Seoul Cooking: Tomato sauce with anchovies and celery leaves

Since we're on Easter break, I'm at home for the day and didn't feel like going grocery shopping. With the remaining can of stewed tomatoes left in our pantry, I decided to make some pasta sauce for lunch. At the last minute, I threw in some of the leaves of the celery that we bought around Daelim station this past Sunday before they went off.



The result might be considered the Italian-Chinese cousin of my gochu chamchi spaghetti sauce. The celery leaves and lemon, both last minute additions, melded with the other ingredients to create a vibrant, tangy sauce that offset the saltiness of the anchovies (and even though I did add salt to this, you certainly don't need to). "Zesty" would also be an apt (albeit overused) descriptor. It was not unlike the spaghetti puttanesca that I had at l'atelier doux in Gangnam earlier this week.


Tomato sauce with anchovies and celery leaves

1 can (28 oz) stewed tomatoes, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic
1 medium-large onion, chopped
1-2 Tbsp olive oil
2-3 small or one large celery stalk, minced
1 2-ounce can anchovy fillets, finely chopped - Being a salt fiend/anchovy lover, I used the whole can, but you could just as easily use half or three quarters of the can
3 generous handfuls celery leaves, chopped
lemon zest, 1/4 of a lemon
2-3 generous squeezes of fresh lemon juice
red pepper flakes (I used gochukaru), to taste
ground black pepper, to taste

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil. Then add the garlic and onion and cook until the onion is soft and the garlic starts to brown (I like that toasted flavor). Add the chopped celery during the last few minutes of cooking the garlic-onion mixture. Next, add the tomatoes, anchovy, hot pepper flakes and black pepper. Simmer until the flavors meld, about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, put a large saucepan of water on to boil. When the water boils, add your pasta of choice and cook until al dente; drain and set aside. If the sauce isn't finished yet, mix the cooked pasta with a little olive oil so it doesn't stick together. When the sauce has thickened, add the celery leaves, stir, and cook for a few minutes until the flavors start blending. Finally, stir in the lemon zest and juice. To serve, toss the pasta with the sauce until coated and top with remaining sauce. Makes approximately 4-5 servings (depending on how saucy you like your pasta).

***

I was so excited to share this that I started writing this entry before I was finished eating it!

how to deal with tomatoes that are past their prime

So as predicted I was unable to post all of last month and the first half of this one. It might be a little too late to post about NYC from August, but moving on...

The weather has finally started to get crisper and more appropriately fall-like, which puts me in a slow-cooking, stewing mood. So far, thinking back, I've made winter squash soup, split pea soup, squash and potato puree, and, a couple weeks back, we made Ethiopian food for the first time at home (misser wot and that mixed vegetable curry that I always forget the name of) using M's cookbook that he bought me for my birthday. I've also been eating a lot of Chinese wheat noodles mixed with oyster sauce and topped with a hard-cooked egg and stir-fried greens.

So this past Saturday at the Mount Pleasant Farmer's Market I purchased the $12 bucket-o'-tomatoes again (*that's about 8 pounds of tomatoes), thinking, (irrationally, in retrospect) that they would be just as deliciously ripe and fresh as the August tomatoes. I selected some romas and other assorted heirlooms. I got them home and discovered that they were a little tough, quickly going mealy, and one of them was smelling a bit off (read: moldy). I had to come up with a way to use them quickly or at least prepare them for later use. The solution came to me fairly quickly in the form of a broiled tomato sauce for huevos rancheros. I just preheated the broiler, rinsed and plopped about a dozen of them in a glass baking dish and slid it under the broiler for about 15 minutes, rotating with tongs as needed until they were uniformly wrinkly and black in places. After letting them cool for a bit I peeled them, mashed them with a pastry cutter, and then added them to a skillet of sauteed minced red onion and a couple of serranos that I've been keeping in the freezer. That simmered for a bit (20 minutes?) to thicken, and thus I managed to solve half of my tomato "problem" in one fell swoop.

We had a surprise visitor down from New York that day, so the three of us enjoyed our plates of eggs out in the deck in the sunshine, served with tortillas (heated directly over the gas flame for a few seconds), topped with tomato sauce and shredded sharp Cheddar, and leftover beans and rice.

I repeated the broiler trick with the remainder of the tomatoes the following night, and this time I remembered to core the tops out and make little "x" slits in the bottom of each tomato prior to broiling for easier peeling. Now they're sitting whole in the fridge mixed with basil leaves, ready to be turned into tomato sauce when I have a minute.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

On Saturday I bought approximately 8 pounds of heirloom tomatoes at the Mount Pleasant farmer's market for $12. This amounted to 17 tomatoes!

Hooray for tomatoes and their myriad uses! Here's what they've gone into so far:
~sliced and eaten with Gouda cheese and bread
~mixed with diced cucumbers for a quick salad
~gazpacho
~salsa fresca
~enchilada sauce!

That last entry was for a dish that we based on one from Diana Kennedy's Tortilla Book. Made them last night and served with black beans (made in the crockpot from dried beans) on the side. I'd been craving enchiladas since my Friday late night 'snack' at Haydee's. We basically filled corn tortillas with a mixture of sauteed grated zucchini, roasted, diced peppers (sweet and poblano) and mozzerella cheese, and topped them with the aforementioned enchilada sauce, made from tomatoes, garlic, white onion and chipotle chiles in adobo. The sauce was so sweet from the tomatoes, it didn't need any added sugar! We weren't entirely satisfied with the recipe (needs a little tweaking), so I'm not going to post it in its entirety, but I did make a double batch of the enchilada sauce and froze half of it for later when the bounty of tomatoes is no more.

Farmer's market record for this week:
17 tomatoes
5 summer squash of several varieties
3 cucumbers (my mistake; they proved to be old and tough. They looked nice enough!)
2 more young cucumbers from a different vendor
dozen eggs
1 bunch leeks
2 sweet red peppers (so good!)
3 gorgeous poblano chiles
6 peaches from Reid's orchard
1 package (about a pound) ground buffalo from Cibolla farms
1 package (about a pound) ground pork from Cibolla farms
garlic, two varieties: German white and Kazakhstan