Are Ohio Tomatoes Really the Best?

In the public mind, Ohio is not ubiquitous with tomatoes. You don’t read heartfelt odes to Ohio tomatoes in Saveur or see them on the menu in some Wagnerian dining experience at Alinea. This lack of attention from the non-Ohio world makes Ohio tomatoes the country’s biggest secret amazing food. Here, it’s a given. Tomatoes are the state fruit.

Ohio is not keeping these tomatoes secret on purpose, mind you. I didn’t even care about them myself until I moved out of the state; as a girl, I recall the South Carolina friends we vacationed with every year raving about the cardboard box of homegrown tomatoes we brought down to the beach house. “Ohio tomatoes!” they’d sigh, and it baffled my youthful mind that people who lived within spitting distance of a wonderful beach and wild-caught shrimp could crave anything from my humble home. I didn't become a tomato convert until I grew up and moved across the country to the San Francisco Bay Area, where gem-like heirlooms of every shade were bountiful at markets and grocery stores. I bought them and enjoyed them, but they didn't make me dizzy like the unassuming red globes I savored on visits back to Ohio. Scarcity leads to mystique. There is no Ohio tomato like an Ohio tomato in the palm of a expat Ohioan. 

I should clarify that the biggest, most pulsing fists of tomatoey lusciousness hail from the dense red clay of the Mid-Ohio Valley, in the southeast corner of the state. Nothing against heirloom tomatoes, but the ultimate Ohio tomato is just a run-of-the-mill beefsteak, red, shiny, and perhaps a bit knobby and misshapen. They grow in family gardens and the fields of tiny family farms all along the river, baked under the summer sun and bathed in thick humidity.

Any homegrown tomato is a treat, but the (admittedly lovely) tomatoes I grew in my various Oregon backyards just didn’t measure up. I’d like to ask a horticulturalist why, scientifically speaking, Ohio tomatoes dazzle so—is it soil pH? chemicals from the industrial plants downriver?—but I’m afraid the truth will disappoint.  Maybe my fine Oregon tomatoes would have stood up in a blind tasting to their Ohio counterparts, and it was really just a vanished summer idyll I was yearning for.

It’s August, and all over town, the inimitable smell of tomato leaves withering in the heat betrays no hint of the acidic sweetness and almost buttery flesh to come. I’ve been eating enough to give myself an ulcer: thick raw slices on a plate, more substantial than any filet mignon. Neighbors gave them to me; I give mine to friends. Summer will vanish, and Ohio will get boring and shitty again, and so we all dive into the intoxicating cosmos of seeds and pulp our precious tomatoes offer us in this eternal now.

Mid-Ohio Valley Summer No-Cook Tomato Sauce

Serves 4-6

Get one 12-ounce package of eggy Rossi Pasta Capelli d'Angelo. This can be purchased at their gift shop on Front Street in Marietta, or at any one of a handful of grocery stores. When I was 20, I worked at Rossi Pasta making gift baskets, and I got a lot of free pasta, and pasts tastes best when it’s free. In lieu of Rossi Pasta (free or not), use 8 ounces of ordinary dried angel hair pasta.

 Next, procure about one and a half pounds of quite ripe, very red homegrown tomatoes—beefsteak or the likes, and luscious enough to eat a plain slice of as if it were cake. Maybe you grew them yourself, maybe your best friend’s parents left a bag of them on your back porch like the tomato fairy. These tomatoes should be at the stage of ripeness that’s just before squishy. At least half an hour and up to two hours before planning to eat, chop them up (on a cutting board with a groove if you don’t want to make a swampy red mess of tomato juice). Put these chunks in a large bowl, along with a pinch of red pepper flakes, a large clove of garlic that’s been mashed to a paste, and a generous amount of kosher salt. If you have fresh oregano around, mince up about a teaspoon of that and add it. If not, no big deal. Let this all sit at room temperature; the salt will work on the tomatoes and make a soupy, saucy mess.

