Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Tomatoes à la Provençale

      Yep, another cook along blog, what can I say?  I evaluate carefully these days as I am enjoying the cooking, but the posting requirements get a bit tedious at times.  That said, I enjoy reading everyone else's posts, and I learn a lot and make notes in my books about it all, so I feel I must play along nicely. 

      "What is this," you ask, "another French cooking assignment each week?"  "Yes," she replies, happily! 

      Helene at La Cuisine Helene put forth in Twitterworld last week (Helene works FAST) her desire to cook a bit in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I and Vol. II, and invited those so inclined to cook along with her each week, posting on Fridays. 

      I had actually just ordered the book as Susan and I thought we might cook along together now and again from the book, but sadly my book has not arrived yet, so this week I am scrambling about trying to find a recipe that will qualify for the cooking/posting this first week.  Nancy kindly checked various recipes that I had in another Julia book, and we came up with one that would work to get me by this first week. 

      In this blog along, Helene has decided that each participant can pick each week the recipe of her/his choice from the book, Vol. I or Vol. II, so that it will match nicely with their own family's interests, tastes, budgets, etc.  What a deal!  I immediately embraced this idea for I could see at once that I could pick things from Julia's books that would compliment the things I was making each week from the Le Cordon Bleu at Home cookbook that we are using at Whisk Wednesdays.  They would fit together perfectly!  Yep, I'm in! 

      The first recipe I chose to make was Tomatoes à la Provençale,

page 507, Vol. I (thanks, Nancy, for looking up the page for me amidst your very busy day) because I needed something quick and easy. 

      You begin by washing and then slicing the tomatoes in half around the equator, scooping out most of pulp and seeds (infant baby spoons are very good for this chore), seasoning (salt and pepper) the tomatoes, making a mixture of fresh bread crumbs, shallots, scallions, garlic, and parsley, and adding a little drizzle of olive oil, to fill the cavities of the tomatoes. 

      Place the stuffed tomatoes into a shallow baking dish, drizzle on a little more olive oil, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. 

      Simple, easy, can be assembled ahead to be baked at time of dinner, and very colorful and tasty.  A perfect side dish for almost any meal.  We all loved the dish and will make it often, especially in the winter when we only have those hard hothouse tomatoes at the markets, I can see where the seasonings and herbs would do wonders for those.

      This is the part where I usually tell everyone to click on a site if they want to see everyone else's recipes, so just click on Helene's site above and she has a few listed this week.  And, this is the part where I usually list the recipe for next week, but I don't have my book yet, have not decided on a recipe, so I guess it will just be a surprise next week.