Charting new waters…

May 26, 2011 by 13 Comments

Well…I did it!  Jumped the SS Blogger ship and here I am on WordPress.

                       

I’m still unpacking while looking around, trying to get used to the new format.  My blog isn’t finished getting its new look just yet, hopefully that will all be done soon.  Right now, I’m totally missing my list of fav blogs and what each has been posting lately; will have to tweak things a bit once I’m all moved-in.

For now, this is just one more learning process; hopefully WordPress won’t be as much of a butt as Blogger.  I’m off to try and catch-up on all I’ve been missing for the last few days!

 

 

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Thirsty Thursday – Tomato Water Martini

May 19, 2011 by 7 Comments
This tomato water cocktail recipe is adapted from one by award-winning chef Michael Chiarello; I love his cookbooks and, of course, recipes. In his restaurant, he noticed a clear, fragrant liquid would collect on top of the large buckets of tomatoes his cooks had chopped. He discovered this sweet tomato water made a wonderful and refreshing “martini,” garnished with a cherry tomato and mozzarella skewer.

It goes without saying that this great summer treat can be made even more “festive” with the addition of some iced vodka.

Makes about 6 Tomato Water Cocktails (will vary depending on water content of tomatoes)

 
                                                                   

Ingredients:

  • 3 pounds ripe red tomatoes, cored, quartered
  • 2 tsp kosher salt
  • cheesecloth as needed
  • 12 cherry tomatoes
  • 6 small mozzarella balls (called bocconcini), or regular fresh mozzarella cut into cubes
  • 6 fresh basil leaves

Preparation…

To make the tomato water:

Toss the salt with the tomatoes. Using a food processor, working in batches, process the tomatoes, pulsing on and off, to create a very course puree. Do not over-chop, as you don’t want a smooth sauce-like product.

Place a large strainer over a non-reactive deep pot or container, and line with several layers of cheesecloth. Pour tomato puree into center of the lined strainer and gather up the edges of the cheesecloth to form a bundle. Tie off the end with kitchen string. Attach the bundle to a long wooden spoon and hang it over the container to drip.

Let the bundle hang in refrigerator for 12 hours. Discard the sack (or use it for a sauce) and transfer the tomato water to a smaller container. The tomato water will keep refrigerated for 3 days.

To make the cocktails:

Freeze 6 martini glasses. Make the garnish by skewering 2 cherry tomatoes with a piece of mozzarella in between each tomato. Rub the rim and inside of each glass with a crushed basil leaf to scent each drink. Place one tomato and mozzarella skewer into each glass. Pour in chilled tomato water and serve immediately.

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Furious Friday – Blogger BITES!!!

May 13, 2011 by 18 Comments

                                                           

After more than 30 hours of downtime, Blogger, the Devil-incarnate, has managed to re-surface.  Big effing deal!

Generic apologies and promises to “restore all posts/comments that were removed on 5/12”  have proved to be of little consequence.  Don’t know about any of you but my Thursday post seems to be ancient history.

For those bloggers who labored to put out posts, and trusted this damn website to retain their work, well, it’s maddening.  Some people are already in the midst of migrating over to Word Press, fearing another Blogger breakdown.  Obviously, anyone staying here needs to take steps to externally back-up all their work from this point forward.

The worst part is, that, for the past few days, there have been issues with leaving comments and various blogs not loading.  Research on the web found people complaining about this yet the morons at Blogger didn’t issue any type of message to registered users in advance of the big crash.  Surely, a lot of people might have had the chance to save their work with enough forewarning.

Whatever.  For now, it’s over.

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