This week we are cooking with tomatoes. We eat a lot of tomatoes, both cooked and uncooked. Most every dinner we have a salad with some kind of tomato...that said, there is nothing like late summer in Indiana for fresh garden tomatoes to make those salads sing. Now, at the tail end of tomato season, I find myself actually cooking with them more, making sauce and such. This week I made Taco Tomatoes.
Making Taco Tomatoes is easy enough, I just sliced a thin top portion off the top of the tomato, hollowed out a good portion of the harder pulp and seeds, and filled it up with a mix of taco meat filling. I topped it off with a bit of cheddar cheese, plopped the thinly sliced top portion back on the top, and baked it in the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
My taco meat mix is nothing out of the ordinary. Ground beef (cooked and drained of the drippings), salt, pepper, chili spice, cumin, onion, finely diced hot chili pepper, sliced black olives, black beans (drained and rinsed) and some tomato paste, add some water to get the right consistency for your taste. You can make whatever taco mix you like.
I served the Taco Tomatoes on a bed of lettuce and with some homemade tortilla chips seasoned with chili lime seasoning. By "homemade," I mean I cut small corn tortillas into wedges and dabbed a little olive oil on them, seasoned with the spice and baked them in the oven for the same time as the Taco Tomatoes, flipping the chips halfway through the baking time.
This was a delicious meal, we are thinking we will put this process to good use in the future. I made four of them, I ate one, there were no leftovers so it can be said that Mark was a huge fan. To see what the others made with their tomatoes, you can click on the members' blogs listed here: Peggy, Margaret, Ulrike, Nancy, and Donna.
Next up is Zucchini, posting on October 23. If you would like to join in, just leave a link to your post in the comments section at any of our blogs and we will come and see what you made!