[Lifestlye] Desperate for a BLT? How to make 12 classic tomato recipes – without any tomatoes

[BirSaNN]

In these days of food shortages, you might assume lasagne, pizza and meatballs are off the menu. But with some simple substitutions you can still enjoy many favourite meals

Acombination of high electricity prices and bad weather has led to salad items being rationed in supermarkets around Britain. Many shoppers at Asda, Morrisons, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl will have, in recent days, encountered empty green crates in the fresh produce aisle, or sales of broccoli and tomatoes capped at three a customer.

The tomato shortage, in particular, has been a rude awakening, given that so many midweek no-recipe fallbacks use them. Here, then, are a dozen ideas for making versions of those meals when you can’t get hold of fresh, bottled or even tinned tomatoes and don’t want to reach for the puree or ketchup.

1. Red pasta sauce
Anyone with an allergy to nightshade vegetables (which include tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chillies and aubergines) will be familiar with nomato sauce. Recipes usually combine carrots, celery and butternut squash with beetroot. Depending on how much you like the earthy sweetness of beetroot, you can use anything from a single beet to a vac-pack of four little ones.

Blitz the cooked or steamed veg with onion and garlic, sauteed in olive oil, balancing out the flavour with vinegar (red wine or balsamic) and sweetness (honey or sugar). Finally, season with salt and pepper to taste and add finely chopped fresh herbs.

Roasting tomatoes is always a good way to start a rich sauce – and so with carrots. Slow-roast a bunch in butter and olive oil, as the Swedish chef Simon Bajada does for a beautiful soup he serves with fresh cheese and black bread. When you come to blitz them, use only as much vegetable stock as you need to achieve a sauce consistency. Fold in a fresh herb mix and season well.

The Ask Lindsey advice column on DeliaOnline suggests using a slow-cooked courgette base, with the umami brought by a good helping of white miso.

2. Creamy pasta sauce
“Yoghurt,” says Yotam Ottolenghi in his 2020 book Flavour, “as opposed to cream, has a natural acidity, so it makes creamy pasta sauces which are rich but not in any way cloying or unctuous.” Considering tomato brings acidity, this feels like a good alternative. Ottolenghi pairs his warm, cumin-flecked yoghurt sauce (stabilised with a couple of egg yolks and about a teaspoon of cornflour) with roasted butternut squash.

3. Pizza sauce

If you have not yet sampled the joy of a white pizza, now is the time. Rachel Roddy stresses that a proper yeasted dough is crucial for Roman pizza bianco, the topping being a drizzle of olive oil with prosciutto, parmesan and figs in the summer. As it is winter, you may want something more seasonal, so spread your base with ricotta, cream cheese, mascarpone, cottage cheese or creme fraiche. Vegan options include chickpea puree and cashew cream. Top as you wish.

4. Lasagne
There are so many options here. Butternut squash and sage. Salmon, sweet potato and greens. Caramelised onion, mushroom and blue cheese. J Kenji López-Alt’s spinach version is quite simple: he sautees the leaves with shallots and garlic in butter and olive oil, then drains them of all moisture, before chopping up and adding to a mix of ricotta or cottage cheese, blitzed with an egg, lots of parmesan, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Then he layers as many prepped lasagne sheets as the spinach mix will take, with dollops of a cheesy white sauce to bind everything.

5. BLT
Tomato, as Dana Velden highlights on the Kitchn website, is fundamental to sandwich-building, for the “colour, flavour, juiciness and texture” it brings. Nonetheless, she offers a multitude of substitute slices. These include: baked or roasted root veg (butternut squash, turnips or swede); lemon-dressed cooked potato; roasted peppers from a jar; raw or cooked beetroot; pickles (courgette, aubergine, radish); persimmon; apple; pear; fig; kumquat; and kiwi. All of these know what to do with salty bacon and crispy iceberg.

link: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/mar/01/desperate-for-a-blt-how-to-make-12-classic-tomato-recipes-without-any-tomatoes