellos or if you a German enthusiast, Black Forest cherries. And if 2 shots of 80 proof brandy is a little too much, Kirsch is also used in Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake), fondues and chocolates.

Cherry season gets extended by the first cherries of the year arriving from California in May and Midwestern shipments keep grocery stores supplied until early September. Nothing like the local varieties - On the local front, now is the time - Bings, Queen Annes, Raniers and Chelan varieties all hitting the markets at the same time and unfortunately, will all disappear at the same time. Cherry's cousins, the plum and peach, will assuage the disappearance of this year’s crop in a couple of weeks. Until then there is clafoutis and on the cocktail side - a Manhattan packed to the rim with pitted cherries that have been chilled in the freezer for 10 minutes - for summer, cool and refreshing.

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The Not So Mighty Quin

A local restaurant offered a ‘quinoa risotto’ on the menu. I know what they were trying to convey. Quinoa risotto?! In the words of Will Arnet, Come On.  GOB

Restaurant owners/staff get maybe a luxurious half-hour a day to work on writing a menu. The pressures of running a restaurant are mighty and draining enough, When dedicating what few resources you have to describing the menu - conveying the taste and texture of a food to a customer will always trump the purity of a definition.  

Can you guess which is which?

Quinoa isn’t my favorite thing in the world. Dirt, soap, the paradoxical soap-dirt are all good descriptors of the pseudocereal’s flavor. I am not sure how a person could cook quinoa so it would get a risotto like creamy yet chewy taste, but there are more talented people than I working in kitchens.

Risotto, of course, is the classic Italian dish made from Arborio rice. Waverly Root lists about 2 dozen varieties of risotto in his classic Food of Italy: All are made from rice. Which is sensible, considering you can’t have risotto without the riso, or rice. In one of my new favorite books, Why Italians Love to Talk About Food (While gesturing with their hands and making Goodfellas references) (not actually the subtitle), author Elena Kostioukovitch spends many pages breaking down the risotto of Italy, she finds, quotes and translates a poem about risotto but does not list one non-rice risotto, probably because they don’t exist.

A quick survey of the google doesn’t exactly return bountiful pages of rice free risottos, even using different keywords in queries…there are a couple South Beach Diet options, a few more recipes for brown rice risotto and close to 2 million hits for “Quinoa Risotto”, fortunately this isn’t a quickly growing and amazingly predictive google trend. It actually isn’t a google trend at all, it is just 2 million, now 2 mil and one pages on the same topic.

A more accurate description of the quinoa dish would have been porridge. Which, you know, doesn’t have the same $23.50 for a vegetarian entrée type of élan that risotto has. Even if your porridge was just right, it still doesn't sound like something you’d want to order. If you ordered porridge in front of me and I try not to be this way about other’s food choice but I would taunt you, calling you Goldilocks and [stuff].

Calling quinoa risotto will pass, soon it will be quinoa couscous, barley polenta, Millet popcorn, food fashions are fickle, not textbook definitions.

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Farro Jackpot

Saucapolis – Is farro the same as millet? King of Hearts

Because farro is used interchangeably with emmer it is best to species specific- farro is Triticum turgidum dicoccum. It is believed, a priori, emmer was 2nd wheat cultivated by humans. Einkorn wheat gets the nod for having been cultivated first. Einkorn is a little less particular about its climate and hardier, producing in cooler climates, but has lower yields than emmer. Funny thing; most of the seats of civilization were decidedly uncool (temperature-wise, I mean what’s cooler than a Ziggurat). Despite this glaring paradox most scholars believe the order went Einkorn, barley, followed by emmer, which in turn was displaced in the Roman era with durum wheat.

Millet is millet, it is a cereal grain native to Africa and Asia. Millet does have the advantage of growing in arid regions and has an exceptionally high protein level of 16-22% (bread flour comes in at 10-15%). On a world scale, millet is grown about 1/20 as much as wheat then, mostly as fodder but when consumed by humans, it is usually the base of a substance porridge. And to a lesser extent, millet is used to make breads and a beer. As a subgenre of brew; millet beers are moving from the equatorial regions to the western world due to a never before experienced outbreak of celiac disease that seems to be unique to this generation of affluent, young adult westerners. Thus creating a need to supply those who suffer with a gluten-free beer.

More than millet, farro is most like is a fellow member of the wheat family Triticum Spelta. Spelt is a little closer to bread flour than emmer but all the wheat cousins are easy to confuse, they look alike, they are prepared in many of the same ways and they grow on both sides of the Alps. On the North side, the Germans call spelt, dinkel. In Italy, spelt is called Farro Grande but it is understood on a cultural level that it isn’t really farro – much like native French speakers intuitively understand masculine and feminine forms, this just is, no explanation.

Farro, on left, remains chewy after an extended and necessary soaking and prolonged cooking. Some might actually compare the texture and technique of cooking farro to risotto, except for the lack of ris (More about this in the next post). It would be more accurate to call it porridge. Farro, goes well with poultry or vegetables, it is served a lot with beans and greens as a hearty stew - with more fiber than a prune stuffed with metamucil. Farro is a good change-of-pace away from the rice, potato, noodle starch option. Or in soups or salad – not in the green salad type of way and it pains me to say this, like tabbouleh. The problem - farro, like all things Italian, is expensive. As a food, it doesn’t pack a $10 a pound wallop, especially compared to $1.50 wheat berries, spelt, barley or kasha – all of which add earthy tones to any meal, only cheaper.  


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UnNatural

I went all steak and potato on my dinner last night: after living on rice and pasta for 7 days - I wasn’t on any sort of anti-Atkins diet, I just didn’t really plan my weekly menu all that well. The first 4 days were good - carbonara, linguine and raab, spaghetti and peas. Then a few days before payday, my choice was eat out or buy groceries on a credit card or have some more pasta, I opted for the latter. When I went to the store to reload, I placed semolina on my shopping list and then couldn’t bring myself to buy it - we need a timeout. 

Last night’s dinner was a definite response to my week of carbs – Steak and demi-glaze, potato cakes with grated leeks & horseradish and steamed cauliflower - I obliterated any nutritional gain a simple veg could have brought me by covering it with a cheddar cheese sauce. Bourbon and an ice cube for dessert. I know last night's meal was reactive, but it might have been reactionary too.

As unbalanced as my diet was these last 7 days, at least my diet isn’t Scottish: BBC reports on a study that finds 97% of Scots have at least one risk factor to their health. “Unhealthy living is nearly universal” in Connery-land. Although BBC didn’t pass judgment, I will – what a bunch of kilt-wearing, chain smoking, would rather distill a vegetable than eat it, who only take time out from drinking, smoking and not exercising to eat the one food of their regional cuisine - no, not haggis, but anything that comes out of a deep-fryer. Your a culture that makes the average suburban Texan look fit in comparison, hey Scotsman, I taunt you.  

While the Scottish may live an unnatural life, our friends at the Coca-Cola Company are trying to help. By promoting a healthy diet? No, they are trying to blur the definition of ‘natural’. Coke ingredients like citric acid, cocaine, high-fructose corn syrup and beet sugar are natural in the sense that they are ‘natural in origin’. Whatever that means.

In fairness, natural isn’t a legally defined term. The UK and EU have some standards regarding the term. The US has usage guidelines for natural as it concerns packaging. According to comments made at a recent conference, Coke - the company, is concerned the average consumer doesn’t understand the distinction between natural and artificial. Coke’s solution - clear, concise definitions agreed to voluntarily by all industry participants? No, it wants no regulation or government oversight at all.

It doesn’t appear Coke wants to relax standards in order to label its category leading cola as ‘natural’. The company probably wants to clear the playing field for additives/functional foods (antioxidants, memory-boosting ginkgo balboa) or simply to allow sweetened concentrates to be labeled ‘natural’. Because if the government can’t do anything right, a large multi-national corporation will always do what is moral and rational. Or more likely they want us all to adopt the Scottish Diet and then sell us insulin.


