Last week’s dish came from Greece, so delicious I’ve decided to linger.
Pulling up a raffia chair to the taverna table, to watch the slow putter and scrolling wake of a boat criss-crossing crystalline blue. How could a week be enough…..
So it’s another order for feta, tomatoes and oregano, this time joined by pistachio, mint, parsley, rice and red chilli.
Taken from Jamie Does… is this recipe for Simple Stuffed Veg. Jamie (Oliver) cooks up a mix of beef tomatoes and red & yellow peppers. I kept it – true love style – to just tomatoes.
A couple of things to note about this recipe:
- It requires pistachios to be shelled – something I thought I enjoyed – turns out I do, but only when alternating shelled nut with swig of cold beer. So I’ve reduced the recipe to quantities which happily serve 2 for lunch. This pitches shelling to eating time at a better ratio.
- It requires the insides of the tomatoes to be scooped out and discarded….. which goes against the (long) grain. However having now eaten the end result – I’d say their disembowelling was not in vain.
Ingredients:
4 large tomatoes – tops sliced off (but popped back on so hold on to them)
½ finely chopped onion
1 clove finely chopped garlic
25g shelled pistachios
50g long-grain rice
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
¼ red chilli, deseeded, finely chopped
300ml vegetable stock
50g crumbled feta
Small handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Small handful of fresh mint, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of tomato puree
Olive oil/butter
Salt & pepper
- Scoop out the tomato insides (by the 3rd this will be a profoundly satisfying task). Place in a roasting tin.
- Dry fry the pistachios. (Jamie’s advice: they’re done when they start to smell fantastic – which they do – but in case you’re in olfactory overload from onion chopping make sure you remove from the heat before they start to blacken.) Transfer them to a pestle and mortar and give them a bit of going over (not too much, think rubble not dust).
- Fry the chopped onion and garlic in olive oil and butter. Cook till soft (about 10 minutes).
- Add the rice, oregano, chilli, 50ml of stock, salt & pepper. Stir for about 8 minutes, admiring all the while how pretty it looks, flecked with chilli red.
- Remove from heat and stir in the prepared feta, parsley, mint and pistachios.
- Now fill the tomatoes with the mixture. Put the tops back on and drizzle with olive oil. Add the tomato puree to the remaining stock and pour it around the tomatoes.
- Cover the roasting tin tightly with tin foil and put in a 200C/180C fan/400F/gas 6 oven. After 1 hour I checked, and the rice was cooked so all was done .
Serve – you are about to enjoy comforting rice, rich tangy feta, herb highs and chilli kicks…all encased in silken tomatoey goodness.