Boil the pasta according to the directions on the Rossi Pasta package. And drain the pasta, and although I normally would reserve some of the pasta cooking water, we’re not going to do that now, because we want the pasta to absorb the very liquid part of our splendid tomato sauce so that every bite offers an explosion of summery tomato flavor.

Return the pasta to the pot you cooked it in. Add the tomato sauce, along with a few tablespoons of very good olive oil and a big fat handful of thinly sliced fresh basil. You need lots of basil, which will collapse in the heat of the dish and wind up not looking like nearly as much as you began with. Taste this and add salt or whatever to make it taste right.

Divide the pasta between big bowls and top with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Feta or soft goat cheese would also be acceptable, but I like the parm. Then dig in. That’s it.

This recipe absolutely will not work in parts of the country with crummy tomatoes, or after late September, or if you use the wrong shape or type of pasta; the network of angel hair pasta strands lock in the sauce like a sponge so you don't miss a drop of flavor. This also will not be quite as good if you consume it in a location other than my parent’s screened-in back porch, where an unseen chorus of cicadas drone in the background, to a mesmerizingly creepy, jungle-y effect. But if you get all of the variables right, your dinner will be like a big plate of adult candy. No salad, no bread. Just the pasta, maybe a glass of white wine. Amen.     

Curried Sweet Potato and Red Lentil Soup

Right now we’re at the peak of summer, but I first encountered this rib-sticking soup in the chill of last November. It’s an all-season soup; I can’t stop craving the stuff, with its exotic aroma and bright flavors.  

I can thank the TipTop Café of Thomas, West Virginia for introducing me to this hearty manna. After a long day of teaching a charcuterie class in the adorably historic village of Thomas, I was beat. We’d driven up the mountain with a car full of kitchen equipment and specialty cuts of dead animals. We all had a blast, but anyone who’s cleaned up after a day of sausage-making knows what a task it is. After we’d dried the last sheet pan and swept the floor a final time, we walked a few blocks to the TipTop, a darling little coffee shop/bar/restaurant in a well-preserved former mining town (population 600-something). Passing through its door was like entering a portal to Brooklyn or Portland: the tidy row of specialty chocolate bars, the gleaming shelf of infused liquors, the kid’s area with an IKEA play kitchen. I was famished—when I teach classes, I get hyper-focused and can’t really eat anything of substance—and a steamy bowl of vegan soup topped off a day of pâté-making like nothing else could.

Thomas is hours away, and I’m saving future TipTop visits for fancy chocolate bars and cocktails made with nibby bourbon. I can’t get those here, but I was able to replicate the soup in my own kitchen. Slightly sweet with a gingery bite, it’s easy to throw together (and, if you own a pressure cooker, will be ready to eat in all of 10 minutes). Even my four-year-old daughter consented to eat spoonfuls at the dinner table, a rarity for any food that’s not a cheese sandwich.

We returned from on a two-week trip recently. I peeked in our root cellar (actually just a basement-corner “IN” basket salvaged from a former library job) and saw tendrils sprouting from the giant sweet potato I’d intended for soup. After lopping off the rooty top, I plopped it in a dish of water, and lo! It grew. My hope is to pot the thing in a hanging basket, once the roots really get going. Sweet potatoes make cute houseplants, but they make better soup.

Curried Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup

Serves 4-6  

Do not even consider using a can of lite coconut milk. Fatty coconut milk is what makes this soup so rich and fragrant.

• 1 13.5-ounce can coconut milk
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 4 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 2 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 pound 5 ounces), peeled and cut into 4-inch chunks
• 1 cup dried red lentils
• 3 cups water
• 2-1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
• 1 lime
• Chopped cilantro, for serving

Open the can of coconut milk and spoon a few tablespoons of the fat at the top of the can into the bottom of a pressure cooker at least a 4-quart capacity. (You may use a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed stockpot). Turn the heat to medium-high. Once the coconut fat sputters, add the onion and cook until soft and translucent, 3-5 minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and cook another minute. Add the curry powder and stir until combined. Dump in the sweet potatoes, lentils, remaining coconut milk, water, and salt.

