Tag: easy

Kabocha Squash Simmered in Dashi, Soy Sauce, and Mirin

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“If you buy that,” Tomoko said, “I’ll tell you how to cook it.”

Sold! And suddenly I was the proud owner of a cute little kabocha squash, eagerly awaiting directions from my Asian food-guru.

It’s a toss-up really as to which “hyper-detailed” step was my favorite one from Tomoko. Either, “Okay. Dashi, soy, salt, sugar.” Or, “If it’s not yummy enough, add some mirin.”

No, wait . . . the winner for “clearest” and “most concise” instruction is: “I don’t know why, but we just kind of (insert miming the act of scraping squash skin here).”

But you know what? Sometimes that’s how you learn recipes and new cooking techniques. Some of the best cooks I know are instinctive cooks who rely on past experience, sounds, smells, and what they see to guide them more than a written recipe.

I don’t know if this is what Tomoko meant or intended for me to cook, but the result was unbelievably delicious. Probably the best thing that I have made in months. I actually loved it so much, I ate an entire pumpkin in one sitting by myself. And when there were only a few pieces left, I actually wished that I had another one. It was that good.

When I texted her later, she said, “Hee hee! Yeah, it’s one of those recipes that is so simple, no one ever explains it.”

That may be true, but I am going to try for you.

Ingredients:

4 cups of water

1 largish piece of kombu

1/2 cup of dried bonito flakes

1 small kabocha squash

Japanese soy sauce

Salt

Sugar

Mirin

How to prepare:

1. First, you need to make your dashi. Dashi is incredibly easy to make and consists of basically 3 ingredients: kombu (dried kelp or seaweed), dried bonito flakes, and water. For more details, I defer to La Fuji Mama, who completely demystified the whole thing for me.

Basically you take a largish piece of kombu and rehydrate it in a medium sauce pan with 4 cups of water. Let the kombu soak for about 15 minutes. Bring the water to a boil, and right when it starts to boil, remove the pan from the heat and add about half a cup of dried bonito flakes. After 3 or 4 minutes, remove the kombu and strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve, or a coffee filter.

Voilà! You have made dashi!

2. Cut your kabocha squash in half. Scoop out the seeds. Cut each half into quarters. Using a paring knife, scrape the skin of the squash. You don’t want to remove the skin, but just clean up the outer surface. That way, your squash will cook more evenly. Cut the squash into 1-inch pieces.

3. In a large Dutch oven or casserole, try to spread the squash pieces out in a single-layer skin-side down. If that isn’t possible (it wasn’t for me), just make sure that the squash isn’t too crowded in the pot.

4. Sprinkle the squash with salt, sugar, soy sauce, and mirin. Fill the pot with just enough dashi to barely cover. Bring the liquid to a simmer, and continue to cook the squash until the pieces are easily pierced with a knife.

5. Using a slotted spoon, gently remove the squash from the cooking liquid, and enjoy your delicious kabocha.

The Daring Kitchen November Cooks’ Challenge: Chinese Tea Eggs

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About a month or so ago, I heard about the Daring Kitchen from another blogger who writes Live the London Life. The basic premise is this: The Daring Kitchen comprises of two groups, The Daring Bakers and the The Daring Cooks. You can sign up for one or both (I am just signed up for The Daring Cooks). Once you sign up, you will be tasked with cooking one recipe each month from what the monthly host has selected as the cooking or baking challenges. Everyone posts their dishes on their blogs on the same day (also known as the reveal day).

So today is the big reveal day for my first challenge: Cooking with Tea.

I’ve never cooked with tea before, with the exception of maybe duck breast a long, long time ago. So long ago that it doesn’t count anymore. Of the three dishes I could have chosen from, I perhaps chose the easiest (the other options were a green tea noodle soup, and a beef and sweet potato stew made with rooibos).

But hey, I made the decision right after I whacked into my thumb with that folding knife!

And sometimes the simplest recipes are the most challenging . . . or at least that is what I am telling myself 😉

So here are the blog-checking lines: 

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Ingredients:

6 eggs

2 tablespoons of loose black tea, or four tea bags (I used loose Keemun)

2 teaspoons of Chinese Five-Spice Powder

1 tablespoon of coarse salt

Sesame seeds for garnish

How to prepare:
(taken from The Daring Cooks’ November Challenge PDF)

1. In a large enough pot to avoid overcrowding, cover the eggs with cold water. Bring to a boil over medium heat and simmer for twelve minutes.

2. Remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and keep the cooking water.

3. With a spoon, tap the eggs all over until they are covered with small cracks. This can also be done by tapping and rolling the eggs very gently on the counter.

4. Return the eggs to the pan and add the tea leaves or bags, Chinese five spice powder, and salt. Cover the pan.

5. Heat gently and simmer, covered, for one hour.

6. Remove the pan from the heat and let the eggs cool down in the liquid for 30 minutes.

7. Remove the eggs from the liquid. Peel one egg to check how dark it is; the others can be returned to the liquid if you wish to have the web-like pattern darker. Allow the eggs to cool fully.

8. To serve, peel and slice the eggs in halves or quarters. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Tiny Potatoes Roasted in Parchment Paper with Garlic, Rosemary and Thyme

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Last week I saw the cutest little potatoes at the Greenmarket. About the size of thumbnail each, they looked absolutely adorable — and I knew exactly how I wanted to cook them.

I wanted to roast them. In parchment paper.

I cannot express to you how essential a roll of parchment paper is in my kitchen. I use sheets of it all the time. They’re non-stick. They make clean-up a breeze. They line my sheet pans when I roast vegetables. They keep my pie weights away from my delicate tart crusts when I par-bake them.

And they make it possible to cook things en papillote, which is a fancy French way of saying that you cook your food in an “envelope” that you have made out of parchment paper.

Parchment paper is amazing. It lets just enough moisture release while cooking so that your food comes out perfectly moist and juicy, but not water-logged. Potatoes done in this way are crispy on the outside, and meltingly tender on the inside. They are practically like little orbs of confit.

It’s so simple to do, yet looks so impressive — like a beautiful present.

And who doesn’t like presents?

Ingredients:

About 1/2 pound of tiny potatoes per 12 x 16-inch sheet of parchment paper

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Pepper

1 sprig of rosemary

A few sprigs of thyme

1 fat clove of garlic, lightly smashed but still in its papery skin

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 400°.

2. Thoroughly wash and dry your potatoes. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and drizzle them with olive oil. Sprinkle them liberally with salt and freshly ground black pepper. With your hands, toss the potatoes together so that they are evenly coated with the oil and the seasonings.

3. Take a large sheet of parchment paper (about 12 x 16 inches) and fold it in half width-wise. Lay it out on a baking sheet. Turn the potatoes out onto one half of the paper. Arrange them in a single layer. Add the garlic clove to the potatoes, and lay the sprigs of rosemary and thyme on top. Fold the other half of the paper on top of the potatoes.

4. Beginning at bottom corner of one side, fold over or crimp the edges of the parchment paper as you move from one side to the other until you have a half-moon shape.

Now, traditionally you’re supposed to fold your parchment paper in half, and trim it into a heart shape (just like you did for Valentine’s Day back in school) before stuffing and crimping. However, I don’t know if this does anything other than make your half-moon a prettier shape. Maybe it also gets rid of excess parchment paper if you have cut off a sheet that is too big.

In any case, you can do it if you want to, but it’s not necessary.

To help you visualize crimping, here is a video with Chef Paul Prudhomme, who will pronounce en papillote any dang way he pleases.

5. Roast the potatoes for 45 minutes. Your kitchen will fill with the heavenly smell of rosemary, garlic, and thyme. Remove the potatoes from the oven. The parchment parcel will be all puffed up from the steam inside. Let the parcel sit for about 5 minutes before carefully (watch out!) using a pair of scissors to slit it open. Remove the garlic, thyme, and rosemary, and serve the potatoes straight from the paper.

Balsamic-Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

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This is a neat little twist on butternut squash soup. Roasting the squash concentrates its flavor. Roasting it in a buttery syrup accented with balsamic vinegar adds a little bit of bite, and a whole lot of interest.

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash, seeded, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

1 tablespoon of butter

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 packed tablespoon of dark brown sugar

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons of salt

1 pinch of cayenne pepper

1 large shallot, minced

Olive oil

1 Gala apple, cored, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces

3 cups of chicken stock

1 cup of apple cider

3 tablespoons of maple syrup

1/3 cup of heavy cream

Salt

crème fraîche to serve

Special equipment:

A hand-held immersion blender

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 400°.

