How to peel a tomato.

tr!cks Comments Off

Apr 252011

Peeling a tomato is not what I prefer in anyone’s kitchen. Tomato’s skin has the most minerals and vitamins in all the tomato. But if you need It peeled – here’s my way of doing this:

Clean it from the stem.
Cross cut it on the opposite side.
Have in mind, you must not cut too deep or the tomato juices will all go off in the hot pot and leave the tomato dry inside and with bad taste.

Have its skin cut all the way to the stem.
Have It forked from the stem side.
Put a small container of water on the hot plate.
Wait for it to start boiling at 100 degrees.
Put the forked tomato inside.
Count to 40.
Get it off.

Let it cool a bit. You should really wait or you will malform the tomato if you are in a hurry. It’s quite tender when warm.

Peel slowly from the cross section towards the stem.
Leave it to cool completely on some surface.
Use it for whatever you decided “peeled tomatoes” are good.

Even if I am to keep all that skin off from the tomato for some reason, I would put it in the boiling water as little as possible. The tomato is quite tender and I don’t want squishy salad. (It’s still good for Gazpacho soup or a juice though. Don’t just throw it away. Remove the stem and put it in the blender to make an excellent tomato juice).
There are two reasons I approve this method for peeling. It’s Lycopene. First – Lycopene is one important carotene in the red tomatoes. And It’s ability to kill bad cholesterol and actually get rich and with higher concentration in baked and boiled tomatoes is the second.

So, If you want to keep healthy – don’t mind the tomato’s quality and just have it in the dish or in the plate. There are a lot of recipes with peeled tomatoes or with minced/ground ones, even if they are a bit soft.
Anyway. If you know better, faster or healthier way – Just let me know.

Meatball soup and roasted chicken

My k1tch3n Comments Off

Apr 232011

Every time I try to do some soup it turns into all purpose main dish instead of … just a soup. And every time I promise myself “I will not overeat, I will not eat half a loaf of bread with this” etc. … I simply fail.

This one turned tasty, too. I failed again. Then I said to myself “What the heck. It’s spring. Bike time.” and I kept cooking.

For this one I put most of what my fridge had not dried and left unusable:

few medium carrots, some green onions,

piece of butter (around 25 grams),

ground spices, chunk of old cheese,

minced meat, a handful of rice, 1 medium sized mushroom.

I’ve diced the mushroom and mixed it with the ground meat and the cheese. Put some salt, ground black pepper and cumin. Rolled balls about 2 cm in diameter and let them steam a bit with the vegetables in a chunk of butter. Then poured a liter of warm water and left it to boil for 40 minutes on medium hot plate.

While it was cooking I made a cup of salad and found that there are few large pieces of chicken behind the bag of vegetables … still not behind it’s “don’t eat this after this” date stamped on the package.

So I’ve decided to make them all too, so I don’t throw them in the garbage tomorrow. I’ve got ground spices already and was thinking what to do with them.

So it’s a soup with a side dish of salad and roasted chicken after all.

I promise I will burn everything with the bike tomorrow. Found a bottle of white wine also. And I can assure you, it’s fully compatible with the roasted chicken.

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Bean with meatballs stew

My k1tch3n Comments Off

Apr 172011

One of my favorites since the hungry Bulgarian years ’95-’97. I’ve eaten so much beans, cooked in so many different ways that I can fill another blog with them.

Preparation time	2-3 hours depending on bean type but it’s worth it
Servings	4
Calories	579 per serving.

Ingredients


30-40 ml olive oil,	2 ltr. cooking pot,	one big or few small carrots,	One medium onion or few green onions,

A cup of white beans (250 gr.),	One big red pepper,	250 grams of ground meat (60% pork, 40% veal),	10 leaves spearmint, ground black pepper, ground red pepper, ground cumin, one tbsp of salt.

Preparation

Wash the beans in cold water. Put them in the pot, pour a liter of warm water and let them boil for 1 and a half hour (90 minutes) on the hot plate set to 5 or 6 (high). It should be enough for most of the bean types.

[If you are using peeled beans, 30-40 minutes are more than enough but I rarely use this type. The bean shell has some GI lowering abilities, that are good for most of the slightly obese people like me.]

Take a wooden spoon and get few beans from the boiling water. Blow gently to reduce the temperature and taste the beans. The bean is ready when it does not feel crunchy while chewing.

Turn off the hot plate for now. Remove the pot from it and let the beans cool a bit. Rinse the whole lot with cold water. (You don’t want to keep that water the bean has been boiled with at all). Let them dry a bit and put them to a side dish or a large cup for later.

Clean the pot.

Put some olive oil in the pot and take it again on the hot plate. Set the power to “4” or medium.

Make 10-15 small meat balls with slightly oiled palms and put them in the pot to fry just for a minute on each side.

Dice one carrot, one onion and one red pepper. Put them in the pot and leave them for 5 minutes to get the smell of slightly fried meat.

Put the beans. Sprinkle the spices and pour 1 liter of warm water. Stir with a wooden spoon. Cover with the lid. Let it boil for 50 minutes.

The stew is ready when the carrots are soft (check one with the wooden spoon) but you may keep boiling for another 10 minutes to make it even tastier.

And … as I always suggest drinks – for this one it’s beer 😉

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Ingredients

Preparation

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