13 July 2008

Catching Up

Another busy week with not so much time for cooking (or cleaning...). But today I made one of my favorite dishes, one that screams SUMMER: spicy roasted cherry tomatoes with marjoram.


This is adapted from an Epicurious recipe that calls for chicken breasts. I make it with chicken thighs but more often than not I'll just go with the tomatoes and garlic. Here's my version.

Spicy Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Marjoram

1 pint cherry (or grape) tomatoes
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp seasoned salt (I like the salle alla diavolo I got in CA last year)
1 tbsp fresh marjoram
4-5 garlic cloves

Preheat oven to 450. Mix all ingredients well, place in a shallow baking dish and roast for about 30 minutes or until tomatoes are blistering and splitting.

If I have hot pepper jelly I'll substitute that for the flakes. It's excellent warm or cold, add some feta and you have a great salad.

I used my Neuwave oven for these and they only took about 9 minutes to cook. The upside is that the kitchen stayed cool, the downside is the lack of crunchies that form on the bottom of the dish when it's roasted in the oven. That's a tradeoff I can handle in the summer.
...

While I was in Europe I missed my friend Tom's birthday slumber party so on Wednesday we went out for a belated celebration dinner at Cities Grille. This place has been open for quite a while and the food is consistently great.

We each had a salad to start and he went with the Chick-a-rizo: gulf shrimp sauteed with chicken breast, scallions, tomatoes, mushrooms and chorizon sausage in a white wine lemon herb sauce, served over cheesy tortalloni. Sorry the pic is a little fuzzy but it still looks delicious. Tom gave it a thumbs up. (He chose not to have the shrimp.)


I had my Cities Grille standard, the Blue Gouda. It's a beef tenderloin served on toasted cornbread and topped with a housemade bleu cheese, gouda cheese and sun dried tomato spread and comes with herb sautéed shrimp and mashed potatoes. The juice from the beef soaks into the cornbread and the cheese / tomato spread is spicy and sublime. I've always thought the shrimp were overkill on an already perfect dish but I'm not about to ask for them to be held!


Cities Grille
4511-C John Tyler Highway Williamsburg, VA 23185
757-564-3955

2 comments:

Cosmo said...

Ok, so even though I waited too long to pot some herbs for you (they're a little too leggy right now), I have TONS of marjoram--didn't even know you liked it! So I'm harvesting spicy oregano and marjoram for you for future dishes--let it dry in a baking sheet for a few days (while the aroma pervades your house), then when it's dry and crumbly, slide it off the stalks and crumble it when you need some. You can do the same with catnip (and I'll throw in some of that for Sammy). HOWEVER--catnip, marjoram, and oregano are all in the same faimly, so you should probably dry the herbs you plan to eat somewhere where Sammy won't roll in them . . .

LG said...

It'll be hard to break the news to Sammy that there's something in the apartment he can't roll in, but this'll be great - thanks!