Holy crap! Our cherry tomatoes are finally coming ripe and we’ve got too many of them. I just picked about fifty and there are plenty more still green. I’m thinking of making some homemade salsa. Anybody got a good recipe? Actually, do you have any other ideas for what to do with them? Suggestions welcome, as otherwise we’ll be eating nothing but salad for the rest of the summer!
Claire
January 28, 2004 — 8:00 pm
Don’t ask me for the recipe, but I once ate cherry tomato soup at a restaurant. It was great – really tangy.
Kris
January 28, 2004 — 8:52 pm
Mmm… sounds yummy. I have to eat tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches though. It’s my favorite.
I ended up making some salsa with this recipe. We used a jalapeno from our garden. We added a clove or two of garlic but forgot to add the lime juice. Still turned out pretty good! (Oh, and I learned that cilantro is the same thing as coriander. Useful trivia!)
stefanie
January 29, 2004 — 12:22 am
How about a simple salad with tomatoes, mozzarella cubes, basil & a little olive oil? sort of chopped up insalata caprese…
rdh
January 29, 2004 — 12:59 am
Check with Cindy, she makes a mean salsa, alittle heavy on the cilantro for my taste but otherwise not bad.
aim
January 29, 2004 — 6:04 am
yeah, cilantro=coriander=SUCK. i hate that stuff. don’t like baby tomatoes either, so you’re on your own. 🙂
Ron
January 29, 2004 — 6:07 am
Take cherry tomotoes, some coarsely-chopped peeled/raw potatoes, and some whole garlic cloves. Mix them up and dump out onto a piece of aluminum foil. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and add some fresh herbs (rosemary worked well for me). Add salt/pepper to taste. Fold the foil closed, making a foil envelope full of the ingredients above. Bake until the potatoes are done (about the same time it would take to bake a regular potato). It’s awesome. We had a bunch of cherry tomatoes this summer and Marlin just sort of winged this recipe and it turned out delicious. Next time, I’ll probably try adding a little cheese as well (fresh grated parmesan or asiago, perhaps?)
Max
January 29, 2004 — 7:12 am
Ron’s recipe sounds like the bomb! You can also make this cream-cheese spread (which is delicious) using sliced cherry tomatoes piled on the top: http://www.lotsofco.org/archives/000558.html#000558 .
amy
January 29, 2004 — 8:49 am
Yup, that one took me forever to figure out. The I worked with a woman who was born in Mexico and moved here over a decade ago. Here’s how it works(as she told me): cilantro is the leaf and corriander is the ground up dried berry from the same plant.
My suggestion is to grow your own!
Kris
January 29, 2004 — 10:26 am
Thanks everyone! We’ll be trying out your suggestion tonight, Ron. Snookums does something similar based on the “vegetables al forno” we had in Italy last summer. Basically, in a little ovenproof dish he layers french beans, sliced onions, quartered tomatoes, and garlic cloves. Throws in whatever fresh herbs we have on hand. (Usually rosemary.) Then he drowns the whole thing in olive oil. Cook in an oven as hot as you dare. Turns out YUMMY. I like the idea of doing it in al-foil though. Less mess! We might chuck in some pumpkin instead of the potatoes and see how we go…
I thought in Australia they pretty much use “coriander” for everything. The Snook does, anyway. If you buy a bunch of the leaves in the store they’re just called coriander, and if you buy the seeds ground up it’s just “ground coriander seeds”. That’s why I was confused, because I haven’t heard anybody use “cilantro” since the US. I definitely think it’s related to the Mexican usage though, which we don’t have very much here. We’ve actually got some growing in our garden (in among the tomato jungle) that we chuck in Thai green curries. I didn’t use to like it so much in the States but it’s growing on me.
Tricia
January 29, 2004 — 11:36 am
My experience is the same as yours, Kris; Americans (and this must include Mexicans) make that differentiation between corriander the seed and cilantro the leaf, while the Brits, Aussies, Indians, and probably many others call it all coriander. Ex: one of my favorite condiments is coriander chutney which is clearly made from the leafy green bits (although it’s spicy and terrific on anything remotely Thai or Mexican in origin).
Veggies roasted in olive oil are the best. I like butternut squash, onions, garlic and sweet peppers sprinkled w/ parmesan, or cauliflower sprinkled with blue cheese.
Are you still looking for another salsa recipe? I know my mom has a great one, but it’s pretty similar to the one that you found online.
Another thought about the tomatoes (if you’re eating bread): we just had brushetta last night covered in chopped fresh tomatoes, olive oil and basil; it smelled amazing.
Ooh, one more idea: shishkababs (I’m really sorry about the butchered spelling, especially reading your recent post). We used to grill cherry tomatoes along with marinated meat, mushrooms, and peppers in small pieces on skewers.
Kris
January 29, 2004 — 12:02 pm
Oooh, kebabs (I’ll just eliminate the tricky part!) would be perfect! Personally I love bruschetta but we’re trying to get back to our diet so bread (and potatoes, etc) are out. But kebabs… Yum! I may have to make up some marinade tonight. Any suggestions? 🙂
Also – Does anybody know if I can just use cherry tomatoes as a straight-up substitution for regular tomatoes in things like spaghetti sauce and chili? I’d be chopping them up, of course. I’m just wondering if the ratio of skin to flesh to seeds to juice will be off from the larger version, and that might effect the recipe. Maybe I’m overthinking it. I was just hoping to do a few things that we could freeze for winter.
Eileen
January 29, 2004 — 12:36 pm
i don’t know all that much about cherry tomatoes but they are really good in guacamole- they’re usually a bit sweeter and more flavorful than reg. tomtoes. just mush up some avacados and add chopped up cherry tomatoes, green onion, cilantro, salt, a little diced jalapeno, and a small squirt of lime juice. sometimes i cheat and stir a couple of spoonfuls of store-bought salsa and then just add the diced cherry tomato.
Kris
January 29, 2004 — 2:45 pm
Ooh, guac is good. The Snook’s a fan. I’ve always been pretty ambivalent about it (doesn’t hold a candle to copious amounts of sour cream, IMHO), but anything to stem the tide of tomatoes is all right by me! 🙂
Ron
January 29, 2004 — 3:20 pm
When I left the recipe with my comment, I was wondering if potatoes were still off the menu at Chez Web-Goddess. I think the same recipe with pumpkin would be a bit too sweet for me, but let me know how it turns out. I think the same recipe with butternut squash sounds fantastic, though. I’ll have to try that next year. How many cherry tomato plants did you grow? We only grew two plants but we had must have picked 6 or 8 quarts of tomotoes from them.
amy
January 29, 2004 — 3:33 pm
I have a recipe for tomato sorbet, but it requires an ice cream maker. (you use the sorbet on fish, it’s really yummy!)
Kris
January 29, 2004 — 4:03 pm
We grew EIGHT plants. We’re idiots. We had no idea how much tomatoes that would mean.
In terms of pumpkin, over here “pumpkin” pretty much means squash. In fact, they even say “butternut pumpkin”. We eat these great green ones with bright orange flesh called “Jap pumpkins”. Very yummy. I always have fun explaining to Aussies that for Americans, pumpkin pretty much only refers to the orange jack-o-lantern ones, and nobody really eats those anyway.
Okay, and Amy… Tomato sorbet that you eat on FISH? Puke! I think that’s what they eat in hell. (And you have a lotta nerve giving me an image like that a mere two days after giving me the worst hangover of the year!) 🙂
amy
January 29, 2004 — 5:52 pm
it’s really really good! it is from Tetsuya’s cookbook. It’s not for really fish, it’s for scallops. mmmm.
And hey, Snook needed the bottles, didn’t he?
stefanie
August 11, 2004 — 11:52 pm
ok, just had to report, this is the first time I’ve stumbled upon you as a result of a google search! I wanted to confirm that coriander & cilantro were the same, typed in “cilantro’same as’ coriander”… and voila — you came up 4th, just after Epicurious… wow, I’m impressed!