Sweet Roasted Tomatoes

I like condiments the way I liked jewelry as a tightly-braided calico-printed bookish Mennonite girl: big, gaudy, and swinging from lobes of lettuce, studded or satiny, maybe splayed on velvety cuts of duck or strung in little droplets over beets, swizzled in amber strands over tender rolls and when in hell was the last time I had DUCK, or amber strands of anything? It's high time I got out the dress-ups again.

For starters, we can always hide our dry toast and sprouting potatoes under some clever sauce or pickly thing. Darkly caramelized roasted tomatoes do the trick nicely.

Preheat the oven to 450, oil a baking sheet, and quarter a dozen roma tomatoes* lengthwise, crowding them cut-side up on the baking sheet. Mix two parts sugar to one part salt and sprinkle it lightly over the tomatoes, taking care to keep it off the baking sheet. Slide them in the oven and roast till quite shrunk and dark (put those sugars to work making complicated caramel flavor), but not entirely burnt. Straight-up carbon doesn't taste very complicated. Pull the tomatoes from the oven and let them cool till you can peel them up off the tray without burning yourself. You can store them in a jar in the fridge for a while -- they're lovely in sandwiches, tossed with roasted potatoes and basil, or rolled around a chunk of feta. 

Note that eating too many will give you canker sores in your mouth. It's the trait of a good condiment to bite back when we treat it like a staple -- much like our companions when we don nothing but jewelry.

*What? Tomatoes in February? Here I run into a moral snag. If they are quite a thrifty deal, practically free -- and I fix the long-distance insipidity by roasting as I describe -- is it wrong for me to support the multinational-petroleum-gross food industry? Is it downright heinous if Michael Pollan happens to be in Portland tomorrow, touring with his new book, In Defense of Food?

Vicious Tomatoes

Last night a girl called tomatoes to-mah-toes. She wasn't British.

This morning I locked myself out of the new house & got ambushed by a bushel of romas. They dealt a few swift blows before losing their surprise advantage. It was a little dicey till the onion, basil, and oregano subdued them and I landed the coup de grăce with a splash of balsamic. Hackwork, really (I didn't even brown the onions!) but decent under the circumstances. I'll wait till much later to add the garlic and salt -- I like my garlic to keep its bite.

Life Amongst the Dollarbags

A week or so ago I mentioned a delightful store that sells extra-ripe produce in dollarbags. Now I make dollarbags. I know all about the criteria for the dollarbagged produce, about the politics of spreading out the "premium" seconds among numerous bags, and about the people who buy dollarbags multiple times daily. I know when to snag the figs for myself, and when to leave the gargantuan sprawling heirloom tomatoes that, without scrupulous upkeep, will only disintegrate like the great fragile egos of melodramatic jilted girlfriends bleeding mascara all over my kitchen counter.

Like everyone in early September, I have enough needy tomatoes in my life as it is. Today I chopped one coarsely with half a neglected avocado (neglecting one or two tomatoes in September is understandable -- but tell me -- what sinner neglects avocados and still finds her name inscribed in the Book of Life?). I sprinkled on coarse Celtic sea salt, black pepper and sprouted sunflower seeds, crumbled in sharp raw cheddar cheese, drizzled it all with EVO, and called it "supper".

Supplemented, to be sure, by some savory-sweet chocolate-covered almonds -- and extra-ripe figs.

I love my new job. Instead of comparing sex lives, my coworkers talk about Cat Power and embroidery and how hard it is to find a job with a Ph.D. in evolutionary ecology. We exist in that urban limbo of hypereducated fruit vendors, flirting with the hypereducated Trader Joe's employees next door with whom we maintain an openly symbiotic relationship, and who may or may not have supplied me with the sharp cheddar and the chocolate-covered almonds I'm always popping. We're eager to show you where the gluten-free flours are found, and just how juicy the blackberries are, and how to select an avocado that will be perfectly ripe in time for your classy dinner party 48 hours from now (without jeopardizing one serif of the golden ink with which your name is written in the Holy Book).

And I'll always put extra spirulina in your smoothie if you smile like that.