…and went to heaven, and do I ever have a surprise for you: heaven is made up of Tomato Bread Pudding. And here all along you had thought it was made up of gold—ha! Three simple things, tomatoes, bread, and pudding, but when done the right way (with a few more ingredients)—um-um-um, glorious!

I was floating around, high on Roasted Tomato Perfume, but now I have parked my rear firmly on my wooden chair and my fingers are furiously clacking away, rushing to tell the tale.

I read this recipe in Gourmet magazine, the same one that had the fried lemons and parsley dish. Wait! Do not go away! This recipe redeems that other recipe, and then some.

This dish takes a lot of oven time, so make it in the cool of the morning. It reheats well (at least I imagine it would, but I can’t honestly say I know that for sure since I haven’t tried reheating it yet), so bake it up in the morning, and then heat it up for dinner. I ate this for lunch today, and I plan to eat it for supper tonight, breakfast tomorrow, lunch tomorrow… you get the general idea.

Tomato Bread Pudding
Adapted from Gourmet magazine, the July 2008 issue

3 pounds Roma tomatoes, the little top cut off and then the tomatoes halved lengthwise
1 ½ teaspoons herbes de Provence (I made my own mixture a while back—I don’t know the proportions right off the bat, but it consists of marjoram, sage, basil, thyme, fennel, and rosemary)
some good olive oil, about a half cup
1 head of garlic
1 loaf of crusty, white bread (about one pound)
2 cups milk
1 cup cream
8 eggs
2 cups grated Fontina cheese (about 9 ounces)
½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated
salt and pepper

Put the halved tomatoes in a large bowl, drizzle with two tablespoons of olive oil, add the herbes de Provence, 3/4 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper, and toss well. Arrange the tomatoes, cut side up, on a large sheet pan, one with sides.

Take the head of garlic and cut off the top of it, about a quarter inch down, so that you can see the cloves. Discard the top.

Place the scalped head of garlic on a piece of foil, drizzle the garlic with about 1 teaspoon of olive oil, wrap the foil up tight around the garlic, and place the metallic ball on the sheet with the tomatoes.

Bake the tomatoes and garlic in a 375 degree oven for 50-60 minutes. The tomatoes will be brown and very slightly blackened, but still have a good deal of juice. The garlic will be soft. The house will smell divine. Remove the pan from the oven and let sit for a little while.

Take the loaf of bread and cut it into 1-inch cubes.

Put the bread cubes in a large bowl and toss with 1/3 cup olive oil. Spread the cubes on another large cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 10-20 minutes, stirring once or twice, until toasty brown.

When the garlic is cool enough to touch, squeeze the garlic out of it’s paper wrapper.

The recipe said to push it through a sieve, but that didn’t go so hotsy-totsy for me, and besides, I don’t see any real point to it. So just mush up the garlic real well with your fingertips, checking to see if there are any hard lumps or fibers; if so, pick them out.

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, milk, garlic paste, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1 ½ teaspoons black pepper. Add the cheeses.

Now, grease a 9×13 glass pan and put the toasted bread cubes in it. Pour the cream mixture over top of the bread. Place the roasted tomatoes on the top, pressing them down in a little. Bake the pudding at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes, until it’s firm and nicely browned. Allow to cool for a little bit before eating. Or not.

Alright. I’m done now. I won’t delay you any longer. Go out to the kitchen and cook up a pan of heaven on earth. Feel free to belt out some hymns while you chop and roast and whisk your way to a higher, better place.

Another thought: What would this be like if I added some browned sausage to the pudding mixture? What about a couple of caramelized onions? Oo-oo-ooh! I’m being transported! Someone grab my feet, quick!

Wait a second. The first paragraph in that last post was supposed to go with this post. I had made a healthy summertime pizza and was going to tell you about it to prove that I don’t only make sugary foods. But I got sidetracked. Apparently.

Anyway, here it is.

