Summer flavors, but it's winter. Oh well, you do what you can.

The Yeti wife was out of town this week which means I usually experiment. I would then normally post results of experiments here. That is the crustimony proceedcake, as my bear friends would say. However, I did not really do any experiments (except for the lamb and beef cheeseburgers, east coast style, but I'll post that some other time). Instead I've opened up the legendary hairy Yeti archives and will share this dish with you. And the snowdogs did get to go somewhere every day this week too, including into the creek at the park even though I told them not to. Silly snowdogs.

I know that this is really a summer dish with the tomatoes and all, but since "bulletproof" tomatoes are available in the market year-round nowadays, this should be possible for people in general to do anytime. The texture of "bulletproof" beefsteak tomatoes are actually well suited for this recipe, but the flavor is lacking as you would expect. I like to use large heirlooms that are often available in late summer. If you want to use vine-ripe or other smaller tomatoes, try using about double the number of tomatoes (8 or so) or you can cut and stuff a bunch of larger cherry tomatoes and substitute feta for the softer chevre goat cheese for appetizers.

Tomatoes stuffed with couscous

4 large tomatoes, preferably nearly ripe, but still with some firmness of body
couscous, about 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup dry instant, or about 1 cup when fully prepared. That would also be about 2/3 cup of Israeli couscous if you wanted to use that. For this I like the texture of the smaller grained couscous.
Some goat cheese, about 4 ounces
Salt and pepper
about 2 tablespoons diced onion
1 clove of garlic, crushed
no more than 1/4 cup of additional herbs and veggies, such as curly parsley, cilantro, dill, diced bell pepper, as desired.

Prepare couscous as you would normally. Mix prepared couscous with the onion, garlic, and optional ingredients and set aside (for at least 20 minutes, this is about as long as it will take you to prepare the tomatoes).

Prepare tomatoes:
Cut off the top of the tomatoes. Taking care not to puncture the sides or bottoms of the tomatoes, remove the core and seeds. I use a melon baller. Season the inside of the tomatoes liberally with salt and pepper and place upside-down (open side down) on a rack above a tray or other container for the tomatoes to drain off excess liquid. You'll want to let the tomatoes drain for at least 15 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 325F.

After tomatoes are drained, stuff each tomato with 1/4 of the prepared couscous mixture. Place 1/4 (about 1 ounce) of goat cheese on top of the tomatoes. Bake for about 15 minutes, then place under a broiler for about 5 minutes or until the goat cheese is melted and slightly browned.

Serves 2 Yetis, or 4 people as a large side dish. This is great with some garlic bread and broiled fish or fresh green beans.