46. BL-Tomatoes (p. 26)

The concept for this recipe* is simple: BLTs without the bread. These tasty hors d'oeuvres are simply a hollowed-out cherry tomato stuffed with a mixture of shredded iceberg lettuce, crumbled bacon, mayonnaise and salt and pepper. The result is something that is fancy, yet familiar.

I could just tell from reading the recipe that these were going to be a hit at my family's Labor Day cookout, so I doubled the recipe so that we wouldn't run out. That was a good call, since they disappeared pretty qucikly.

I was lucky to find 24 large-ish, ripe cherry tomatoes at the local mega-mart (sometimes they surprise me with good produce). The first thing you do is to cut a very thin slice off the bottom of each tomato so that they won't roll around on the platter. Then you slice off the tops of the tomatoes and scoop out the centers with a melon baller. The one-inch diameter tomatoes called for by The Book is an absolute minimum, otherwise, scooping out the centers with a melon baller will be a frustrating, if not impossible task. But, don't go much bigger than one inch, since as Teena noted, these things should be single-bite-sized, or else you'll be wearing the "BL" filling.

The filling couldn't be easier. First, you crisp up some bacon (I used turkey bacon without any ill effects to the finished product) and crumble it. Then you finely shred some iceberg lettuce. Mix it all up with some mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and stuff the filling into the tomato shells. This last step proved to be a little time consuming, and I don't think that I'd try to make these for a great big party. Unless you had lots of help, stuffing a hundred of these babies would take all day, and I'm guessing that they need to be eaten pretty soon after being made, so making them in advance probably isn't an option. But for a small party, they're fun and delicious.

Date Cooked: August 31, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A-

*The recipe is not available on-line

3. Strawberry Salsa (p. 896)

What with the salmonella scare affecting the nation's tomato supply, I figured that it would be good to try a tomato-less sals-alternative.

The list of ingredients in this recipe (strawberries, onion, jalapeño pepper, cilantro and lime) make this dip a little bit scary. But, like everyone at my family's Father's Day celebration who was brave enough to try it, I really liked this salsa. The flavors (sweet, hot, tangy) melded well, and it didn't come off as a fruity salsa.

The blurb in The Book suggests it as a substitute for pepper jelly, and recommends serving it with roast chicken or pork. I doubled the recipe and served it with tortilla chips as a salsa substitute, and it was great.

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

2. Eggplant "Caviar" (p.11)

If I stumbled with the Pita Toasts, I jumped right back up with this great dip. This dish is simple enough, even though it does dirty more than its fair share of dishes: you have to broil the eggplant and tomatoes, and then you need to saute the onion and green pepper, and then you need to whiz the whole thing in the food processor.

The real reason I burned the Pita Toasts was because, instead of watching them closely, I was washing all the dishes I dirtied making this dip.

All that aside, this dip was excellent, the roasted flavors of the eggplant and tomatoes blended well with the carmelized flavors of the onions and peppers.

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

1. Pita Toasts (p. 7)

There's an old saying that every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If that's the case, I tripped and fell on my face on the first step.

I volunteered for appetizer duty for my family's Father's Day celebration, and I decided to make Eggplant "Caviar" and Strawberry Salsa. I thought that these Pita Toasts would go well with the Caviar, and the recipe couldn't be easier. It's one of those recipes where the name is the recipe. The ingredients and the cooking instructions are in the name: to make Pita Toasts, you basically toast pitas. That's about all there is to it.

I even said to my wife before I got started cooking, "This one is so easy that I can't even believe that I get to count it as a recipe." But I spoke too soon. The Book says to cook the toasts for "about 12 minutes total." Apparently, "about 12 minutes" is not the same thing as "12 minutes," because in a matter of seconds somewhere in between 11 and 12 minutes, the Pita Toasts became Pita Cinders. It might have had something to do with the fact that I used whole wheat pitas, or maybe it was the non-stick cookie sheets (which make food brown faster), or maybe the oven got too hot.

But, no one complained, and they gobbled them up. (Maybe it was just because the Eggplant "Caviar" was so good, no one noticed that the Pita Toasts were charred.) Anyway, I'm not going to let this initial setback break my spirit. The only way is up!

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy (or at least it should have been)
Rating: C (but it's all my fault)