More Tomatoes

If you come to my house right now, you'll smell two things: sunscreen and garlic. The boys and I stayed at the pool as long as possible, and when we got home we were starving. As soon as I walked in the door I started cooking. There's a pile of cherry tomatoes on our counter that's been growing larger every day. And I can see more out there on the vines, ready to be picked; cherries, Romas, the works.  Makes a person a bit panicky. I'm happy to say that our indoor tomato pile just became a little sauce, simmering on the stove. This is a tomato sauce with the barest essentials: cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano, salt and pepper, crushed red pepper. (I've mentioned that my husband has a thing for peppers. He made the crushed red pepper with last year's batch of peppers.) I heated a pan, poured in some olive oil.  Just threw everything in at once. The result: a little taste of summertime.

We had a jar of Alfredo sauce too. I stirred this into the fusilli, and topped it off with the tomato sauce. Kind of Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade of me. But addictively good. An achievement for someone who  maybe got a little too much sun today. 

Brazilian Collard Greens

Thank goodness for the Internet, for teaching me about Brazilian Collard Greens. I had no idea that collards were a big deal in Brazil. According to Wikipedia:

In Portuguese and Brazilian cuisine, collard greens (or couve) are common accompaniments of fish and meat dishes. They are a standard side dish for feijoada, a popular pork and beans-style stew. The leaves are sliced into strips, 1 to 3 mm wide (sometimes by the grocer or market vendor, with a special hand-cranked slicer) and sautéed with oil or butter, flavored with garlic,onion, and salt. Sometimes, it is also eaten fresh.   

I read up a bit on the preparation of these greens, and the cigar-rolling and slicing into thin strips intrigued me. We've had greens galore these days, and it's been a challenge to find new ways to prepare them. This was a much-needed bit of inspiration. There are various recipes, some using pork fat. For my Brazilian collards, I decided to go simple vegetarian style, using this recipe. I loved that it had only four ingredients: collards, garlic, olive oil. Oh, and salt and pepper. 

To begin, I washed the greens, then cut off the stems and the spiny middles. Then I stacked them up into little piles, rolled and sliced them.  Making the garlic paste was fun too; the mortar and pestle just don't get used often enough. 

Since I had just come home from a yoga class where we did about a thousand down-dogs and my arms were tired, I let Josh help me pulverize the garlic.

The garlic paste went into the hot oil, then I threw in the greens and sauteed them quickly. The result was strands of crispy and garlicky collards. So new! Well, new to me.