Tomatoes Filled With Seasoned Cottage Cheese

Added two photos 6-19-22

 

I recently came across this "general" recipe among some German dishes. It grabbed my attention, especially with warm weather upon us. To my knowledge, I had never seen this dish, and I looked it up, even under its German name, "Gefüllte Tomaten mit Hüttenkäse" (Hüttenkäse= literally, "hut cheese," hut... cottage... käse=cheese, get it?). Anyway, I found several variations, with some using feta cheese, others using herb seasoned cheese, and still others using no cheese at all, but rather a variety of herbs and spices. So this recipe is the basic recipe, but with my own touches to it.

Ingredients:

4 large (baseball to softball size) ripe tomatoes
2 1/2 cups cottage cheese (large or small curd, low fat is fine)
1/4 cup of your favorite crumbled blue cheese, like Stilton, Roquefort, Gorgonzola or some other 
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
3 green onions, with the green, chopped
2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
3 tablespoons tomato paste, thinned out with a tablespoon of white wine or just water
1 teaspoon Hungarian sweet paprika
1 teaspoon Hungarian hot paprika (generally, Hungarian hot paprika is not really all that "hot")
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon white or black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional, as the cheese has salt)

Cut the tops off of the tomatoes, cut out the tough core and scoop out the seeds and center of the tomatoes, so they can be filled. Mix the rest of the ingredients together well. The mix will have an orange or red like color. Fill each tomato with the mixture and serve with some crackers, chips or bread.  


I served the tomato with a slice of multi-grain bread

And with whole wheat bread ...

WORD HISTORY:
Strain (2)-There is more than one word of this spelling in English, but this is the one with a variety of specific meanings, among which the most common are: 1) "to injure a muscle by tightening that muscle too much, due to overexertion (also used of voice)" 2) "to filter something, typically through some type of sieve" 3) "to lift an object to the point of injury or physical endurance" 4) "to press a matter to what is seen as an extreme position." It is distantly related to "strait," which is used both as a noun and as an adjective, and is a word of Latin derivation, but borrowed by English by way of Latin-based French; and to, "stringent," a word borrowed by English directly from Latin. It goes back to Indo European "streygh," which had the notion, "to press, to exert pressure on;" thus also, "to pull with force." This gave Latin "stringere," meaning, "to pull tightly, press together." This was passed to Latin-baased French as, "estreindre," meaning, "to hold, press or tie tightly." This was borrowed by English in the early part of the 1300s as "streynen," which then became, "straynen," before the modern form. The noun form was derived from the verb in the early 1400s to mean, "an injury to muscle by overexertion (straining)." The noun "strainer" (a filter) was also derived from the verb in the first half of the 1400s (it has peacefully coexisted with the native English word "sieve" since the 1400s, so there is no "strain" between them).