Spicy Tomato Salad – A Perfect Lunch

So, risking sounding overly simplistic, I wanted to share the recipe for what has been my favorite lunch over the past few months here in Buenos Aires. Most days, around lunch time, I go to the corner vegetable stand and buy a few ripe tomatoes, a small onion (red or white, currently I like red better), and one small spicy hot pepper. Today I bought a bunch of baby arugula too because it looked very tasty but that is not in my normal recipe.

Then I come home and wash and cut the tomatoes into irregular bite size chunks and put them in a bowl. Then I cut half the small onion (or 1/4 if it is larger) into little strips and put that in the bowl as well. Then I dice the hot pepper and add that too. Then I put a big pinch of salt (I prefer the large grain salt for this, it seems to give more flavor), some pepper, and then drizzle with olive oil and viola, you have a delicious salad. Make sure to get ripe and good quality tomatoes or your salad will be quite dull and boring and too acidic.

I usually eat it with a chunk of wheat bread or some kind of baghette if I have one, or even with crackers. If I have bread I add a little extra olive oil, and when it was really hot in summer I would add an ice cube to cool things down and make more sauce for dipping.

As usual I finish my food before thinking about writing a blog post about it soI will post up a photo of someone else’s tomato salad that looks more or less like mine (though I don’t put basil on mine). The recipe I use I learned when living in Sicily and we would often have this salad to accompany grilled meat. 

Enjoy!

 

Baked Ratatouille with Eggs

Hi Everyone, I know I forgot about my recipe blog for a while but hopefully I will re-motivate now. I made this rataouille the other day and it was very tasty and then the next day I re-baked it with eggs on top and that was even more delicious.

The recipe for ratatouille is quite simple, and although there are lots of complicated ways to make a ratatouille I took the simplest approach. I bought eggplants, zucchini’s, red peppers, red onion, very ripe tomatoes, and garlic. I actually added some potatoes sliced very thin at the last minute even though they are not traditionally in ratatouille. Then I cut all those things into small chunks and put them in a baking pot with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, thyme and fresh parsley. The tomatoes I didn’t cut but crushed with my hands over the veggies in the pot to make a kind of crushed tomato sauce. Then I baked it covered for a few hours on low heat until everything was cooked.

Then the next day I took the leftovers, still in the pot, and cracked 5 eggs over the top and put the whole thing back in the oven, this time covered in more parsley, salt, pepper, and basil, and some parmesan cheese on top (or whatever hard cheese you have). Cook it until the eggs set, not too long or they get hard, and then enjoy with a salad (some hot sauce on the eggs also adds a nice touch).

For a salad I used ripe pears and some baby arugula with a sweet balsamic which was perfect as a side dish. So many veggies, so delicious! After a week of traveling to Mendoza, Argentina and eating steak every night this was the perfect meal!

[These pictures are actually not mine but look just like what I cooked. I only realized after eating this tasty meal that it was blogworthy]