2. In a small saucepan, heat the butter and the olive oil together over very gentle heat. When the butter has melted, add the brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, cayenne pepper and salt. Stir everything together until everything is well-incorporated. Continue to heat everything for a minute or two more. The mixture will become syrupy, and the harshness of the vinegar will soften a little bit.

3. In a large bowl, toss the butternut squash and the butter mixture together. Spread the squash out evenly on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Roast the squash until it is tender, about 15-20 minutes. When the squash is done, transfer it from the hot pan to a bowl.

4. Heat some olive oil in a large casserole or Dutch oven over medium heat. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the shallots. Sauté them until they begin to soften. Add the apples to the shallots, and heat them together for about a minute or two. Add the butternut squash, and stir everything together. Add the chicken stock and the apple cider. Let everything simmer for about 20 minutes, skimming any foam that rises to the surface.

5. When the apples are tender, blend everything together with an immersion blender until smooth. Adjust the seasoning. Add the maple syrup and heavy cream. Stir everything together, and adjust the seasoning for a final time. Garnish with a dollop of crème fraîche and serve.

Grilled Delmonico with Mashed Potatoes and Sautéed Spinach

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After about 3 weeks of kitchen hiatus, it feels so good to be back to cooking again.

I busted out my grill pan — which had been languishing in the back of my cabinets for years. Really years.

Why haven’t I used it? I don’t know. It was kind of an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of thing. Pretty ironic, actually, given all the meat in my freezer.

But now that it is out, I am putting it to good use!

Delmonico steaks are also known as boneless rib-eye steaks. The cut famously refers to Delmonico’s Restaurant in NYC, where the cut originated around 1830 as the house steak. In terms of tenderness, it is like a filet mignon, however a proper Delmonico is more marbled, and juicier as a result.

My grill pan has allowed me to get back in touch with grill marks, or cross-hatching.

Cross-hatching, also fancily know as quadrillage, is created by positioning your steak on the grill at roughly the 10 o’clock position, and then rotating it to the 2 o’clock position after about one or two minutes, depending on the thickness of your steak.

To help visualize this, here is the fabulous David Leite from Leite’s Culinaria. Click here for the video.

Some great tips for successful steak + how to use a stove top grill pan:

1. Take your meat out of the fridge about half an hour before you want to cook it. You want the steak to come up to room temperature before grilling so that it cooks evenly. This doesn’t mean that your steak should be warm; it should be cool to touch, but not fridge temperature.

2. Season your steaks well. Salt makes flavor pop.

3. Get the grill hot, man. Once the meat is on the grill, you can turn down the heat if it seems like it is cooking too fast.

Perhaps one reason why I stopped using my grill pan was that every time that I cooked on it, my fire alarm went off and the apartment was filled with smoke. Recently, I realized that I just never learned how to use it properly. Now, it hardly makes any mess and a bare minimum of smoke, even when brushed with olive oil. And it still tastes like grilled food. Not outdoor grilled food, but I accept the limitations of a grill pan.

The keys to not simulating a house fire? Make sure your meat is not fridge temperature when you put it on the grill. Brush your cast-iron pan (they shouldn’t even sell non-stick grill pans; once cast-iron is properly seasoned, it is effectively non-stick) lightly with oil. Too much oil = too much burning oil. Heat your pan until it is hot. Once the pan starts to smoke, put your meat on. I never leave the temperature as high as it was to heat the pan in the first place. I generally lower the heat to medium, particularly for thicker cuts because I want the interior to cook before the outside burns. That was the biggest lesson that I learned about using a stove-top grill pan: it shouldn’t be smokin’ hot for the entire duration of cooking. For more tips, click here.

4. Resist the urge to mess with the steak once it’s on the grill before it is ready to turn. You can monitor the doneness by touching the top of the steak with your finger or a pair of tongs. You don’t actually need a thermometer to do this. Make a really tight fist. Now with your other hand poke the fleshy part of your fist between your index finger and your thumb. That bouncy hard resistance that you feel is what a super well-done steak would feel like if you poked it. Open your hand and make a super loose fist. Touch the same part. That’s what really, really rare feels like. Now, aim for somewhere in-between.

