
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.

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.
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