What you should be doing with your Sungolds

If you've been reading Em-i-lis for at least a year, you might know that I adore tomatoes. Raw, in sandwiches and tarts, with peaches, in savory jams, cooked into beautiful sauces for pasta, canned for later use. 

Basically, I'm Forrest Gump's shrimpin' friend, Bubba, or Christopher Guest's nut-aficionado character in Best In Show, with tomatoes.

As an aside, y'all have to watch this clip. Sends me to the floor in peals of laughter every.damn.time. Harlan Pepper, god bless you. HAH!

But back to Sungolds. Possibly, they are my favorite tomato. At the least, they are my favorite small type. I love their golden orange hue, their perfect sweet tang and the way you can eat them hand over fist and never tire.

all delicious, but the bright orange Sungolds are my favorite.

Several summers back, I was heavily into anchovy-garlic anything and one evening cooked some Sungolds over low heat with anchovies, garlic, capers, parsley and olive oil. The sauce ingredients melted together in the most divine, sticky, unctuous way, and the tomatoes broke down just enough to add pleasurably to the mix but also maintain a distinct texture and standing. 

lusty sungold love

Lusty Sungold Love was born, and I have found that the very best way to enjoy this dish is spooned atop toasted baguette slathered with fresh ricotta. Each bite makes you pause. Maybe you'll close your eyes or sigh a small, contented "aah." And then you'll reach for another slice of bread, the bowl of ricotta and the spoon dunked in the lusty tomatoes. And you'll start again and enjoy it just the same.

Good, good food

After getting the kiddos to bed last night, I instructed tired T to hit the couch while I whipped up some dinner. Earlier, I'd had the presence of mind to buy some burrata, anticipating a magnificent salad in which it'd co-star. Do you know burrata? It is such a magnificently unnecessary cheese. In a good way, it's like whipped cream atop a full-fat, full-sugar frappuccino. The latter is overwrought enough, so to then add whipped cream and probably a drizzle of something like caramel or chocolate is beyond the pale. Burrata does that but marvelously. It is, basically, a shell of mozzarella stuffed with a combination of mozzarella and cream. Good mozzarella is insane treat enough, but burrata? Sweet baby jesus in the skies, that's like a seven year old getting to eat all his Halloween candy in one sitting.

Burrata is so delicate and rich and oozy in the best way that it's sometimes hard to transfer from container to plate. As I carefully spooned two blobs onto my platter last night, they immediately spread like pancake batter on a hot griddle. What can you do with such decadence but just follow its lead??!! So, I let the cheese spread and plated around it: grilled plumcots (of the gods), mint, olive oil, Maldon salt and just a bit of very aged balsamic. I dare say Tom closed his eyes as the first bite hit his tongue and later licked the plate shiny clean.

I'd asked Tom to blacken the calliope eggplants on the grill so they'd be nice and smoky; I then made them into some baba ghanoush. A huge bowl of Sungolds went into a batch of my Lusty Sungold Love which I served with fresh ricotta and toasted bread. All in all, a heck of a meal.

We then watched Argo, shocking ourselves with our ability to stay up for the entire thing. SUCH a good film! And Ben Affleck with that hair and beard? HOT!