5. Let it rest a little bit before serving.

Irish Bacon and Cabbage Soup

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From the archives!

As I am currently a little out-of-commission, I decided to revisit some meals that I have made in the recent past, but haven’t blogged about yet.

This soup is one of them. A few months ago, I got some Irish bacon in my CSA. What is the difference between Irish bacon and regular ol’ streaky bacon? Well, according to Wikipedia — the be-all, end-all arbiter of everything — regular bacon is made from pork belly (which is why it’s so nice and streaked with fat). Irish bacon, on the other hand, is made from center-cut pork loin — which is along the backside of the pig. Because this kind of bacon is not from the belly, it tends to be much leaner. There is usually a narrow band of fat that rings the edge, but each slice is generally more pork than fat. Similar to Canadian bacon, Irish bacon isn’t supposed to get crispy like belly bacon. It still has incredible flavor though, and holds up well to things like thick soups and stews. This recipe, adapted from Epicurious, makes a warm, wonderful, and traditional stick-it-to-your ribs kind of meal. Perfect for the rain and newly arrived cold weather. Ingredients: 1 pound of sliced Irish bacon 3 tablespoons of butter 1 medium onion, chopped 2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced 1 quart of chicken stock 2 bay leaves 1/2 of a small head of Savoy cabbage, cored and thinly sliced Salt and pepper Special equipment: 1 hand-held immersion blender How to prepare: 1. Place the bacon in a medium saucepan, and cover it with about two inches of cold water. Bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat so that the water is at an even simmer, skimming any foam that rises to the surface. Cook the bacon for about 7 minutes. Drain the bacon, and when it is cool enough to handle, cut it width-wise into 1/2-inch strips. 2. In a large casserole, melt the butter over moderate heat. When the butter begins to bubble, add the chopped onions. Sauté the onions, stirring often, until they begin to soften and turn slightly translucent. Add the potatoes to the onions, and sauté everything together for about 2-3 minutes more. Add the stock and the bay leaves. Adjust the seasoning, and bring everything to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer everything together until the potatoes are soft and tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. 3. When the potatoes are ready, add the cabbage to the pot. Simmer the cabbage until it is soft too, about 5 minutes. Fish out the bay leaves and discard them. Don’t forget . . . like I did! 4. Once you find and remove the bay leaves, blend the soup together until it is smooth. If the soup is really thick, you may want to add some water to it to thin it out a little. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use a regular blender or a food processor, working in batches if necessary. Once the soup is puréed, stir in the bacon. Adjust the seasoning for the final time, and rewarm the soup if needed before serving.

Roasted Miso-Curry Delicata Squash with Pork

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Yet another recipe adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day. This dish is a marvelous mixture of flavors and textures. It also shows off some of the first of Fall’s bounty: the gorgeous Delicata squash.

Oblong and streaked with golden yellow, forest green, and ivory, Delicata squash have a thin and delectable skin that does not need to be peeled. It cooks quickly, and yields a sweet, pure taste.

Though Swanson’s original recipe, like all of her recipes, is vegetarian, I find that the addition of thinly sliced pork goes well with the miso-curry sauce.

Ingredients:

A scant 1/4 cup of white miso

A scant 1 tablespoon of Thai red curry paste

Olive oil

1 Delicata squash

About 1 pound of small red potatoes, quartered or cut into even chunks

1 boneless pork chop (about 1/2 a pound), cut into 1/4 inch-thick slices

1-2 handfuls of shelled pepitas

Half a bunch of roughly chopped lacinato kale, stems removed

2/3 cup cilantro, roughly chopped

The juice of 1 limes (2 if the limes are small)

How to prepare:

1. Heat your oven to 400°.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the white miso, the red Thai curry paste, and about a 1/4 cup of olive oil with a fork. Add more oil to loosen up the mixture if it seems too thick.

3. Trim both ends of the Delicata squash. Cut it in half lengthwise. Scoop out all of the seeds and discard them. Cut each half into 1/2-inch half moons.