Summertime Pizza
I think it was Barbara Kingsolver who gave me the idea of putting the cheese down first on the pizza crust, so I should probably say this recipe is adapted from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

your favorite pizza crust recipe (mine follows)
one pound of mozzarella cheese, shredded
some shredded Parmesan cheese, if you wish
about five Roma tomatoes, sliced
several handfuls of fresh herbs, a variety of whatever is growing in your garden (basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, etc)
cornmeal for dusting
good olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400-450 degrees. Brush a large cookie sheet (preferably one with sides) with lots of olive oil and then sprinkle it with cornmeal. Place the pizza dough on the cookie sheet and flatten it out with your fingers, gently pressing it into the corners of the cookie sheet. Sprinkle the grated mozzarella cheese over the crust. Lay the tomato slices on top of the cheese. Roughly chop up your herbs (no need to wash them if you grew them yourself) and sprinkle them over the tomatoes. Top with some freshly grated Parmesan. Drizzle olive oil over the whole thing. Be generous, now!

Bake the pizza for ten minutes, or until the cheese is brown and bubbly and the bottom of the crust is a golden brown. Remove the pizza from the oven and brush more olive oil on the crusty edge—the oil softens the crust and makes it yummy. (I really like olive oil.)

This recipe makes one large pizza, and serves 4-8, depending on what else is for supper.

Pizza Crust
Adapted from the More-With-Less Cookbook.

1 tablespoon yeast
a pinch of sugar
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoons sugar
About 3 cups of flour (part of which may be whole wheat), and then a bit more

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast, with the pinch of sugar, in the cup of warm water.

In a larger bowl, measure in the oil, salt, sugar, and a cup of the flour. Add the dissolved yeast mixture and stir well. Add the rest of the flour. Knead the dough until it is soft and elastic. Let it rest for at least five minutes before shaping it into a pizza crust.

This recipe makes one thick crust, or two thin crusts.

I’m a little concerned about what you all think of me. I mean, I posted about gingerbread and cobbler and chocolate chip cookies and chocolate beet cake, all in a row. You probably think that all I eat is sugar and more sugar. And you’re right. Just kidding! See, a lot of what I eat is too boring to mention. Leftover salad for breakfast, oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, more leftover whatever, granola, tomato sandwiches, eggs. It’s just not note-worthy.

And then when I get it into my head to fix something different, something unusual, something gourmet, then my whole family suffers.

Take, for instance, last night. Late in the afternoon, I dug a bowlfull of fingerlings, boiled them up, and then turned them into Smashed Potatoes (more on that recipe later—it’s a good one). While the tators were in the oven, I fled the house to go on a jog-slash-walk. Mr. Handsome kept an eye on the potatoes and the kids, and then he fed the potatoes to the kids, along with some ketchup. Everyone was still hungry when I got home, which was totally understandable and expected, so I made Supper Part II: Fried parsley and lemons wrapped in corn tortillas.

Yes, you heard right. I fried lemon slices

and parsley

and wrapped them in warm corn tortillas,

all because Gourmet magazine told me to.

It was actually quite yummy. Different, refreshing, and definitely gourmet. Not something the kids ate (I didn’t even do any insisting as I knew my offering was a little over the top), and not something that could stand in for an actual meal. But hey, I (rather, Mr. Handsome) had already served those smashed potatoes, and the kids were happy enough about gobbling up plain tortillas with ketchup. Mr. Handsome had a rather sour look on his face (from the lemons, maybe?), so I fried up some of the leftover boiled fingerlings in the lemony oil (Yo-Yo Boy said they tasted like a carnival—I’m still not sure if that was a good or bad thing), and Mr. Handsome ate some of the potatoes wrapped up in a tortilla, along with cheese and ketchup.

I made him a coffee shake afterwards. To compensate.

I think he feels towards my gourmet cooking as I feel towards his smashed applesauce. See, we’re a good team—we are each adept at doing dumb things, so we each have become skilled in the art of Dumbness Survival. Maybe that, surviving your spouse’s dumbness, is the bottom line to a happy marriage? Ooo, now there’s a deep thought. I’ll have to ponder that for a bit.

Okay, I pondered. Now allow me to elaborate:

Here, here! In order to survive a marriage you must know how to survive the other person’s dumb ideas, dumb mistakes, and dumb experiments—in other words, the sum total of his royal Dumbness! (And remember, at the same time you are surviving his dumbness, he is also surviving your’s.)

I have a feeling I could write a book about this. (Mr. Handsome could, too.)

Ps. I think the lemon-parsley tortilla wraps would be better, more acceptable, if they were served with shredded, spicy chicken and sour cream.