foodtvandme.com is the unofficial food network fansite with news, reviews, and my attempts at those great recipes you see on tv.

For this week’s attempt, I decided to try to appease all of you that voted in the Resolution poll.  The winner of the poll was, “I love food and food loves me,” but in a close second, most of you would like to increase the amount of fruits and veggies in your diet.  I decided to pick a recipe that involves both of these concepts.  I also saw that Michael Chiarello was doing an episode devoted to California, where I happen to reside, so I couldn’t resist the following choice from his California Here I Come episode.

Weekly recipe attempt:  Tomato Steak with Baked Goat Cheese and Herb Salad

I liked the look of this recipe.  It was very simple, yet pretty.  I decided, in honor of football season, and incidentally appetizer season as well, that I would make a smaller version of this recipe to perhaps be passed around when the big game is on.  I used Roma tomatoes instead of beefsteak and made the goat cheese rounds a bit smaller.  Unfortunatley with the goat cheese rounds being smaller, they didn’t “bake”/ melt as well as the bigger slices would have.  It was still delicious just the same.

The only problem I came across if you were to use this for a big game thing, was the fact that once you put the slices of goat cheese into a frying pan, you have to watch them fairly carefully.  Or else you’s end up topping your tomatoes with little lumps of charcoal.  This might be difficult if one eye was on the game instead of both on the pan.  If you have a TV in your kitchen, then problem is solved.

All in all, I’d give this an 8 out of 10.  It was a little more messy to make than I thought it would be, so it gets a little lower score than the overall taste would have given it.