Get Cooking — Sundried Tomato Lovefest!

I am in love.  And it is all thanks to Old Man Winter, who somehow took a wrong turn and spent a half of January in Miami this month.

You see, in most of the country, January is not a good month for tomatoes, hence the rock-hard, mealy imported specimens your local chain grocery store might try to ply you with this week.  Here in South Florida, however, January usually marks the start of the blushing season, when tomatoes begin tempting us with their divine vining of flagrant rouge.

Alas, this January, it’s just not happening.  Thanks to the cold snap, tomatoes are suffering.  They’re more pallid pink than ribald red, which means fresh tomatoes are definitely not part of my kitchen repertoire this month.

But why give up tomatoes altogether?  Tomatoes (at least cooked tomatoes) are high in lycopene — boys, this is good for your boys — and other goodness.  And they taste so darn delicious.  When fresh tomatoes are in season, and when they’re ripe and juicy and fragrant, there’s little that can beat them: throw in a bit of salt, a slick of olive oil, and a furtive rubbing of garlic across hot, crusty country bread and you’re pushing all the right buttons (and you’re doing it in Catalan, which is even more attractive).

But when they’re not in season, or not good, it’s usually prudent to skip the fresh tomatoes. Canned ones are OK, but dried tomatoes can cloak your usual ‘mato dishes with an intensity, richness and earthiness missing from, say, your typical quick pasta sauce.  Now’s a great chance to try out the caramelized sweetness of the sundried specimen.

Some great uses for sundried tomatoes: as a substitute for basil in pesto.  As an addition to hummus.  As a layer in a gorgeous, hot little turkey-basil-n-Swiss panino.  And as their own three-minute pasta sauce.

I oven-dried my own Roma tomatoes from the farmer's market to give them some much-needed flavor, but dried ones in a jar from the supermarket will work great in these recipes, too, and will save you a step. I like the commercial ones packed in oil, if you can find a high-quality oil. Otherwise, just reconstitute hard, dried tomatoes in hot water. Use the liquid they leave behind as a flavoring agent.

'Maters. Spinach. Minutes away from luscious.

Come to mamma...

Above, you see my husband’s favorite way for me to use up our sundried tomatoes: I add good olive oil to the pan and get it nice and hot, then I drop in the tomatoes and a few big handfuls of baby spinach.  As the spinach wilts, I add a Tablespoon of heavy cream (from grassfed cows — I like the brand Natural by Nature, which you can find on the East Coast) and a bit of the pasta water.

So that’s my husband’s favorite way to play up these red beauties.  Luscious luscious luscious.

My favorite?  Coming up in the next cooking post.