It’s tomato season!

When I signed up for the Growing Washington summer CSA, one of the items I was most looking forward to during the season was heirloom tomatoes. They’ve got so much more character and flavor than the waxy, generic grocery store breeds. And they’re so expensive at farmers markets that I generally can’t bring myself to buy them.

Well, tomatoes are coming in our boxes now! Sungold cherry tomatoes, big beef slicing tomatoes, Roma tomatoes… who knows what will be on the list next week. I haven’t been overwhelmed to the point where I’m making salsa yet, but I have definitely been eating a lot of tomatoes.

American Style
breakfast skillet – fingerling potatoes with eggs, spinach, onions, and Sungold cherry tomatoes

The nutty taste of fingerling potatoes is another thing I love. I’ve been spoiling myself for breakfast! I microwave the potatoes for about 3 minutes (fingerlings are small), then cut them up and cook them with everything else.

For a slightly healthier variation on some of these flavors, I’ve also done a spinach salad with the tomatoes, marcona almonds, French-fried onions, and Asian sesame dressing.

Asian Style
fan qie chao dan – stir-fried tomato and eggs

This is the dish that you never see in Chinese restaurants (in the States) but every Chinese person eats. I’m serious. Talk to anyone, particularly Chinese kids raised in the US, and they will begin to spout off their love for this incredible simple dish. Though I think my love for this was heightened by the fact that my parents would serve us mustard greens, bitter melon, and chicken livers otherwise.

I can’t make it quite like my mom does – in this picture, I got lazy and my tomato slices are too big, and everything isn’t saucy enough. But if you check the internet, everyone’s got their own recipe. Some people say peanut oil, some people add ketchup, some go with sugar, some go with salt. My rendition adds sugar to the eggs and salt, soy sauce, and mirin to the tomatoes.

Not Tomatoes

I have a lot of love for Uwajimaya, my local Japanese grocery store. The selection of sashimi-grade seafood is one of the reasons for that love. When I saw value-priced packages of wild sockeye salmon, I had to snatch them up.

I’ve been eating lunch at Kiku Sushi a lot recently because they’ve got interesting selections for lunch. One of my favorites was an albacore tataki donburi. So for my sashimi, I fashioned a lazy version of that, with sushi rice, soy sauce, and furikake (Japanese rice seasoning).

~N