Seafood pasta

Copying a bit from a favorite dish at Grotto, I made seafood pasta last night.  It was a hot night on the patio & I didn't want to have a heavy red sauce.  I sauteed some fennel, shallots & garlic in olive oil & added white wine and some of that nice veal stock my sweet husband makes & freezes.  We had some tomato-basil sauce still in the freezer from last summer and that filled the tomato role.  I added saffron and frozen shrimp & scallops.  I mixed it in the pot with angel hair pasta and took the whole bowl over to the neighbors patio.  It was a hit.

"Stuffed" Cabbage

We used the cabbage on the first day!   I made my interpretation of stuffed cabbage, which is a cabbage lasagna.  I boiled the cabbage leaves for 15 minutes, according to a recipe I found on the internet.  Then I sauteed 1/2 a large onion, a shallot, a head of garlic, 3 carrots, 1/2 a red pepper, a rib of celery, some sprigs of thyme in olive oil with a pound of ground beef and a pound of ground veal.  I added a little bit of chili powder and some salt & hot paprika.  I cooked a cup of basmanti rice and added the cooked rice to the mixture. Luckily, the sweet husband had made a pot of tomato sauce today.  His sauce included fresh beefsteak tomatoes from the market, garlic, onions & roasted beets!  Instead of rolling the meat in the cabbage, I layered it in a 9 x 12 pan.  First, I put a couple scoops of sauce on the bottom.  Then a layer of cabbage leaves, then a layer of meat, cabbage leaves, meat, cabbage leaves & then sauce on the top.  Then I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes.  The 8 year old approved & the sweet husband & I added a few dollops of goat cheese.  Yum.

Oven dried tomatoes

I could go to bed if my oven were not filled with tomatoes!  My neighbor Demos mentioned today that he had dried some tomatoes.  Our house is full of tomatoes!  Those from the CSA bag of course and all of the tomatoes my sweet husband has purchased for a winter of tomato sauce.  Demos works for a food processing company & "one of the chef's at work" told him that he should dry his excess tomatoes in a 225 degree oven for about 5 hours, with just a little olive oil & salt.  I tasted them & they were great.  Thus, my tomatoes went into the oven about 6:00 and now I wait for them to dry, instead of sleeping like my children.

Tomato sauce time

We bought at least 20 pounds of heirloom tomatoes at the market on Saturday plus 9 pounds of Amish paste tomatoes. Beginning last summer we have made and frozen batches and batches of tomato sauce.  Last years sauce was a fresh tomato sauce which was not cooked down and was somewhat watery but had a great flavor.  This year we have not skinned the tomatoes but are cooking them much longer so the skins dissolve in the sauce, it makes for a thicker richer sauce.   The sweet husband is at least 15 pounds into the sauce making project, and if it weren't for my Amish paste tomatoes would have hopes of finishing tomorrow.   The paste tomatoes do, I think, have to be skinned, I'll let you know when we get there.