End of the Garden Salsa

I brought in the last of the peppers and tomatoes last week before the heavy frost could permeate through the protective old bedsheets I strew over my plants every fall. Since then I've been busy drying, freezing, pickling and making other foods with the last of the garden.
I must note, the vegetable garden was abundant this year as usual, but our tomatoes and peppers didn't ripen as usual. I believe these fruits require warm summer nights to ripen, and this year our nights were cooler than normal.

Every year is different, and this year we needed recipes featuring green tomatoes and/or under ripe peppers.
I froze diced peppers and whole Roma tomatoes in bags, froze tomato sauce in cartons, dehydrated red paprika peppers for grinding to paprika, red and green poblanos for grinding, and smoked green poblanos to dry for ancho powder.
On the recipe side, I came up with sweet spiced pickled green cherry tomatoes, green tomato vegetarian mincemeat, and green tomato salsa.
All I have left of fresh peppers left are a few beautifully ripe Giant Marconis for the grill, and a half a bag of Fooled You jalapenos for whatever.

Here is my recipe for Green Tomato Salsa that I adapted (quite a bit) from an old Pacific Northwest Extension bulletin. You can make it as hot as you like it by adjusting the peppers. I won't add the canning directions here because I quit canning years ago, and the recipe is not exactly what the Extension did, so the acidity might be different. It's a joy to be able to make something so good from nearly all my own garden. The onions were from the market, but I just imagine if I could only grow my own limes and black pepper...

Green Tomato Salsa

6 cups chopped green tomatoes
4 cups chopped (seeded) green poblano peppers
1/2 cup finely chopped jalapeno peppers
4 cups chopped white onions
6-8 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
a handful cilantro leaves, stems removed
a handful of chopped parsley leaves, stems removed
3 Tbsp crumbled dried oregano leaves
1 Tbsp ground cumin
1 cup bottled lime juice
1 Tbsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes or so. Cool and ladle into storage containers.
Refrigerate and use, or freeze.
Makes 6-8 pints.

Options: Tomatillos can be substituted for green tomatoes. