Green Tomato Cake

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I can hardly believe that June is almost half gone already! I've been working on a new project out at the farm and I've neglected to post here much this month. I'm so excited about my latest venture, the Route 52 Farm Trail but it's been very time consuming. Anyway, earlier this week Mom and I were canning some of the gorgeous San Marzano tomatoes my dad grew this year, when a summer storm hit. If you've every lived in the South, then you know that sometimes they seem to come from nowhere and are gone almost as quickly. This one was really intense for about 30 minutes and then was gone. We really needed the rain but the strong winds caused a few green tomatoes to fall off the plants. I brought them home with me and thought I fry them for dinner. I was looking in The Crescent City Farmers Market Cookbook , (in New Orleans), for a recipe when I came across this recipe for green tomato cake. Forget fried green tomatoes, cake it is! It may sound odd to put tomatoes in a cake, but green tomatoes have the texture that's similar to an apple, so they work perfectly in cake. The recipe in the cookbook didn't have a frosting, but I decided to top it with a brown butter icing. It's so good, I may be picking some more green tomatoes, just so that I can make this cake again!!

Green Tomato Cake 
Source: Kitty Hooper (Crescent City Farmers Market green tomato vendor)
Printable Recipe
Ingredients:
3 cups plain flour
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups chopped green tomatoes
1 cup chopped walnuts
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Method:
In a mixing large bowl, combine flour, sugar, eggs, oil, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; mix well. Stir in tomatoes and walnuts The mixture is very thick! Pour batter into greased and floured bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour. Remove from oven and let the cake cool in the pan or cake will fall.

Serves 8-10


Browned Butter Icing
1/2 cup  butter
1 cup confectioners' sugar

After the cake has cooled and can be removed from the pan, make the frosting. In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until butter is lightly browned. Whisk in confectioners' sugar until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.

The brown butter icing is fantastic!

Just in case you thought I did this whole blogging thing all on my own, I do have a very faithful assistant...

My "assistant" checking for crumbs after the photos are taken.

Sweet Pea Tendril Salad

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Our local farmers markets are packed of wonderful produce this time of the year. This week I bought sweet corn, super sweet orange cherry tomatoes, peppers, beets, cantaloupe, and peaches. I can't help it. When I get to the farmers market I just go a little crazy and want to buy some of everything. This week I also found pea tendrils, also called pea shoots, from one of our local farmers. Pea tendrils are the are the young leaves and shoots of the pea plant. If you've never tried pea tendrils, they are delicious. I think they taste like fresh peas crossed with spinach. You can use them in  much the same way as you would use spinach. They can be sauteed, tossed into pasta, or eaten raw in a salad.
I used the pea tendrils and several of my farmers market purchases, along with some grilled shrimp I had leftover from the night before, to make this delicious salad. I used only pea tendrils for this salad but if you like, you could also mix the pea tendrils with other salad greens.

Sweet Pea Tendril Salad with Grilled Shrimp and Corn
Serves 2 as a main course or 4 as a side salad
(printable recipe)
For the salad:
2 cups tender sweet pea tendrils or a mixture of lettuces and pea tendrils
A handful of fresh cherry tomatoes, I used tiny sweet orange tomatoes
Salt and pepper, to taste

For the corn:
2-3 ears of fresh sweet corn cut from the cob
1 Tbs. unsalted butter
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. curry powder (optional)
freshly ground black pepper

Remove the husks and the silk from the corn and cut the kernels off as close to the cob as possible without cutting into the cob. Melt the butter in a large, heavy saute pan. Add the corn, salt, pepper and curry powder, if using. Saute uncovered on medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the corn is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper.

Lemon Vinaigrette

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon minced fresh garlic
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
freshly cracked black pepper

Gently stir the ingredients together, do not emulsify.

I used this recipe for Margarita Grilled Shrimp. I made the shrimp the night before and had it leftover. I put them on the salad cold but they would be great right off the grill on top of this salad. (If don't want to go to the trouble of grilling the shrimp, you could substitute steamed shrimp.)

Place pea tendrils in a serving bowl or divide onto individual plates. Add the tomatoes and sauteed corn and grilled shrimp and drizzle the lemon vinaigrette over the salad.

Shop at the farmers market! You not only support your local growers but you also get to eat some really tasty food.

What I did this summer...