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Cracker, Graham

Sylvester Graham, namesake of the cracker, was a 19th Century theologian and lecturer who advocated an Edenic Diet, believing what was good enough for Adam and Eve was good enough for modern man. And like many Christians, the important part wasn’t so much of what Adam and Eve actually ate as much what they didn’t have to dine upon  – alcohol, meat, shellfish, sauces, condiments, coffee, tea, refined sugar and the especially pernicious white flour.

In Graham’s lifetime, new wheat rollers constructed of steel, made it easier to remove the bran and endosperm from the wheat berry in the milling process, making for a whiter, albeit less nutritious flour. At this point, people often tangentially talk about the purity and by extension importance of white flour - to which I say STFU. The oily endosperm severely reduces the storage life of flour, oxidizing flour and making it rancid. Removing the nutrient rich other husk has some downsides – namely pellagra but vitamins and essential amino acids weren’t exactly the pressing issues of the day. Besides, the popularity of white flour had far less to do with the aesthetics and theoretical implications of purity and much more to do with price and shelf-life - both improved with the new milling methods and improved transportation.

Graham’s conjectures didn’t stop with white flour; Chicken pie is a direct cause of cholera. He was more sex obsessed than a closeted evangelical, lecturing that masturbation would lead to blindness, paralysis and senility. Sex, marital sex even, more than once a month would cause “languor, lassitude…feebleness of circulation, chilliness, headache, melancholy, hypochondria, hysterics…weakness of the brain, loss of memory, epilepsy, insanity and apoplexy. Epilepsy and apoplexy wow, I think Dan Savage might point out this dude wasn’t sex positive. 

Emerson chided him as “the prophet of bran bread and pumpkins”, begging the question - Are you going to take that from a Unitarian? At least the anabaptists didn’t go at Graham with pitchforks and sticks - At least 3 mobs of bakers and butchers attacked Graham in his life. They took exception to Graham’s preaching as a detriment to their trade and businesses and sought to drive him out of town by force.

Modern vegans point to Graham as an early leader. Graham did oppose drinking milk, not so much due to animal rights but urban dairies where cows were fed on brewery mash, and as a founder of a temperance league, Graham’s concern wasn’t exactly the same as Moby's. It might be telling that vegans look to someone who was so dead set of against earthly pleasure and enjoyment as an early adapter of their cause, but in a post otherwise filled with double checked facts, that is an opinion.

Graham published his ideas about diet, abstinence and temperance in The Graham Journal of Health and Longevity, at the time popular; it lost some of its cache when Graham passed away somewhere between the ages 54 to 57 (his birth year varies). For all his wackiness, the dude did get most of his dietary information correct: The key to healthy diet is eating a wide range of foods with emphasis on fresh fruits and veg. Speculative history is onanistic in a way Sylvester Graham probably would have objected to, but one wonders what he would have preached in a more scientific time - Would the clinical study of the effects of food in the diet tempered is beliefs or would he have just found something else to object to.


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Oh, Oh Pistachio

I just heard a rumor that pistachios aren’t nuts? Whiskey-Tango-Etc.

I know! Cashews, almonds, pecans, walnuts, peanuts nor pine nuts are nuts – the latter 3 have nuts in their freakin name. Acorns, chestnuts and filberts are true botanical nuts. The ones we eat and cook are thought of as culinary nuts – In the same way the tomato is a fruit that is treated like a veg, culinary nuts are drupes, seeds or kernels that are used like nuts in the kitchen.

Pistachios are kind of wacky in many ways. The pistachio tree is member of a family that produces mastic and another tree cousin, the terebinth, produces turpentine, while another tree produces mangoes and still another member of the family fruits the cashew. And just in case that wasn’t weirdly diverse enough, all are related to poison ivy. There are male and female trees – A dude tree gets planted near 8-12 chick trees and does his work with his harem, (in the US all the cultivar of choice is the appropriately named "Peters" pistachio). It takes about 20 years to reach peak harvest. The pistachio nut is actually a drupe; a fleshy fruit that contains a stone – like an olive, cherry or almond. The trees bear a fruit/nut harvest every year but it the tree produces a superior harvest only in alternate years.

