You Say Tomato...

...and so do I. I'll start this entry off by saying I almost didn't cook tonight. On our way home from our away game last night we stopped at Arby's and I went for that side of fries with my otherwise somewhat healthy meal (let me mention that it has been a LONG time since I have eaten fast food fries), and I was still feeling those fries today. I don't think I will ever have a random fast food craving again because of the feeling those fries gave me. It probably doesn't help that I haven't eaten all that well the past two days. Time to get back on the wagon!

Long story short, I did in fact cook tonight just for all my foodie followers (the things I do for you all) and I'm glad I did. Tonight was another stuffed vegetable from the "Everyday Contorni" chapter, Stuffed Tomatoes! I've had stuffed mushrooms, stuffed banana peppers (mmmmm), but never a stuffed tomato. But honestly, I don't think you could possibly go wrong with a tomato stuffed with something. Unless that something was tuna.

First things first, I had to cook some couscous. The recipe says to use arborio rice, however, being the poor college student that I am and the difference between couscous and rice being small, I didn't feel bad about the substitution. I cooked the couscous in some salted water which didn't take long, then set it aside.

Next, I had to cut the top off the tomatoes and hollow them out. Easy, right? No, not really. I cut off the tops then dug in with my spoon and found it to be almost as difficult as trying to hollow out a pumpkin. The difference is that a pumpkin is much more sturdy and thick and you can cut a bigger hole in the top. A tomato is smaller and it's easy to go right through its walls. The first one I hollowed out ended up having a small hole in the bottom, and then I got the hang of it on the second one. Too bad I only made two tomatoes.

As the toaster oven heated, I tossed the pulp from the tomatoes with my couscous along with some garlic, basil, parsley, salt and pepper. I also stirred in a bit of Parmesan cheese. After this was all mixed to my liking, I filled each tomato with the mixture, heaping it a bit on top (Giada's rules). I then placed the tops of the tomatoes on top of this, and baked them for about 20 minutes.

I had a good amount of couscous left over so I decided to eat it as my tomatoes cooked. Turns out this was just as good on its own (aside from biting into some raw garlic. Luckily I don't plan on socializing outside of my apartment tonight. And maybe this will ward off any Edward Cullen wannabes. Did I mention there's a creepy cardboard cutout of him in a window on the top floor? I digress). I decided I needed to create a meal out of this mixture at another time when I was feeling more creative.

The picture above puts my tomatoes side-by-side with the picture in Everyday Italian. I don't think Giada covered her tomatoes with the tops when she cooked them because hers are nice and browned on top. She also probably cooked hers in an actual oven, not a toaster oven. But she also has a state-of-the-art fully loaded kitchen in Malibu, and I do not.

Despite all of that, the tomatoes were delicious, and messy. I wasn't sure how to dig into them, so I opted for a fork rather than using my hands like the barbarian I tend to be in the privacy of my own room. The tomatoes were soo juicy and of course, the basil enhanced their flavor. Giada recommends serving these to guests I'm assuming in some sort of party setting, but I think they may be a little messy for such an occasion. I recommend them as a side dish to a meat entree, personally.

Sunday will be my next day to cook when I try out another dessert and complete my third cycle through the book! Holy cow times flies!! Check back then for more updates :)

P.S. Congratulations to the cross-marketing campaign between Dove and Wal-Mart. Your "Real Beauty" campaign has been stuck in my head for the past week (you know, the one to the tune of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?"). Luckily, I refuse to fall for your advertising antics and will NOT be going to Wal-Mart to stock up on Dove beauty supplies. Take that Man!

Another Open Letter to Shrimp:

Dear Shrimp,

You are wonderful, fantastic, divine, and a plethora of other adjectives that have yet to be invented. I'm sorry for my deep dislike for you all these years and hope you can forgive me. I see us having a beautiful relationship in the future.

P.S. I love you.

We've already been over my prior severe aversion to shrimp, but I'll elaborate a bit more. My mother used to order Shrimp Scampi at restaurants and make it at home back in the shrimp-less "dark ages." I always thought it smelled so good, but never thought to maybe try it because I was convinced I did NOT like shrimp.

Talk about a complete 180. I made Scampi on Couscous tonight, and I absolutely loved it!! Honestly, why didn't anyone force this down my throat years before?! This was so flavorful and awesome, I will begin to explain the process.

