Sacramento Digs Gardening logo
Sacramento Digs Gardening Article
Your resource for Sacramento-area gardening news, tips and events

Articles Recipe Index Keyword Index Calendar Twitter Facebook Instagram About Us Contact Us

Grate some tomatoes into a great side dish

Recipe: Healthy grains are the base for flexible pilaf recipe

tomato half on a grater
Grate tomato halves for the cooking sauce for multigrain pilaf. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Three tomatoes
The rich flavor of these Cherokee Carbon tomatoes was perfect
for the pilaf.

August is when I start looking for other ways to use my tomato bounty. I've had several BLTs and caprese salads, made cobbler, and I've doused grilled salmon in tomato-basil vinaigrette. I'll get to my usual tomato canning later this month.

In between, I've found a great way to use tomatoes in an easy side dish. This multigrain combo can easily be adapted to whatever flavor profile you want, to accompany tacos, chicken tikka or beef kabobs. A large-hole cheese grater is the only fancy equipment you need, and you don't have to strain out the seeds -- they become part of the texture of the dish.

Note that the grains can be varied, but I would keep basmati or jasmine rice as the main one. The others are up to you and your pantry contents.

Four-Grain and Tomato Pilaf
Adapted from "You Say Tomato" by Joanne Weir
Serves 6

four grains
Basmati rice, top, and from left, millet, freekah and quinoa
blend went into my version of this pilaf.

Ingredients:

3 medium ripe red tomatoes

1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil

3/4 cup basmati or jasmine rice

1/4 cup quinoa or quinoa blend

1/4 cup millet or bulgur wheat

1/4 cup freekah or amaranth

1/2 teaspoon or more fresh thyme, plus more for garnish, or 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 or 2 shallots, minced

Optional addition: 4-ounce can chopped chilies, drained

1 cup vegetable or chicken stock

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper


Bowl with pilaf
The finished dish, here garnished with thyme.

Instructions:

Cut the tomatoes in half. Cup each tomato half in your hand, cut side out, and, using the large holes of a grater, grate the tomato into a bowl. Discard or compost the skins.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the rice and your selection of other grains (the four together should total 1 1/2 cups), and the thyme or cumin and shallots. Stir until the grains are coated and hot, 1 to 2 minutes.

Increase the heat to high and add the stock, 1 1/2 cups water, the tomato juice and pulp, the chilies if using, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and simmer, covered, until the grains are tender and the liquid is absorbed, about 25 minutes.

Fluff with a fork. Correct the seasonings. Serve, garnished with more thyme or garnish of your choice.

Comments

0 comments have been posted.

Newsletter Subscription

Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.

Local News

Ad for California Local

Taste Spring! E-cookbook

Strawberries

Find our spring recipes here!

Thanks to Our Sponsor!

Cleveland sage ad for Be Water Smart

Garden Checklist for week of April 20

Before possible showers at the end of the week, take advantage of all this nice sunshine – and get to work!

* Set out tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash.

* Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.

* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.

* Plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Transplant lettuce and cabbage seedlings.

* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.

* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.

* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Give shrubs and trees a dose of a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.

* Start thinning fruit that's formed on apple and stone fruit trees -- you'll get larger fruit at harvest (and avoid limb breakage) if some is thinned now. The UC recommendation is to thin fruit when it is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Peaches and nectarines should be thinned to about 6 inches apart; smaller fruit such as plums and pluots can be about 4 inches apart. Apricots can be left at 3 inches apart. Apples and pears should be thinned to one fruit per cluster of flowers, 6 to 8 inches apart.

* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Weed, weed, weed! Don’t let unwanted plants go to seed.

Taste Summer! E-cookbook

square-tomatoes-plate.jpg

Find our summer recipes here!

Taste Fall! E-cookbook

Muffins and pumpkin

Find our fall recipes here!

Taste Winter! E-cookbook

Lemon coconut pancakes

Find our winter recipes here!