If using the pressure cooker, lock the lid in place, bring to the highest pressure, and cook for 7 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally. (If you’re not using a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover. Cook maybe about 30 minutes, stirring often. You’ll probably need to add at least another cup of water, bit by bit).

Unlock the lid of the pressure cooker and either mash the soup with a potato masher or stir it vigorously with a big wooden spoon—the sweet potatoes should be cooked enough to easily fall apart. Stir in the sriracha sauce and squirt in the juice of half the lime. Taste and adjust the seasonings with more salt or a few squirts of sriracha. This soup thickens quite a bit as it cools, so you may need to add more water to make it more like soup and less like porridge.

Serve topped with cilantro, if you like, and more freshly squeezed lime juice. Once cooled, the soup will keep, tightly covered in the refrigerator, for 5 days.   

My Baby's Got Sauce

My latest piece for The Oregonian will have you eating giant piles of awesome veggies all week long. Read it here. Then make the finger-licking sauces. And then watch this. 

Indian-Style Green Beans and Potatoes

For years I've been all geared up about pressure cooking, so when I finally got to teach a Modern Pressure Cooking Workshop this past weekend, I was over the moon. Pressure cooking is a hard sell for places that host classes. It's just not sexy. Pressure cookers strike home cooks as risky and prone to explosions. But pressure cooking is IS sexy, and it's also very safe, and that we had a sold-out group this past Sunday only proves how groovy the folks are up in the Randolph/Tucker county area of West Virginia. It's about 3,000 feet up there, to be exact, so we needed a few extra moments of cooking time for a number of the dishes. (Note to chef-educators: when something does not turn out exactly as planned, blame the altitude!)

Here's one thing we made in the class, a summer staples I cook again and again: green beans and potatoes. Pull out your pressure cookers and snap to it.

Indian-Style Green Beans and Potatoes

Serves 6-8 as a side dish

Is there any other veggie pairing as homey and adaptable as green beans and potatoes? Here, we’re adding turmeric and a few spices with ginger and garlic for an Indian feel, a riff on a recipe created by my friend Sara Alway in her adorable little book on companion planting, Soil Mates. But you could tinker with the aromatics and seasonings and take it in dozens of different flavor directions.

The doneness is the trick here. Some green beans are old and tough; some are young and tender. Some potatoes cook up in 4 minutes; others take longer. Also, I love it when my green beans get on the mushy side and the potatoes begin to fall apart. I’m guessing you don’t (if you do, awesome!) Use these cooking times as a guideline, checking after 4 minutes and cooking longer as needed.

• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 2 teaspoons whole black mustard seed, optional
• 1 onion, diced or sliced
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¾ cup vegetable stock, water, or whey
• 2 pounds small redskin potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1-2 pounds green beans, snapped
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, optional
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice for serving

1. Heat the cooker over medium-high heat. Add the oil. When it shimmers, add the mustard seed and cook until the seeds pop.
2. Immediately add the diced onion and cook until the onions begin to brown, about 5-10 minutes. You may need to lower the heat to keep the onion from burning. Add the ginger, garlic, turmeric, and coriander and cook for an additional minute.
3. Stir in the water, stock, or whey, then add the potatoes and green beans. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the works. Lock on the lid, bring the cooker to pressure, and cook on the highest setting for 4 minutes (really I always need to go longer, more like 8 minutes, but start with 4). Release the pressure and take a peek in the cooker, poking a potato and green bean. If they are not yet tender, continue to cook in increments of 2-4 minutes.
4. When the vegetables are cooked to your desired doneness, stir in the butter, if using. Taste for seasoning and add more salt. Unless you used whey, which is already tart, squeeze as much lemon juice over the vegetables as you like and serve.

Rosemary and Garlic Variation: Substitute olive oil for the canola oil, and omit the spices and ginger. Add a dried bay leaf and a sprig of fresh rosemary when you add the liquid and the vegetables.

