Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Tomato Fest!

With all the craziness of Po Boy week I never got around to writing about my favorite festival of the year: The Creole Tomato, Zydeco Music Festival! Among the many wonderful aspects of this free festival are the incredible live performances by local Cajun Zydeco bands and incredible food! The vendors have everything from tacos to po boys and oysters, but the real attraction are the tomatoes of course!
Every year Covey Rise Farms (a local farm from Covington) supplies enormous, beautiful local creole and heirloom tomatoes. They sell them by the pound, along with gorgeous eggplants, onions, and many other crops, as well as cut in a superb tomato salad.
This fresh salad was the real show stopper at the festival. Between the incredible flavor of the vine ripened tomatoes, cucumbers, and greens and the aromatic blend of basil, shallots, balsamic, salt and pepper- oh my lord, have mercy. I have never tasted something that screamed summer more than this mouth watering salad. It was so good that Eric and I tried to recreate the magic with our own caprese salad for dinner that night.
Our version used one of their plump and juicy red tomatoes, as well as one of Eric's home grown creole tomatoes, and my homegrown basil and thai basil. We added fresh mozzarella, which you can find at any Whole Foods, as well as Olive Oil, Balsamic, Salt, and Pepper. It was really phenomenal, but possibly not as delicious as our main course.This lovely photograph displays our home-fried thinly sliced eggplant, topped with Marinara and parmesan, all sitting on top of a bed of squid ink pasta and fresh mozzarella. I am not one for eggplant but this was really spectacular, and very easy to make. After a long day of learning how to Cajun dance, this was just what I needed; local, fresh, and delicious, just the way I like it!

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