4. In a medium bowl, combine the squash and the potatoes with about half of the miso-curry mixture. Toss the vegetables together with your hands until they are evenly coated. Turn the vegetables out onto a parchment paper-lined rimmed baking sheet. Spread them out in a single layer, and bake them for about 20 minutes.

5. In a small bowl, toss the pork with half of the remaining sauce. After the potatoes and the squash have roasted for about 20 minutes, evenly scatter the pork and the pepitas over the tops of them. Continue to roast everything until the pork is cooked and the potatoes are done, about 15 minutes more.

6. In a large bowl, combine the kale, the cilantro, the remaining miso-curry, and the lime juice. Add the roasted pork and vegetables to them. Toss everything gently together. Serve and enjoy.

Ricotta-Topped Rigatoni with Tomato, Sausage, and Kale Sauce

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I have a new love: Jersey Farms Crushed Tomatoes.

I can eat them straight out of the can. Seriously. They just taste so rich and, well, tomatoey.

All of the tomatoes come from just 6 cooperative farms in New Jersey. Once picked, they are canned within 24 hours with no added water or preservatives, only a little salt. The crushed tomatoes are thick, but not too thick. They are perfect. Just perfect. You almost don’t need any seasoning at all. You practically don’t even need to cook them.

But if you do cook with them, whoa golly, are you in for a treat. These tomatoes make the best pizza sauce. The best anything, really.

Using some mild beef sausage from my CSA, I made a quick sauce with just garlic, olive oil, and some extra kale I had in the fridge. After rolling some al dente rigatoni in it for a couple of minutes, I topped everything with a sloppy spoonful of creamy, locally-made ricotta. A little drizzle of olive oil to add an extra bit of luster.

And I tell you, it was delicious.

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 pound mild Italian beef sausage, casings removed

Red pepper flakes to taste

1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes (preferably Jersey Farms Crushed Tomatoes)

2 cups of kale, chopped with the ribs removed

Salt and pepper

1 pound of rigatoni

Whole milk ricotta cheese

More olive oil for drizzling

How to prepare:

1. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large casserole, or Dutch oven. When the oil begins to shimmer, sauté the garlic in it until it is fragrant. The garlic should just begin to have a little bit of color, but not too much. Crumble the sausage into the oil, and cook it until it is evenly browned (be sure to break up larger pieces of sausage with the edge of your spoon as you cook). Add as many red pepper flakes as you like. Toss the red pepper flakes with the browned sausage for about a minute before adding the tomatoes.

2. Carefully pour in the crushed tomatoes. If the sauce seems too thick to you, you can add some water to thin it out a little bit. Stir everything together. Lower the heat, and let the sauce simmer for about 15-20 minutes before adding the kale.

3. In the meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil. When the water begins boiling, add the pasta and cook it until it is al dente.

4. Let the kale wilt in the sauce while the pasta cooks. Adjust the seasoning.

5. When the pasta is done, drain it well. You will add about a ladleful of sauce per 1/4 pound of pasta. Toss everything together, and then divide the pasta into warmed bowls.

6. Top each serving of pasta with a nice, fat dollop of ricotta cheese. Drizzle some olive oil on top of everything. Before eating, be sure to mix the ricotta into the pasta with your fork!

Pan-Seared New York Strip Steak with Butter and Soy Sauce

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Is there Tom Colicchio backlash? The Top Chef judge is everywhere these days, opening and closing Crafts across the country, and thoroughly saturating the New York market with ‘wichcraft sandwiches.

You kind of want to hate him, or in the very least wonder sneeringly if he is actually ever in a kitchen these days. In any case, Sifty, in his recent re-review for the New York Times, did re-bestow 3 stars on Craft . . . so does that mean it never lost them after over a decade of dining?

Possible backlash aside, I have to admit that I love Colicchio’s book Craft of Cooking: Notes and Recipes from a Restaurant Kitchen. The book is not for the faint of heart. He does not give you “easy” recipes. They are dead simple, but they are very precise and suffer a little bit from Thomas Keller Syndrome, meaning that to execute some of them you feel the pressure to raise and snuggle a piglet from birth, feeding it only milk proteins and ambrosia until it reaches market weight.

Many times, I go over the recipes and think about how I can do it faster.

Not better, but lazier.

I inevitably find, though, that Colicchio’s way is the best way.

