Baked Goat Cheese and Sliced Tomato Salad with Pesto

Mmm, now I have something real to post about--our dinner tonight. I tried a new recipe from my Jack Bishop cookbook, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. How I first came to find Jack Bishop's excellent vegetarian cookbooks is like this.

A little over 4 years ago, my step-grandfather died--the third husband of my grandmother, the one who is 101 years old now. On the day of the funeral I invited all of our family who would still be around for another day to come for dinner the next day. This included my biological maternal family members, plus my grandmother's second husband's family, who technically are not related to us, but we keep them close as real family. Unfortunately, though we all regarded my grandmother's third husband as father and grandfather and loved him as such, and he loved us as such, his original family never seemed to see it quite like that. But we still have good memories of Barney, and he was my grandpa since I was 17 years old.

So, a large number of people were coming over for dinner. I had never cooked for such a crowd, and still haven't since. This was when we lived at St. Nicholas Ranch, an hour from Fresno where we did all our grocery shopping. I looked at what I had on hand, and decided the week had already been stressful enough without an added trip into town, plus it would take too long--two hours just for driving. I had several days of dinners planned and ingredients for them, so I decided to just cook everything I had planned for several days, all in one day. I started cooking first thing in the morning, and cooked all day long. It was cheese-fare week--in the Orthodox church, cheese fare week is the week we "say goodbye" to cheese and eggs just before Lent; we've already said goodbye to meat the week before--as vegetarians, it seems a little extraneous, but we do have special cheese-fare meals anyway, that we only eat during cheese fare. I remember one of the dishes was blini, which is a traditional Russian Orthodox cheese fare meal. Another that I made, just to round out the meal, was spoon bread--a cream-topped creamy corn bread.

I was terrified I wouldn't have enough food, so I just kept cooking! And of course we had plenty, with lots of leftovers. I think that everyone enjoyed it, and I know that my aunt and uncle from Minnesota did. When they got home, they sent me a thank-you card with a gift card for a bookstore, telling me that they so enjoyed my vegetarian cooking and they wanted to encourage me to continue expanding my cooking repertoire, and that I should use the gift card to buy myself a cookbook that looked good to me. So, I chose Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook. I so enjoyed it that I bought another of his when it was published: A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. And so I bring you this recipe that we enjoyed tonight.

First, don't attempt this recipe if you don't have access to wonderful, summer-sun ripened tomatoes. It just won't be the same with supermarket tomatoes.

I looked for the type of goat cheese suggested by the recipe, but didn't find it. I did find a wonderful wine-rinded aged goat cheese. The secret here is that you want aged, not fresh, goat cheese.

Finally, the only cooking this recipe requires is to bake the cheese, and it requires such a small baking dish I used my toaster oven. Perfect for a hot summer evening. Very simple and quick.

Baked Goat Cheese and Sliced Tomato Salad with Pesto

Pesto:
Put 2 cups fresh basil, 1 tablespoon pine nuts, and 1 small garlic clove into a food processor. Process until finely chopped. Add olive oil, up to 6 tablespoons, as the motor is running, scraping the sides as needed. (I didn't process until quite smooth, as I used part opal basil, and I wanted pretty flecks instead of muddy paste. :-) Add salt to taste.

Goat Cheese:
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Cut 12 ounces of aged goat cheese (preferably Bucheron) cheese into four rounds (or if wedges, like mine, just slice the wedges into smaller wedges). Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a small baking dish, just large enough to fit the cheese in a single layer. (The recipe says put 2 tablespoons of the oil in a separate dish for breading the cheese with, but I found this to be a dish-saving measure that was very easy.) Coat the dish with the oil. Place 1 cup of bread crumbs on a dish. Dip each piece of cheese into the oil and then into the breadcrumbs. Press bread crumbs onto the cheese. Put the cheese into the oiled dish and sprinkle any remaining bread crumbs over the cheese. Bake until the cheese is light golden brown (mine melted gloriously), about 10 minutes.

Tomato Salad:
Meanwhile, slice four good-sized tomatoes. Smear a scant teaspoon of pesto on each slice.

To serve, place 2-4 slices of tomato on each plate, and set a piece of goat cheese in the middle of the tomatoes.

I served this with bread, and Hibi had nuts instead of cheese. I think next time I might bake her some oiled breadcrumbs to have with it, because those really added to the dish.