Rosie's Back In the Kitchen. And G Is For Gremolata.

OK, I know. Enough of the Hawthornelets and my trips and my riverwalks and my ballgames and veterans memorials. When is Rosie getting back into the kitchen? Well, I dipped my toes in the kitchen today, so to speak. I'm just making a light hors d'oeuvre today: Fresh grape tomatoes from my garden stuffed with gremolata. And what, exactly, is gremolata, you ask?

Well, it's a delicious combination of parsley, rosemary, almonds, garlic, lemon zest, crushed red peppers, red wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and salt and pepper.

I have a little mini-processor into which I threw some coarsely chopped parsley, rosemary, and garlic and the lemon zest and pepper flakes.

Add in the almonds.

And pour in a splash of red wine vinegar and some olive oil and process until you get the right consistency. I must thank Maxine for the red wine vinegar. Apparently a chemistry professor at the university where Maxine teaches make his own vinegar, which starts out with a "mother", then goes further into some involved process. I'm not sure if any distillation was involved, (Of course not. This is a Baptist school.) but the flavor is wonderful.

And here's my gremolata.

I picked some tomatoes from the garden, took a little slice off the bottoms so they sit up without falling over like little roly polys, scooped out the seeds, then stuffed with the gremolata mixture.

And this is one little mouthful of deliciousity.

You have the herbiness of the rosemary and parsley, the crunchy nuttiness of the almonds, the heat of the red peppers, the fresh acidity of the tomatoes, and finally the the citrusy goodness of the zesty lemonocity which kind of wraps all the different flavors up in a lovely little package of yumminess.

Not only can you SEE all the flavors, you can TASTE them too.

I know I've done "G" before - for Gyoza- but decided gremolata was too good to leave out and figured not many people have actually tried this easy and delicious treat. Now, you may be asking yourself, "Where else could I use this wonderful accompaniment?" Well, ask no more. Tyler Florence has a recipe for Osso Buco Milanese with Gremolata. I've actually made this before and it was quite good. Maybe I'll blog the osso buco when I decide to go for a nice dip in the kitchen. Until then, the Gremolata will have to tide you over.