Feck it in the Oven, S3E1 - Chilling out
Greetings, O Loyal and Patient Fans. Look around you, breathe in. You find yourself once again in the hallowed halls of Kitchen Gymnasium, that cherished Mecca of gastrotainment and tragicomedy. After a lengthy hiatus, our Scrap Iron Chef has made a brief but powerful return to the arena that won him such fame.
If memory serves me, it has been roughly a thousand years since we last set foot in Kitchen Gymnasium. 1 A great number of changes have taken place, many of them dark and terrible, some so terrifyingly evil they would shake the very foundations of your faith in your Scrap Iron Chef. But we're not going to talk about them, so it probably doesn't matter. Instead, today, we're going where we previously had never gone before, until we went there, and then returned, in fact on multiple occasions, not to mention that time we tried to go there again, but it turned out we made a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up somewhere else entirely. But we're going somewhere else where we have actually never gone before, because tonight's Feck It In the Oven entree involves... NO OVEN!
All of which is to say: It's Ordinary Vegetarian Meal Time in Kitchen Gymnasium, with
GAZPACHO
... as stolen from the Queen of Air and Darkness, Martha Stewart.
Ingredients
2 pounds beefsteak tomatoes, cored and quartered chopped into bits
1.5 cups canned tomato juice
1 tablespoon finely grated, peeled fresh ginger 0.125 tsp dried ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 3 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes a plastic bottle)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
Flatbread, for serving (optional)
Hardware
A blender
A knife
A cutting board
Two large bowls, one for holdin', one for storin
A small bowl
Measuring devices
Methodology
Now, those of you who have been with the program since season one have already guessed the first step of the process. And you guessed wrong. Because the first step was actually to put the ginger, coriander, and sugar in a bowl and mix them up with the olive oil and three tablespoons of lime juice.
THEN you can get the tomatoes. I didn't so much "core and quarter" as "quarter, cut 'round stems, and chop up." In my case, I dumped the bits in a bowl to stage. Presentation doesn't really matter, because next you...
Take half of the tomatoes and half of the tomato juice and half of the lime-oil-seasoning mix and feck them in the blender to puree on high speed. Partway through the puree process, I added some salt and pepper. Don't ask me how much. Enough, it seems.
Pour the liquefied mix into your storin' bowl, and repeat the puree process with the other half of the... everything. Combine the halves and mix to even things out. Place in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
In my case, "at least one hour" was actually 24 hours. Now, the Queen of Air and Darkness recommends mixing the yogurt and the last tablespoon of lime juice and placing a dollop on the gazpacho when serving with toasted flatbread. I recommend casually mentioning the idea of an adult tomato-soup-with-grilled-cheese-sandwiches to your girlfriend. If your girlfriend is awesome enough, it will result in awesome grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the gazpacho.
Finally, buy some vodka and Tabasco sauce, because tomato juice only comes in either "not enough tomato juice for this recipe" or "way too much tomato juice for this recipe" varieties.
This was initially an experiment in "cold storage food." Good for making your SO dinner before you leave for your second shift job, or making meals for during the week when you're both working OT and going crazy. So, given the success, the remaining tomato juice may go into more gazpacho, and lead to a "how does gazpacho take to freezing" experiment...
1 - Margin of error +/-1,500 years.
This blog post originally uploaded at Dreamwidth. I would quite appreciate it if you would comment there, either with your own DW account, or OpenID.
others already have.
If memory serves me, it has been roughly a thousand years since we last set foot in Kitchen Gymnasium. 1 A great number of changes have taken place, many of them dark and terrible, some so terrifyingly evil they would shake the very foundations of your faith in your Scrap Iron Chef. But we're not going to talk about them, so it probably doesn't matter. Instead, today, we're going where we previously had never gone before, until we went there, and then returned, in fact on multiple occasions, not to mention that time we tried to go there again, but it turned out we made a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up somewhere else entirely. But we're going somewhere else where we have actually never gone before, because tonight's Feck It In the Oven entree involves... NO OVEN!
All of which is to say: It's Ordinary Vegetarian Meal Time in Kitchen Gymnasium, with
GAZPACHO
... as stolen from the Queen of Air and Darkness, Martha Stewart.
Ingredients
2 pounds beefsteak tomatoes, cored and quartered chopped into bits
1.5 cups canned tomato juice
1 tablespoon finely grated, peeled fresh ginger 0.125 tsp dried ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 3 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice (from 2 to 3 limes a plastic bottle)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
Flatbread, for serving (optional)
Hardware
A blender
A knife
A cutting board
Two large bowls, one for holdin', one for storin
A small bowl
Measuring devices
Methodology
Now, those of you who have been with the program since season one have already guessed the first step of the process. And you guessed wrong. Because the first step was actually to put the ginger, coriander, and sugar in a bowl and mix them up with the olive oil and three tablespoons of lime juice.
THEN you can get the tomatoes. I didn't so much "core and quarter" as "quarter, cut 'round stems, and chop up." In my case, I dumped the bits in a bowl to stage. Presentation doesn't really matter, because next you...
Take half of the tomatoes and half of the tomato juice and half of the lime-oil-seasoning mix and feck them in the blender to puree on high speed. Partway through the puree process, I added some salt and pepper. Don't ask me how much. Enough, it seems.
Pour the liquefied mix into your storin' bowl, and repeat the puree process with the other half of the... everything. Combine the halves and mix to even things out. Place in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
In my case, "at least one hour" was actually 24 hours. Now, the Queen of Air and Darkness recommends mixing the yogurt and the last tablespoon of lime juice and placing a dollop on the gazpacho when serving with toasted flatbread. I recommend casually mentioning the idea of an adult tomato-soup-with-grilled-cheese-sandwiches to your girlfriend. If your girlfriend is awesome enough, it will result in awesome grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the gazpacho.
Finally, buy some vodka and Tabasco sauce, because tomato juice only comes in either "not enough tomato juice for this recipe" or "way too much tomato juice for this recipe" varieties.
This was initially an experiment in "cold storage food." Good for making your SO dinner before you leave for your second shift job, or making meals for during the week when you're both working OT and going crazy. So, given the success, the remaining tomato juice may go into more gazpacho, and lead to a "how does gazpacho take to freezing" experiment...
1 - Margin of error +/-1,500 years.
This blog post originally uploaded at Dreamwidth. I would quite appreciate it if you would comment there, either with your own DW account, or OpenID.
others already have.