The nut, the cotyledons are green due to the presence of chlorophyll – how would you feel about a green walnut or cashew? As freakish as green in a culinary nut is, it is that shade of green that makes them desirable contrast in Pates and Mortadella. The green color is desirable albeit a little more unnatural in pistachio flavored Jello-brand puddin and ice creams.

Pistachios are native to the Levant. Fittingly, they appear in Genesis – Jacob gave them along with honey, balm, spices and myrrh to the leader of Egypt – a little gift bag from Canaan. It seems their recorded history is a little more ancient; the faux nut has a recorded history with the Babylonians. The Romans brought the tree to Europe in the twilight of their empire. From there they went around the Mediterranean, before ending up in California. Our neighbors to the south are major producers of the world's crop - surprisingly pistachios weren't a major crop until the mid-70s, this despite the fact the nut that isn’t a nut has been popular in the States since the late 1880s. Callie's crops is good because Iran and Syria are 2 of the top exporters of the crop and I am not sure the US trades with them. And things have recently taken a turn for the diplomatic worse with one of the other top producers, Turkey.

Don’t worry about the nutlessness of being with pistachios, if you stuck to true botanical nuts, you’d be eating acorns right now.

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The Incredible, Edible Dinner

Follow Up: If you were going to make eggs for dinner, what would you cook?

The best egg dinner I've ever had was a poached duck egg, served on a bed of sauteed greens next to creamy polenta. I came across the dish at Portland’s Paley’s Place. So good, I prepare at home a few times a year. With a glass of chilled wine, it is so good on a warm day.

Duck eggs have about twice the calories as a large (standard) chicken egg. Ducks can lay about 200 eggs a year, their chicken hen counterparts can do about an egg a day during their peak laying period. The taste of the egg is mostly dependent on the diet of the foul, not what kind of bird laid the egg. Duck eggs do taste a little different, because of they are rich in fats. Fat = Flavor.

Eggs are  cholesterol rich - chicken 213mg; a duck egg has 619mg all of it located in the yolk. Before you start listening for the sound of my arteries hardening, eggs are a bit of a paradox. Meat contains 50mgs of cholesterol per equivalent serving size, because most of the fat in the egg is unsaturated, it might have a beneficial effect on serum cholesterol. For example, I am not one to deny myself rich cheese, custards and cream sauces, yet I always get a smiley face on my cholesterol test. (Yes, an emoticon is easier than keeping track of which numbers mean what on the test results.) With the proper caveats that I am not a health or nutrition expert, but a balanced diet, low in saturated fats with plenty of veg, appears to be a far better bet than being frightened of some foods and enamored of the magical qualities of others.

Other egg dinners I have been known to enjoy, eggs poached in marinara, served on top of bread fried in olive oil. The Mexican version - huevos divorciados – two fried eggs, one in red, the other in green salsa, each served on a corn tortilla – this really wasn’t a traditional dinner, rather a personal stab at the 4th Meal, the last stop on a couple alcohol fueled evenings. Hollandaise Sauce, Aioli, Caesar Dressing are all pretty eggy but generally, no one dips a spoon into them to make a meal out of them. And we’ll sidestep  the whole discussion of crepes, which are closer to little omelets than pancakes.

Egg Lunch – In Spain I had a Frittata sandwich quite a few times a week – some combination of eggs, potatoes and greens in a small roll. For one or 1-2 €, it hit the spot. Although, I have a hard time eating it because frittata is the lunch the family packed for the dad on his first day of work in The Bicycle Thief, it is a meal that makes me a little sad, making it the type of meal no one will ever wax about nostalgically, a discomfort food. Take that Mac + Cheese.


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BRINNER or DIFAST

Breakfast foods for dinner, dinner foods for breakfast? Any opinions? – Why must we label things?

Breakfast can say it is the most important meal of the day all it wants, but I’ve never felt that way - 2 cups of coffee, some yogurt and a piece of fruit is my usual morning fueling.