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This past week marked the beginning of the school year in our area. I remember those first day of school jitters well. I could never sleep the night before and in the morning my stomach would do somersaults. I could never eat breakfast on the first day of school. It was partly anticipation and partly pure terror. Would I get in Ms. Soandso's class? Would any of my friends be in my class? In other words, there were a lot of unknowns. One seeming constant however, was the obligatory first day assignment of sharing with the class "What I did this summer". I sort of dreaded this assignment. I mean it was summer. What I really wanted to say was "I didn't have to go to school!" But they wanted more... Ummm, welllll, lets see...well "I went swimming", that was always something fun I could throw in. What I didn't share was that in between swimming in an actual pool, there was a lot of playing in the yard with the water hose and maybe slidding on some black plastic. "I played with friends." There again, it was mostly with my sisters, but also doesn't sound cool, at all. "Oh and we went to the beach!" Score! Very cool. Only it was usually just for the day, at the end of which we'd pack into the car and drive 90 miles back home. We were exhausted, sticky from salt water, sunburned, and with sand in some very uncomfortable places, but who needed to know those details. Yup, I'd had another great summer! So in honor of the first week of school, I thought I'd share what I did this summer, well part of it anyway.
At the beginning of the summer I blogged about the farmers market that I manage.Well the summer has flown by and we have ended another successful year at our market. It's a lot of work, in sometimes extreme heat, to run a farmers market. However, it's also so rewarding it to see our local community get excited about buying local grown and produced foods and merchandise and knowing the impact it has on our farmers livelihoods.

 

Lots of fresh locally grown produce 

One of our blueberry farmers sampling another farmers watermelon...it was as good as it looks!

Oats rolled while you wait.

Beautiful cut flowers

Farm fresh eggs

Home baked goodies

Cooking demos

Live music

Handmade pottery

  Handmade soaps

 

Art projects for the kids

  It was a great summer! To see what I did with the rest of my summer, see my previous post. So what did you do this summer??

Rosemary Infused Honey

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 I 've been busy as a bee the past couple of weeks preparing for opening day of the farmers market that I manage here in my home town. It takes months of work, hundreds of phone calls, and thousands of emails to get the farmers market ready for business each year. I helped build our local farmers market from the ground up. It took well over a year of planning just to get it off the ground. Last summer was our first season. It was so gratifying to see those tents go up and the people in our community line up to buy fresh produce from our local farmers. I feel very strongly that we need to support our local growers and think more locally when it comes to eating.
Having a year of experience under our belts, made planning and executing this years market a little easier. The best part, for me, of managing the market is getting to know so many of our local farmers and producers. They are a wonderful hardworking and independent group of people. I look forward to seeing them each week and love buying what they've grown. It's so nice to have a face attached to the food your eating. 
The Beekeepers Association has a booth at our market. Each week different beekeepers run the booth and bring along the honey they've collected from their bees. They encourage their customers to sample the different honey. It's amazing how the honey for one grower tastes completely different from that of another grower. Their hives may be only a few miles apart, yet have a completely different taste and color.
I can't help myself, I always buy too much at the market. I end up having to freeze, or can, or throw a party, to use up everything I've bought each week. I decided, since I had quite a bit of honey, I'd try infusing some of it with herbs and see what happened. I went with rosemary this time because I think that rosemary and honey are a terrific combo and because I have the world's largest rosemary bush. Seriously, it's like some mutant plant or something. Anyway, I used the quick method of infusing my honey. With the slower method, you don't heat the honey at all. The herbs slowly over time infuse the honey with their flavor. The honey has a longer shelf life if you use this method, but I'm too impatient to wait several weeks for the honey to be infused! So I used the quick method. It's quite easy and I loved the end result. Rosemary is perfect with honey. I've already used this honey in so many things: salad dressing, drizzled over cheese, on fresh fruit, and in my marinades. It would be perfect in place of regular honey in the grilled figs I made here.

Quick method for infusing honey with rosemary

1 cup honey (such as clover honey)
a good sized handful of rosemary

Place honey in a double boiler with water in bottom. Squeeze rosemary
leaves to release flavor and add to honey. Bring water to a boil; bring
honey to 185°F and keep at 185°F for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and
let stand for 10 minutes. Strain while still warm. Strain into a clean glass jar.
Makes 1 cup. Store in the refrigerator. Honey should be good for several months.
.

Stop by your local farmers market and pick up some local honey and infuse some for yourself.
P.S. Infused honey would make a great gift.