Brie and oat cakes with tomatoes three ways

One of the dishes we've made recently is Brie Cakes with Sun-Dried Tomatoes from Maria Speck's Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.  This dish combines oats, that old standby, with some unexpected ingredients for a savory main dish.  It also combines the fresh and the dried in interesting ways.  As much as we find inspiration in the fresh foods we find at the farmers market, we also depend on the contents of our pantry, which includes lots of staples from the market (nuts, dried fruits, cheeses, and olive oil), from the Davis Co-op (especially beans and grains), and from our own efforts (like the homemade stock we've mentioned or preserves). This recipe combines all of these categories of ingredients.

The cakes showcase three finds from the market:  we bought a piece of Nicasio Valley Cheese Company's Halleck Creek Cheese, on their advice that it would be the best stand in for brie in this recipe; we cleaned out Ramon Cadena's last pound of sundried tomatoes a week or so ago and had marinated them by pouring hot water on them to soften them and then coating them in a vinaigrette made with balsamic vinegar, a little mustard to help it emulsify, some garlic, salt, and olive oil and we had these awaiting use in a jar in the refrigerator; and, on Wednesday, when we bought some heirloom tomatoes at the market from Tumber farm in Winters, farmers new to us, they threw in, as a bonus, a bruised but luscious heirloom that demanded consumption right away.

All in all,  this seemed to be the time to give this recipe a try.

The recipe combines about a 1 1/2 cups of cooked steel cut oats (3/4 cups dry cooked in 1 1/2 cups water); 1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats (put into the mix dry--you don't want thick rolled oats because they will keep the cakes from cohering); 2 ounces of Brie or in our case Halleck Creek cheese cubed with the rind left on (but don't be stingy, use the whole piece you get at the market); 1/2 cup chopped red onion (the last of the many juicy spring onions we bought to pickle but didn't); 1/3 cup oil-packed (or in our case marinated) sundried tomatoes; 1/3 cup toasted pine nuts (toasting them in a dry pan makes them so much more flavorful); 2 eggs (from the market, natch); 1 tablespoon each chopped fresh sage and rosemary (we were tempted to use other herbs but wound up glad we resisted this temptation because this herb combination worked really well--evoking an Italian/breakfast sausage vibe without the pork--and we've actually got both in our own herb garden); 1-2 teaspoons chopped fresh chile (but we used chipotles because they pair so well with sundried tomatoes); 1/2 teaspoon salt and plenty of ground pepper.  You plop all of this into a bowl, mix it up, and then form it into about 8 cakes (using your hands dipped in water or oil).  You then cook these (in two batches) in olive oil in a skillet over medium heat for about 4-5 minutes a side.  Don't rush them because the cakes are all about the brown crust and the oozy cheese.  If you don't need all eight--and these are super filling because of the oats--you can keep the mix in the fridge and fry up another round later in the week.

A word about cooking those steel cut oats.  Should you be the sort of person who plans ahead, the fastest and easiest way to make steel cut oatmeal is to combine the oats and water, bring them to a boil, cover them and turn off the heat.  Then walk away, my friend.  If you do this the night before, they will be ready to eat the next morning with just a little reheating.  Or you can do them in the morning and use the cooked oats in this recipe that night.  This method also works well for oat groats, which are even heartier--chewier and more filling--than steel cut oats.  It is worth experimenting with this strategy with other whole grains and beans (which we'll discuss in another post).  Time will do a lot of the work for you with very little energy--yours or PG&Es. 

We served the cakes with a version of the sauce Speck's cookbook recommends.  We combined about 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon homemade tomato jam (subbing for the ketchup in the original recipe), a shot of Sriracha, a couple of spoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper.  The cakes really need the sauce, which is surprisingly good.

The final plate was a celebration of tomatoes of different stripes and from different moments in time:  the tomato jam we made last summer from Lloyd's tomatoes, Cadena's sundried tomatoes, and that burstingly ripe heirloom tomato from Tumber.  The Halleck Creek cheese was perfect, too.