Basil and Tomato Variation: Substitute olive oil for the canola oil, and omit the spices and ginger. Decrease the cooking liquid to ½ cup and add a few chopped fresh tomatoes instead. After it’s all cooked, throw in a nice handful of chopped fresh basil and maybe a little fresh oregano.

Down Home Version: Omit the canola oil, spices, and ginger. Render a few slices of bacon and cook the onion in that. Sprinkle a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar over the cooked vegetables before serving. I especially like this preparation when the veggies are a little more cooked and the beans are army green.

*Sara also shared her own pressure cooker, a funky but not scary Hawkins, with me; it's what you see in the photo. Hawkins is a big brand in India, I guess, because the pamphlet that came with the cooker has a bunch of neato regional Indian recipes. Sara, if you want your cooker back, let me know! It's not hard to use at all. Perhaps it's time for me to host a an underground Modern Pressure Cooking Workshop in my own kitchen!  

New Post on Good.Food.Stories.

I have a post about the very accessible art of homemade ice cream on the fabulous website Good.Food.Stories. Every word is true. I really did drop out of the homemade ice cream scene for, like, four years. All because of frozen breast milk. Just read it, and enjoy my recipe for vegan basil-mint ice cream. It's killer.

And as a teaser, enjoy this hypnotic video of the basil-mint ice cream as it's churning. 

Dr. Chicken's PCT Cookies

It’s raining in Ohio right now, but it’s probably not raining where my big brother is. That would be somewhere between Kennedy Meadows and Tuolumne Meadows in California’s High Sierra. He’s thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Every now and then as I go about my daily routines—walking the dog through the cemetery, driving to pick Frances up from preschool, washing dirty pots and pans—I think to myself, “What’s Mark up to at this moment?”

Only he’s not Mark on the trail; he’s Dr. Chicken, or D.C. This trail name of his has a legitimate origin, though I forget exactly what it is. I imagine Dr. Chicken scrambling up a jagged path of scree, taking in noble, wild scenery that most of us only see on wall calendars. Or I imagine him emerging from his ultra-light tent at 4am to get a head start on the day. But usually I picture him eating. Thru-hikers blast through calories and need plenty of fuel.

A few weeks ago, my mother and I put together the food resupply box he’d requested us to have ready . “I’ll need 5-6 days of food” he’d texted me. “Best send by May 17.” Yes, he has a cell phone, and it has come in handy, even though I know Dr. Chicken’s impetus in taking to the PCT was, in part, to escape the frippery of technology and constant communication.

Thanks in part to Cheryl Strayed’s mega-successful book Wild, the PCT is hopping this season. The film adaptation comes out in December, and PCT traffic will probably increase after that. Which is not bad, but the character of a thing changes as more and more people show up. That’s just the way it works.

My brother, D.C., is changing, too. A nonconformist and borderline ascetic, he’s felt trapped in his past few jobs coordinating trail maintenance workers in the backcountry of Alaska and Washington. As the old song goes, he was born the next of kin to the wayward wind. He yearns to wander. All those footsteps on dry desert earth and rocky soil are leading him to some kind of resolution.

I wanted to meet up with D.C. on the Oregon leg of the PCT for a few days, but it’s just not going to happen. I have a kid and a husband and work to do; I long ago squandered all of my wayward-wind days. The best I could do was bake cookies. I packed them up in Ziplock bags and tucked them into the box Mom and I jammed with way too much food, despite his texted assurances not to go too crazy.

I love telling people what my brother’s up to. He’s doing the thing a lot of us wish we could do. I doubt he wakes us up thinking what his sister and little niece are up to, but you never know. He’s out there hiking this thing for himself, but he doesn’t know he’s hiking it for me, too.

Dr. Chicken’s PCT Cookies

Makes 3-1/2 dozen large or 5 dozen small cookies

Plenty of hearty rolled oats, big chunks of roasted almonds, and a generous volume of dark chocolate chips make these modified cowboy cookies hit all of the right textures. I like them for a mid-morning snack. Hopefully Dr. Chicken did, too. To get the most coconut flavor, use extra-virgin coconut oil. It’s not cheap, but its tropical aroma alone is just divine. Some brands of coconut oil are flavor-neutral. Use those and your cookies will still taste pretty great.