I started by heating a teaspoon of olive oil. I reduced the amount of oil for this recipe just to keep the WW points down and used the olive oil spray if necessary. Once the oil was heated, I added a clove of garlic, half a chopped onion, and half a chopped carrot (I pulled another Rachael Ray and saved the "nubber" of the carrot for snacking while cooking). You let this cook about five minutes until the onion has softened. To this, you add some canned tomatoes with their juices. The original recipe that makes four servings and calls for 16 ounces of chopped tomatoes, but for my single serving I used only about two to four ounces. With the tomatoes, I added two ounces of clam juice, a tablespoon of some cooking wine, and salt and pepper. This is brought to a boil and allowed to simmer for about ten minutes. The liquids should be reduced by then and the tomatoes should fall apart.

I let this cool, then put it in my handy dandy chopper to puree it. I added some water every so often as Giada said to do in order to get a broth-like consistency. Next came the tricky math part. In the original recipe, you now take two cups of the tomato mixture with one cup of water and bring it to a boil. I had to break this down to one serving and figured out I needed 1/2 cup of the tomato mixture and 1/4 cup of water. I brought this up to the kitchen to cook the couscous.

According to the recipe, you're supposed to bring all of this to a boil and then add the couscous (I only added 1/4 cup of couscous...the food so nice they named it twice). You then cover it and set it aside so the couscous can absorb all the liquid. I hadn't thought to bring my cookbook upstairs with me and did my best to try to memorize what needed to be done up there. Bad idea. I sort of left out the covering step and the couscous kind of attacked me. It started spitting at me like crazy over the heat, and it hurt! I turned off the burner and removed it from the heat so it would calm down. I tried to slowly bring it back to the heat, but knew it was too soon when it went right back to spitting. Eventually, I tamed the couscous and was able to keep it over the heat long enough to absorb all the liquid.

Next came the shrimp. Because my mother went grocery shopping with me this time, I bought the right kind of shrimp for the recipe. I actually bought RAW shrimp this time, but I had to peel it this time through (no pre-cooked, pre-peeled salad shrimp). First of all, when I opened the bag of shrimp, it had not completely defrosted yet and my hands were frozen as I attempted to peel the shrimp. I was on the phone with my dad at this point and he heard me freak out as I tried to peel them. Once I got rid of most of the ice, I saw that the shrimp still had legs! LEGS!! So help me God they had legs. My roommate found this humorous as did my father and she offered to help me out. I decided to be an adult, and just do it.

After running the shrimp under some hot water to get rid of the ice, I finished peeling them, legs and all, and moved on. Thank God they were the "EZ Peel" variety. If I had to pull off each leg by itself, I may have died a little. Once they were all peeled, I cooked the shrimp in another teaspoon of olive oil and another clove of garlic. I cooked them until they were a white/pink color and had my roommate check them out (she's quite the seafood aficionado) to make sure they were cooked all the way. To my surprise, they were!

I turned off the electric frying pan and once it had cooled, I added the juice of half a lemon, some fresh parsley, and some crushed red pepper.

I put the couscous on a plate and added the shrimp on top of them. I then heated the remaining tomato mixture and added that on top. I'm pretty sure if I were on Iron Chef, I would lose points on presentation on this one, but it really didn't matter once I start eating it. The sauce was very tomato-y and spicy and the lemon worked with the salt of the clam juice. The couscous held the sauce really well and the shrimp were absolutely amazing. I think it's safe to say that I am officially a shrimp fan.

I should mention that I looked this recipe up on FoodNetwork.com to get a ballpark figure as to how long it would take to make it. The recipe said about 30 minutes. This is very wrong when you have to work in two kitchens (one being a floor above the other), and when you're shrimp are frozen and full of legs. I'm not entirely sure how long it took me to make this, but it was longer than 30 minutes. It only took me about five minutes tops to eat it.

So that was recipe number two from the "Everyday Entrees" chapter and the "Everyday Grills and Sautes" section. Friday I will be moving on to the "Everyday Contorni" chapter again making another stuffed vegetable: Eggplant Rollatini!! Check back then for something that is sure to be delicious :)

P.S. Check out the beautiful rainbow outside our window!