Sunday: Tomatoes stuffed with lemon-verbena cheese and tapenade

The last time we made something like this was back when I started this blog. The idea was to reproduce a dish that Andrea had eaten when we were in Provence, and it worked pretty well. We didn't manage to flavor the cheese (brousse) with lemon verbena like it was in Arles, but the app was still damn tasty.

When we saw some lemon verbena at a stand at the Ferry Building farmers' market up in the city on Saturday I knew it was time to make this again.

To start with, I made a half batch of ricotta cheese using a very useful recipe I found back in May. While the milk was heating (in a double boiler this time!), I added about half a cup of loosely packed lemon verbena leaves. I left the herbs in until the milk was close to done, then skimmed them out with a slotted spoon. This lent the milk a great verbena flavor. After making the cheese and draining it very well (I wanted something drier than typical ricotta), I got a cheese with a mild lemon verbena flavor. Clearly a lot of the flavor went with the whey, so it wouldn't have hurt to add more verbena and/or to steep it longer. Still, the cheese is really nice as it stands; and no burnt flavor this time. Double boiler++.

Yesterday was too busy to make tomato confit, so I hollowed out the tomatoes and filled them with a bit of tapenade (6 olives nicoise, one clove minced garlic, 1/2 minced anchovie, balsamico) and cheese, baked them at 425 for about 20 minutes, and let them cool down almost to room temp. I topped each one with another blob of tapenade, a basil leaf, and the top of the tomato and served them on a tomato jus (the tomato guts, pureed and strained, with a drop or two of Tabasco and some salt).

These were beautiful and very tasty.