• 1 cup extra-virgin coconut oil, solid
• 2 cups rolled oats or quick oats
• 2 cups all-purpose or white whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¾ teaspoon table salt
• 2 tablespoons finely ground flaxseed or chia seeds
• 4 ounces (1/2 cup) applesauce, preferably unsweetened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup brown sugar, light or dark
• 12 ounces (2 cups) chocolate chips (check to see if they are vegan, if that’s a concern)
• 2 cups whole almonds, toasted and roughly chopped
• 1-3 tablespoons water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Position baking racks in the top and bottom third of the oven.

If it’s warm and your coconut oil is quite liquidy, pour one cup into a glass measuring cup and chill in the refrigerator for an hours or so, until it’s firmer.

Place one cup of the oats in a food processor or blender and pulse on and off until the oats are in smaller pieces, but not too powdery. Put all 2 cups of the oats in a large bowl. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and stir to combine.

Stir the ground flax or chia seeds together with the applesauce and vanilla in a small bowl, and set aside to thicken.

Meanwhile, put the coconut oil in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat until it’s relatively smooth. Add the brown sugar and beat on high speed, scraping down the sides with a rubber spatula from time to time, until the mixture is lighter in texture and has a somewhat pearly look (about 3 minutes). Add the applesauce mixture and beat another minute.

Scrape down the bowl once more, than add the oat-flour mixture. Beat until combined (this dough will be a bit crumbly, but if it looks particularly dry, add one or two tablespoons of water.) Add the chocolate chips and almonds and beat just until they are distributed nicely through the dough.

Scoop out balls of dough that are about 1-1/2 inches in diameter for large cookies, 1 inch for smaller cookies. Place the dough balls on an ungreased, unlined baking sheet, 12 to a sheet. Flatten each dough ball with your palm a little (these cookies will not spread much during baking). Bake about 8-10 minutes, rotating the sheet from top to bottom and back to front halfway through baking. Let the cookies sit on the baking sheet 5 minutes before transferring them with a thin metal spatula to a cooling rack. Cookies will keep, tightly covered, for about a week. I think. They’re usually gone by day 5 or earlier.

The Lifesaving Sandwich

“I will drink Champagne anywhere, anytime, with anyone,” a former wine merchant friend of mine was fond of saying. I feel that way about Champagne, too, but I feel even more so about The Sandwich. It is alwaysà propos.

The Sandwich is what I eat when there’s nothing to eat. 95% of the time, we have all its components at the ready. Carrots, peanut butter, bread. That’s three-fourths of The Sandwich. Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce is the other quarter. It must be Mae Ploy. All other sweet chili sauces are pale imitations.

The idea for The Sandwich came from the documentary Sandwiches That You Will Like (get it on Netflix; I promise you won’t regret it). The filmmaker, Rick Sebak, visits New York City’s Peanut Butter & Co., where they serve a grilled chicken-peanut butter sandwich. I don’t love grilled chicken, and I especially don’t believe in chicken on sandwiches or pizza. What I do love are salad rolls, especially the peanut dipping sauce. Wheels turned in my brain. After a few wobbly experiments, The Sandwich was born.

Whole-grain bread is the best, especially if it’s studded with sunflower seeds or nubbly bits of cracked wheat. I always toast the bread lightly first, for optimal textural contrast. Also, the warmth of the just-toasted bread heightens the richness of the peanut butter.

Cut the carrots in matchsticks. Don’t get lazy and chunk them up any old way. The lattice of carrot shards creates a network that traps as much Mae Ploy as possible. And the more Mae Ploy on this sandwich, the better.

