Let There Be Lens

I didn’t have a ton of time yesterday, so I convection-baked chicken thighs with a spice rub and put them on top of polenta with some roasted Roma tomatoes (roasted alongside the chicken) and a salsa made with more tomatoes (Roma and pink Brandywine) plus red onion, cucumber, lemon juice, and poblano broiled until the skin blistered and came off easily. I had thought about going the chiles rellenos route, but the wife is not eating cheese right now. I could have stuffed the peppers with polenta, but only thought of that after they were fully blackened and not so structurally integrous. So I made it into a vaguely deliberate pile and called it dinner. And it was good.

Today I had a little more time to mull over the steps that lead to dinner, so I coaxed a little more richness and detail out of the various components. To begin, more Roma tomatoes, since they’re going off like plump fireworks every day now. (Tomorrow I will go buy a big box at the weekly market in town to supplement our crop and get to canning sauce for the winter). This time around I baked them like before, but with thyme, copious olive oil, and a fat clove of garlic cut in half. So the top halves half-dried and caramelized, and the bottom halves confited. Once done, I removed the thyme stems and blasted all the rest in the processor until it was all lovely, smooth, and thick. Here are the before and after pics, because it’s now actually worthwhile for me to take pictures:

While all this tomatoey erotica was transpiring, the pressure cooker was working its barometric magic on some local organic navy beans, water, and a mirepoix of our guanciale, fennel, onion, carrot, parsley, and celery. “Why, it makes its own broth!” you might say, and you would be right to say it. Freaking awesome. Getting the quantity of the water right is the trick, so that when the cooker is opened it’s neither a soupy mess nor a stuck, blackened disaster. Usually I like to err a bit more on the watery side, and then simmer off the extra liquid while I finish up the other things.

In this case, the other things were puréeing the tomatoes, toasting some local sourdough to a bean-supporting stiffness (I have fully fallen off the bread wagon lately) and mincing a grab of parsley. And thus: crostini as dinner. I had thinned the midsummer plantings of rutabaga, daikon, and black radishes- all woefully underdeveloped due to the awful weather; it’ll be a miracle if they reach a decent size before the season ends- so I washed and sautéed the various greens with garlic, lemon, and olive oil for a bright, fresh, crunchy counterweight to the rich, creamy beans and deeply savory-sweet tomato sauce. Also elegantly balanced was our beverage: a 2003 Ada Nada Barbaresco “Valeirano” that’s every bit as good as Mary describes it here. We bought it from her, and I fear that we may be down to our last couple of bottles. It’s my kind of wine; decadent yet austere, wise beyond its years, and tannic enough to improve over another decade or two (not that it will have the chance).

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8 Comments

  1. Jen of A2eatwrite
    September 2, 2009

    So glad I read this… just mulling over combos from CSA share – roasted cherry tomatoes are now included. Perfect counterpart to the kale/pesto pasta I'm making tonight.

    This all looks lovely, as usual.

  2. Brooke
    September 2, 2009

    The tomatoes look wonderful. And you reminded me I wanted to can some sauce this year. Thanks!

    Open-faced bean sammich? Ridiculously good.

  3. Zoomie
    September 2, 2009

    Beans on toast – only you could elevate it to such a marvelous plane.

  4. peter
    September 2, 2009

    Jen: They're so good, and as a counterpart to pesto they have no equal.

    Brooke: I do too. Time to do it? Not so much.

    Zoomie: Beans on a plane!

  5. Zoomie
    September 3, 2009

    Or just plane beans? I know, I know, sorry…

  6. cookiecrumb
    September 3, 2009

    Enough is enough. I have had it with these motherfucking beans on this motherfucking toast.

  7. Heather
    September 4, 2009

    First the risotto, now this. Stop stealing my thoughts. I go away for a few days, and when I come home you're (again) blogging the stuff I make? People are going to suspect something.

    Just so everyone knows, I'm totally not copying Peter. In fact, "Peter who?"

    (I have tomatoes and garlic in my oven right this second and just popped over to say hi.)

  8. GollyGumDrops
    September 13, 2009

    That's pure tomato porn!

Comments are closed.