Because I harbor a certain degree of animus towards breakfast and traditional breakfast foods, when I do eat before noon, I’d be more inclined to lean towards dinner foods for breakfast – particularly left Chinese or Thai takeout. Pizza in the morning is good, but it is pretty rare that nighttime’s pizza lives to see the next morning – Dinner for breakfast is preferred more than going out a traditional egg and bacon type of breakfast or staying in for cereal - I have had leftover noodles straight out of the carton minutes after waking up - I am not one to stand on ceremony before noon - and I’ll do it again. 

Cereal for breakfast is odd not only to me but to members of the world’s largest democracy. While my views are pretty intractable, after about a decade in the subcontinent, Indians are finally starting to embrace American style breakfast foods. When first introduced, companies thought the cereals would be a winner in the milk loving culture. Despite a large marketing push, the people of Indian sensibly chose samosas to Wheaties. After 10 years of advertising, younger Indians with more disposable income have taken a shine to boxed breakfast – Oh, and the manufacturers reformulated cereal so it wouldn’t become soggy in the warm milk that is a culturally preferred. 

A few friends love cereal for dinner – it is quick and easy and only a bowl and spoon remain to be washed, not something I can say about even my quick and easy dinners. Other friends like the pancake dinner nay, love pancakes for dinner. Again, being a little wary of starting a day with starchy, syrupy insulin spike that is the shortstack, but I confess to liking the pancake dinner – hot sauce instead of maple syrup, it was pretty cool. Pancakes by a different name – blini or crepes would provide some culinary cover for this meal, but I enjoyed the chicken pancake.

The thing that always surprises me is that I don’t have more egg dinners. Unless you count aioli or Caesar Dressing as an egg dinner. Elizabeth David titled a book an Omelette (She was English -with their superfluous o & u s) and a Glass of Wine. There are frittatas, baked eggs and poached eggs to be spooned over greens and polenta  – Judith Jones has a picture of a mighty good looking soufflé on the cover of her The Pleasures of Cooking for One – there are fittingly about a dozen egg recipes in her book. Cheese soufflé and a small salad, now there is a meal I could have for either dinner or breakfast. 


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Snap, Crackle, Hyperbole

Did you know that Rice Krispies “now helps support your child's immunity”? Or that Frosted Mini Wheats were "clinically shown to improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20 percent”?

Neither had anyone else in the world, including the cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s when they were called on by the Federal Trade Commission to show their math. The mendacity of the claim isn’t as alarming as the stupidity: Only children's immunity and kids’ attentiveness – What about my adult needs?

Kellogg's said in a statement their company had “ long history of responsible advertising”. The same press release failed to mention why they were trying to destroy that track record now.

Earlier this week the BBC reported on an article appearing in the Journal ‘Thorax’, really I typed that properly; The Journal Thorax. Children who eat 3 or more burgers a week were linked to a greater risk of asthma and wheezing. This causality is found only in more affluent nations; poorer nations are more concerned with finding the calories found in 3 burgers every week.

Being British, they threw in this gem of understatement, “the authors said children who ate several burgers a week were likely to have other unhealthy lifestyle habits as well.” Inadequate cooking space, costly inefficient appliances, expensive produce, lack of grocery stores and a dearth of clean, safe play areas – the burger franchise with a playground looks much like a good enough place to spend food dollars – the whole system is kind of messed up…

Speaking of, lawmakers are currently considering Senate Bill 510, a sweeping update to food safety regulations that really haven’t been revisited since their inception in 1906. While everyone is for affordable, healthy and safe food – this bill will do little to address any of these concerns.

Normally, I shy away from straw man constructs and Zinn/Chomsky paradigms, but I am not sure how else to explain this, so with my apologies: There are those who think, opine and occasionally statistically quantify that what various federal government regulatory standards actually do is force the small players out of the market, rather than insure the healthy and safety of consumers and citizens.

Through various fees and filings, Senate Bill 510 will place a heavy burden on small food and agricultural businesses. Small producers are not holy, holy and magically exempt from bacterial outbreaks, but the answer is not requiring more paperwork, it is aiding farmers so they can produce safe and healthy food.

