Herbivoracious – Vegetarian Recipe Blog – Easy Vegetarian Recipes, Vegetarian Cookbook, Kosher Recipes, Meatless Recipes

Everything but the salt and olive oil was local on this one. Purple Viking potatoes and Purple Cherokee tomatoes from our backyard, chili de arbol from Alvarez farm, onions from the farmer's market, and crowned with eggs from my friend Dan's backyard chickens.

This was so good I made it for dinner two nights in …

Heirloom Tomato Tart

While we are on a roll with the pastry crusts, let's not forget the wonderful savory possibilities! For this one I used the exact same crust as last week's crostata, but baked it in a tart pan and filled it with a tasty aged provolone, Purple Cherokee and Sungold tomatoes and basil.

A …

Slow roasting tomatoes is alchemy. You put base metal in the oven and a few hours later, you've got gold. In this case, we had a pile of Early Girls that had my rapt attention throughout July as they hurtled towards ripeness. But when they arrived, they were… kind of bland. I knew the Purple …

Peach and Nectarine Crostata

Crostata: pie without the fuss. With a pie (or tart), it can be hard to make one as pretty as the picture I have in my mind, either cooling on Grandma's window sill or on the cover of Gourmet. Crostata takes my inability to make a precise pie and makes a rustic …

In the course of planning an Italian-oriented meal, it occurred to me that an arrabiata sauce has mostly the same ingredients that you would associate with a fresh Mexican-style salsa. Traditional arrabiata contains onion, garlic, tomatoes and fresh chili peppers. "Arrabiata" means "angry", referring to the heat from the chilis.

So it might be a bit …

Just goofing off… what happens if you glue a cherry tomato to a cherry? In this case a Sun Gold tomato and a Rainier cherry. I tried to use an LM Pectin solution and plastic wrap to create the bond, and it only worked so-so, it wasn't as seamless or strong as I would have …

We've got some beautiful end-of-summer produce right now, including items that we'll only see for a few short weeks. Zucchini blossoms seem to be at their peak. Hint: if you can buy them still attached to baby squash, they are often a better deal. They stay fresh longer, plus you gets some nice tiny squash …

Arancini. "Little oranges". Only these guys aren't quite so healthy as a piece of citrus. They are actually balls of risotto, stuffed with molten cheese, rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. What. Is. Not. To. Like?

Apparently in Sicily, where they originate, they can be filled with all sorts of things ranging from a slow-cooked …

The general idea for this lightly cooked zucchini carpaccio came from Paul Bertolli's magnificient Cooking by Hand, which I've reviewed here. I was looking for a something fresh and summery to balance out an Italian menu. It makes an attractive and refreshing alternative to a typical salad. Do it when you have perfect, fresh from …