I used to have a coworker who’d literally leave bags of produce from his garden on your desk. Leaving a big display with a polite sign in the break room was definitely not his style; he could not imagine anyone NOT wanting zucchinis of a size that required a saddle and bridle. And since he grew several different types of tomatoes, you had to have large samples of them all.
There were the sneaky people who’d run down to the dumpster on their way out; the rest of us just exchanged recipes.
So, here’s a quick and easy dinner idea if you become the object of a tomato-raiser’s affections: Tomato Pie. This is a real ‘taste of the season since it uses fresh herbs and straight off the vine cherry tomatoes.
You’ll need:
Pizza dough (whatever you got, including the ‘I just picked this up at the groceria on the way home’)
Several cloves of garlic (at least two huge ones)
Olive oil (the light stuff; not the green ‘extra virgin’)
Fresh basil (and oregano if you can get it, too), a big bunch, washed and the leaves taken off the stems, coarsely chopped
Big handful of cherry tomatoes – depending on the size of the pie and the size of the tomatoes, it could be a dozen, washed, quartered, with the little green bits at the stem ends removed.
Grated Romano cheese (or whatever mixture of dried grated Italian cheese in a can you’ve got in the fridge or on the shelf)
Pizza pie pan (this one is made in a 10″ cake pan for that deep dish look)
Prepare the garlic:
Peel the garlic cloves and mash, or put through a processor, or grate on a grater
Add several tablespoons of olive oil and mix until you have a creamy paste
Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F. Put a rack on the bottom rung of the oven.
Put your pizza dough on a greased pizza pan or whatever pan you are going to use. Spread it out.
Spread the garlic/oil paste all over the pizza dough (we’re doing this to seal the dough against the moisture of the cherry tomatoes)
Sprinkle the chopped herbs all over the garlic paste.
Sprinkle the chopped tomatoes on top of that; try to get them as even as you can and with the cut sides UP.
Sprinkle a good slug of the dried, grated Italian cheese on top of the tomatoes.
Put on the bottom rack of the oven for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, check the crust – it should be crispy. If not, leave in for another 5 minutes and check again. If you have to, use a spatula and lift it up and check how crispy it is on the bottom – if it’s crispy, it is DONE. Take it out, immediately cut into pieces and everyone dig in!!
