In My Kitchen-Be warned, Red everywhere!

What’s in my kitchen this month? Tomatoes, tomatoes and yes, more tomatoes. Thanks again Celia at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for giving us this opportunity to share and have a glimpse into kitchens all around the world. Yep, with tomatoes, you cruise along for a few weeks harvesting at leisure and using beautiful tomatoes one by one for your salads and breakfasts and then bang! Glut time. All at once you become overloaded with these beautiful ruby red, purple, black and pinky orange delights.

I usually start by sorting them into 3 separate piles, those that I can leave to ripen a bit longer, those nice now and over the next few days and those that must be used now or they will be destined for the chooks! The nice now and for a few more day ones are going onto my pretty new blue plate/bowl.

I spent this morning making some tomato pickles.

This pickles is great with meat, eggs and anywhere you would use tomato sauce.

I knocked up a ‘tart au tomato’. I just used some puff pastry as the base, spread some Dijon mustard over and topped with sliced tomatoes, olive oil and thyme. Smells pretty good,  might be lunch this week I think.

I also made a tomato ‘quichey’ pie dish. First up, a pastry base into which I spread the bit of tomato pickles that didn’t fit into the jars, then came pan-fried tomatoes, zucchini, onion and capsicum with some olive oil, thyme and oregano. I grated the zest of our first kaffir lime into the mix  too. Gee I love the smell of kaffir lime, it is so heady and aromatic. Oh, there was some chorizo I found in the fridge when I cleaned it out, so that went in as well!

 

I dug out my favourite rolling pin to roll out the pastry. I bought this in an op-shop in Tassie about 20 years ago. Kauri pine and beautiful to use. The ‘quichey’ pie looks good and today’s white sourdough loaf  have kept my ‘toy oven‘ jam packed. Two loaves of 50% rye yet to go in today!

On an exciting note, I have a new sourdough starter, Phoenicia. Celia graciously offered me some of her starter saved from “Priscilla”. How could I refuse? The starter arrived last week and it was only this morning before I’ve had a chance to give it the kiss of life. I’ve named her Phoenicia in honour of the great Phoenician bakers, apparently unrivalled. So now I have Phoenicia, Vessie (after Vesuvius) which are both a white starter and ‘100% rye’ (must think of a name for that! Only a couple of hours in and already signs of life.

In my kitchen is a very handy bucket. When we were camping our trusty old bucket came to grief and I refused to pay $4.00 for one that looked about as good quality as a chinese food container.  I went into the local bakery and asked if they had any spare fondant buckets. $5.00 later we came out with 2 large 10 litre buckets and this handy little one which is ideal for doing my preferment of bread dough in.

Well, that’s about all that’s going on In My Kitchen this month. I now have to go and find my passata making equipment as I think that will definitely be a job that needs to be done in the next week or so. But first, some sourdough french toast with a dollop of tomato pickles for lunch.