One of my favorite ways to prepare steak is how they did it at Craftsteak: in a hot pan continually bathed in butter to finish.

I also love my friend Tomoko’s suggestion to add a hefty splash of soy sauce to the end. The soy and butter marry beautifully together, giving a lusciously heady hit of umami to an already rich grass-fed steak.

Colicchio gave away his steak technique in an Esquire magazine article a while back, so this is just to summarize:

You will need:

A cast-iron skillet

Steak, a nice thick cut

Salt and pepper

About a tablespoon of canola oil

About 3 tablespoons of butter

Good soy sauce

How to prepare: 

1. For all successful steaks, make sure your meat is about room temperature before cooking. Take it out of the fridge about an hour before you want to eat it.

2. Season the steak heavily with salt and pepper on both sides.

3. Heat the canola oil in the cast-iron skillet over high heat. When the oil is almost smoking, sear the meat on both sides until it is brown and crusty. Please note that the steak will be seared, but it will NOT be done.

This is important because . . .

4 . . . after you have seared both sides, reduce the heat to medium-low. Let the pan cool a bit before adding the butter (you don’t want the butter to sizzle and burn on contact). Using a spoon, continually baste the steak with butter, flipping it halfway through to ensure even cooking.

5. Continue basting until it is not quite at the level of doneness that you desire. Right before that point, add a good, hefty splash of soy sauce to the pan. Keep basting the steak in the butter and soy until it is done. Alternatively, I guess you could add the butter and soy at the same time.

Ideally, a medium-rare steak will have a internal temperature of about 135°, but you can also gauge the doneness by touching its surface.

You don’t actually need a thermometer to do this. Make a really tight fist. Now with your other hand poke the fleshy part of your fist between your index finger and your thumb. That bouncy hard resistance that you feel is what a super well-done steak would feel like if you poked it. Open your hand and make a super loose fist. Touch the same part. That’s what really, really rare feels like. Now, aim for somewhere in-between.

6. Let the steak rest for a few minutes before serving.

Black Bean Salad with Oven-Roasted Tomatoes, Corn, Almonds, and Lemon Zest

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This is another great recipe adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day. Swanson, whose blog 101 Cookbooks is an amazing source of ideas and inspiration, makes food that is healthy, wholesome, a little quirky, always delicious, and never preachy.

The great thing about her vegetarian recipes is how amenable they are to your tastes. You can substitute chicken for tofu, or add shrimp, or beef, or pork, and the dishes will still be great.

For this recipe, I added local corn and the farfalle. Since Hurricane Irene, our farmers need all the help we can give them. Though NYC was mostly spared, many of the farmers and growers who bring the literal fruits of their labor every week to us were not. Almost no farm was left untouched by the flooding.

Support local and please make a donation here.

Ingredients:

1 pint of Sun Gold tomatoes (cherry or grape tomatoes work too), halved

Salt and pepper

Granulated cane sugar

Olive oil

3/4 cup of raw almonds, halved width-wise

1 cup of corn kernels (about two ears)

2 15-ounce cans of black beans, rinsed and drained

1/3 pound of farfalle, prepared according to package directions

The grated zest of one lemon

The juice of one lemon

1/4 pound of French feta, crumbled

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°.

2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread the tomato halves over the sheet and sprinkle them liberally with salt and sugar. Drizzle the halves with olive oil. Toss everything together so that the tomatoes are evenly coated in the oil, salt, and sugar. Arrange the tomatoes cut-side up. Roast them until they have shrunken, and have begun to caramelize around their edges, about 45 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and when they are cool, scrape them into a large bowl along with all their caramelized juices.

3. Meanwhile, heat the almonds in a single layer in a large cast-iron skillet set over medium heat. Toss them around every couple of minutes until they are fragrant and toasty. Be sure to monitor the nuts closely; they can burn in a minute! When the almond halves are toasted, add them to the same large bowl as the tomatoes.

4. Wipe out the skillet and add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Heat the pan over medium-high heat until the oil begins to shimmer. Add the corn, and toss the kernels in the hot oil until they begin to brown. Add the corn to the same large bowl as the almonds and tomatoes.

5. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and drizzle everything with olive oil. Toss everything together well. Adjust the seasoning and serve.