You can use any kind of peanut butter. Chunky, creamy. Natural or processed. Salted or no salt added. Just be sure to use a lot. Spread it on both sides of the sandwich. This is good fat that will keep you going strong. Also, it tastes good. And it keeps the carrot-matchsticks glued in place.

Fresh lettuce is nice, but not required. Long sprigs of fresh cilantro, stems and all, are even better. Slices of avocado won’t hurt. Grilled chicken is right out.

Just before serving, on goes the Mae Ploy. It’s not like jam; it’s loose and runny and will make a sticky-slippery mess of your sandwich no matter what you do. You have not made The Sandwich the right way if it’s not a dripping wreck. (Wrap the sandwich in a few paper towels or napkins to create a holder of sorts, if you must).

Surprisingly, griddling does not improve this sandwich, and it is only semi-portable. You may prepare it, sans the toasting, up to the Mae Ploy, which you can bring along in the bottle and add on-site, right before tucking into your hearty yet healthful lunch. At my former workplace, I kept a bottle of Mae Ploy in the break room fridge expressly for this purpose. (Mae Ploy tastes better at room temperature, but it’s runnier that way. I had to make a concession.)

The Sandwich has saved my hungry ass on many occasions. It’s all-season, vegan, and speedy to prepare. I imagine I have a few hundred of them yet to consume in my life, which means I have a lot to look forward to.

What lifesaving sandwiches do you look forward to all of the time, every time?

This originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

Ramp Champ

Champ is an Irish dish of creamy mashed potatoes and scallions. Colcannon is an Irish dish of mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale. What follows features ramps in the scallion role, with cabbage invited along, too—I like how the sweetness of the cooked cabbage sidles up next to the mellowed-out cooked ramps. We don’t call this Ramp Colcannon because Ramp Champ is obviously the better name (it's also our pub trivia team’s default moniker). A little grating of lemon zest is nice, as is fresh dill, but don’t go too crazy, like I did, or they will overpower the ramps. Yes, correct, overpower the ramps. For a vegan version, use tons of olive oil and either non-dairy milk or a generous splash of reserved potato-cooking water.

You may serve ramp champ as-is, or with a fried egg on top. The night that we dug up these ramps, we griddled fatty, flavorful burgers seasoned with minced raw ramps. I think the only way to outdo that combo is to fry an egg and serve all three together: patty, egg, and ramp champ. 

Makes about six servings

• 1-1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled, cut into 2-inch chunks
• As many ramps as you like or have—about 30 would be ideal—cleaned, roots trimmed
• One to four tablespoons butter or extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• ½ medium green cabbage, cut into shreds about a centimeter in diameter
• 1-2 cups of milk, sour cream, or half-and-half
• 1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, dill, or parsley, optional
• ¼ teaspoon finely grated zest, optional
• Lots of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover them with cold water. Add lots of salt, cover, and bring them to a boil over high heat. Immediately uncover the pot and lower the heat to a simmer. When a fork easily pierces a potato chunk, drain the potatoes and mash them up (I like them chunky, with an irregular texture). Put the lid on there to keep them warm.

Meanwhile, cut the white root ends of the ramps into segments about a centimeter long. Roughly chop the leaves of the ramps and set them aside.

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the ramp roots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they are aromatic and softened, about two to three minutes. Then add the chopped leaves and cook, stirring, until they are wilted. Season the ramps with salt and a little freshly ground black pepper. Scrape them into a bowl, wipe out the skillet if necessary, and return it to the heat. Melt another tablespoon of butter, add the cabbage, and cook until it’s soft and sweet, about ten minutes (it’s okay of the cabbage browns a little).

With a big wooden spoon, stir the cooked ramps and cabbage into the mashed potatoes. Add the remaining butter (if you like, and you should; ramp champ is at its best when it’s good and rich) along with the cooked ramps and cabbage and enough milk or half and half to make it smooth but not loose. Season the heck out of your ramp champ with more salt and black pepper. If you’re feeling edgy, add a little chopped fresh herbs or lemon zest, but don’t overdo it, or you’ll negate the ramps, and the ramps are the point.