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

For a tomato side dish, borrow an idea from summer fruit

Recipe: Try a savory crisp with yellow tomatoes

""
My yellow tomato varieties this year, clockwise from top left:
Pork Chop, Chef's Choice Orange, Limmony
and Lemon Boy. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

My counter runneth over with tomatoes.

The heat this past week meant lots of ripening, and I wanted to use some of this fresh bounty quickly before I got into canning or freezing the rest.

Gazpacho is always a possibility, or a quick pasta dish, but I poked around for ideas among the go-to recipes for other summer produce such as peaches. Cobbler, sure, and what about crisp?

Sure enough, I found a couple of recipes, latching onto one developed by a pair of gardeners who also cook, at
whiteonricecouple.com . Since this seems to be the Year of the Yellow Tomato in my garden, I decided to use all yellows, a mix of heirlooms and hybrids. (Well, one pink Brandy Boy that HAD to be used immediately snuck in there.) This produced a mild crisp in which all the spices were in the crumbly topping. It was delicious served alongside turkey meatballs and green salad. Italian sausage would be another good accompaniment.

The yellow tomatoes I used, if you’re taking notes for next year, were: Lemon Boy, Limmony, Pork Chop, Chef’s Choice Orange (OK, it’s gold) and even a couple Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes, just to say I did. I also peeled most of them -- they were very ripe and peeled easily -- but that’s up to you.

Savory tomato crisp

Adapted from a 2013 recipe at whiteonricecouple.com
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

Butter for greasing dish

For filling:
2 pounds tomatoes, peeled if desired, cut into wedges
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
""
 Bubbly filling and a crunchy top: It's a tomato crisp

For topping:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons minced parsley
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon light brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick or instant)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 2-quart casserole or baking dish.

Place the tomato wedges (peeled if desired) into the dish. Sprinkle the cornstarch over the tomatoes, stir, and season lightly with salt and pepper. Set dish aside while you make the topping.

Whisk together the flour, cheese, parsley and thyme. Stir in the garlic, brown sugar and the 1 teaspoon salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingers until the mixture is crumbly. Blend in the rolled oats.

Sprinkle the topping evenly over the tomatoes. Bake the crisp 45 to 50 minutes, or until filling is bubbly and topping is golden brown. Let cool slightly before serving, or allow to cool to room temperature.

Comments

0 comments have been posted.
RECIPE

A recipe for preparing delicious meals from the bounty of the garden.

Keywords:

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 May 11

Make the most of the lower temperatures early in the week. We’ll be back in the 80s by Thursday.

* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.

* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.

* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. (You also can transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.)

* Plant dahlia tubers.

* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.

* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.

* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.

* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.

* Add mulch to the garden to maintain moisture. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch-to-1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.

* Remember to weed! Pull those nasties before they set seed.

* Water early in the day and keep seedlings evenly moist.

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!