“Marinara is basically crushed tomatoes…”

Do you leave the tomato seeds in?  Or take them out?...

I am not anything near a vegetarian, but these recipes look hella good.

I tend to leave the seeds in, out of sheer laziness; they make the sauce slightly more bitter, and for people with texture issues, biting into the occasional seed might be a problem.

Canned crushed tomatoes, Mike.

I’ve usually used tomato paste to make marinara (already de-seeded and cooked down, so it’s kind of like cheating), but I’ve thought it might be interesting to truly make it from scratch (starting with actual whole and uncooked Roma tomatoes and all).  One of these days I might get bold enough to try it.  And the idea of using honey as a sweetener is cool…

(This reminds me of the scene in The Godfather when one of the older gangsters is showing Michael Corleone - as I recall - how to make marinara while they’re getting ready for an attack by their rivals, which was interesting, amusing, and disturbing all at the same time.  Great movie…)

I’ve been doing a CSA this year as well. Ours is very greens-centric, to the point where I’ve got more lettuce than we can keep up with, but it’s good, because I knew I needed more greens in my diet, but we’ve thrown out very little overall. This week’s take is quite interesting, it included a fennel bulb, kale, scapes, and a napa cabbage. I’ve already made a really tasty tortellini soup out of the fennel and kale, and I don’t think I’ll make another roasted scape pizza although the first one was hella good—I might pickle these guys.

I like my tomato sauces pretty chunky. Tomatoes want to be liquid, so I just throw a can of whole peel tomatoes (slighlty drained) into the skillet and then mash at it with a wooden spoon while it cooks if I’m lazy, or do a little pre-chopping (mostly to get rid of the stem end) before I throw it in if I’m not. Either way, you’ll end up with marinara.

Whenever we make pizza or spaghetti, the boyfriend makes marinara from whole tomatoes. I think he takes the seeds out…

I generally don’t make sauce but rather tomato soup, but as said above, I leave the seeds in in both cases.

I take the seeds out when I’m making a sauce or a salsa from fresh tomatoes that I’ve pre-broiled. I put the whole tomatoes on a cookie sheet under the broiler until they’re blackened. The skin slides off and the seeds squeeze out. Otherwise, I leave them in.

Marinara - I use whole canned, rouighly cut in the can ( i used to do this just by turning and pushing the can lid in a couple of times, ‘cause I’m lazy).  I leave the seeds in when I use canned tomatoes and always include basil.  I hope my plum tomatoes (romas) survive long enough to give me plenty for sauce because from fresh really is so much better (though not worth the time for everyone, nor me always).  When I make from scratch, I remove the seeds and chop the tomatoes, though I’m not all that thorough and I leave big chunks.
My ground is very sandy, so that we used raised beds, mostly, but even with tehm we have a problem with blight and my plum tomatoes are already getting yellowed leaves.  anti-bug & fungus soap helps some.

Mighty, you can actually cook lettuce to mix it up.

Fennel is delicious on the grill. Slice, brush with olive oil, proceed. Extremely good with grilled or roasted beets & tossed with feta. Also great with pork chops for carnivores.

Yeah—it just seems weird. For me lettuce is supposed to be crisp and cool. I’ve heard lettuce soup is really good, but I’m just having a hard time getting over the concept.

Shitte looks good!

A long time ago I found, in Colman Andrews’ Catalan Cuisine (one of the first cookbooks I ever bought), an alternative to seeding and peeling tomatoes: cut them in half, clean out the seeds, and grate them down to the peel on a box grater. If you don’t need chunks, it works pretty well.

I tried grilling lettuce. Not that great. Cabbage is a lot better.

My dad’s tomato sauce process involves cutting out the stem end, dunking them in boiling water, slipping of the skins, and squeezing out as much of the seeds as come out easily.  I’ve never really seen it done any other way (apart from commercially canned tomatoes, which he did use when we lived in apartments), and he takes the whole thing very seriously, so his way is probably a good one.

The process actually starts with Step one: grow tomatoes, but good farmer’s market tomatoes are fine too.  Then after peeling/seeding, he puts most of them up in jars, and the actual sauce-making part happens later.

I’ve always wondered about grilled hearts of romaine, but I never seem to have hearts of romaine and a hot grill at the same time.

Oh, and while I’m still thinking of it: Claudia Roden, who’s long been one of my favorite cookbook writers, has a new book out, The Food of Spain. As she usually does, Roden throws in a lot of history and personal experience, and it’s a very nicely done, artsy book with obvious Phaidon influences.

If you like cocktails, I reviewed a book last year that I just gave a friend of mine as a birthday/wedding anniversary present—Speakeasy by Jason Kosmas and Dushan Zaric, which is a book of cocktails from a high-end cocktail bar in NYC called Employees Only. Great stuff, especially if you’re into classic cocktails, and even includes recipes for things like lime cordial and ginger beer.

/crawls back into the reviewer hole