That and considering half our farmers will be retiring in the next decade we need as many new young and small growers, ranchers and producers in the field as possible.

Fortunately, Senator Crew Cut, Jon Tester, whose day job as a Montana wheat farmer gives him a decidedly un-Kennedesque perspective, is sponsoring an amendment exempting producers who make under $500,000 from these changes. And right now, in lieu of a sane food policy that promotes safe, healthy food, this is as good as it is going to get. You can find and contact your Senator here and urge them support the Tester amendment.


Breakfast related Artwork by friend and colleague Brendan Jones from his soon to be published - Breakfast of the Gods. You can visit Brendan's work online with this very link


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Long Time Since I Blogged at Ya

Tomatoes, I know enough about tomatoes to be considered the Cliffy Claven of Lycopersicon Esculentum. Interestingly enough, oh wait, things are never remotely compelling when interesting is used in its adverb form.

Thanks or blame to Arthur Allen’s charming Ripe, Double hat tip to Andrew Smith for his Tomato in America & his editing on Food and Drink in America  - then there were 2 relevant articles in the newest issue of Gastronomica – I love/hate you with your collection of fascinating subjects that get crushed by academic prose and the ‘lighter’ articles where academics try to write in a loose style about things that aren’t that interesting unless you are into navel gazing.

Anyway, during my last few weeks spent on own personal Tomatoathon™, (Or perhaps Tomatoquest ought 10™) I was asked if I like tomatoes. Yes, I like tomatoes – raw tomatoes occasionally cause me to break out in hives. That coupled with the belief that tomatoes taste better when cooked, means I am not ever going to get weepy at pile of heirlooms or a San Marzano – I do like Early Girls though – the tomato people, the tomato.

The Saucykitchen goes through about a half-gallon of red sauce every month. Not quite sure what to call it Marinara – means from the sea, nothin’ briny about it; Primavera – most of the time I used canned tomatoes, which isn’t especially springy. What I make is a tomato-basil sauce – good enough to go on spaghetti but versatile enough to be pizza sauce, a flavor booster for Red Beans, a welcome edition to soup. It is light enough to top baked eggplant but hearty enough to be cooked with chuck, wine and soffritto to make a hearty ragu. Maybe if I had a more Mediterranean sounding name or maybe just spell it in a quasi-Latinized style, like DaVid, I could name it after myself.

Whatever the name, the sauce is made the same way: Fresh basil, rosemary and parsley; 2 tablespoons of fennel seed infused vodka, dried oregano and bay leaf. One carrot, 6-10 cloves of garlic, an onion. Oddly the biggest variable are the tomatoes. I will use fresh when they are around and affordable,  Muir Glen diced tomatoes are the preferred canned variety, a large can cooked with Cabo’s super sweet ‘plum’ cherry tomatoes is my favorite combo, but I will substitute for sales, promos and seasonal goods. Despite being rather fungible with the main ingredient, the sauce has pretty consistent results.

Tomatoes are temperature sensitive. Once picked, they shouldn’t get below 45°, this means your fridge. Some complain about the texture of cold tomatoes – this is a fair assessment; some varieties (I’m talking to you beefsteak) are more adversely effected by the cold than others. We call it that tomato flavor, science calls it is (Z)-3-dexenal, and it is destroyed when temps drop below 45° after the tomato leaves the vine (There is serious opinion and research on what low temps do to tomatoes on the vine).

At the other end of the spectrum is high heat. I like cooking sauce DaVid, still doesn’t really work, I like cooking tomatoes at a medium low temp. This is avoids overkill, tomatoes are cooked in the canning process. And tomatoes have an enzyme that is activated between 130-140 that helps the cell walls of the tomato hold their shape. In sauce, low cooking temps provide the added bonus of softening the onions and garlic without browning them, preserving the sweetness of the carrot, boosting the herbal flavors. Just saying, tomatoes don’t like to live in the extreme.

For now, tomatoes and I are done - In written form, there is Chicken fried eggplant and Sauce DaVid, nope still doesn't work tonight, next week, there will be an egg or two. 

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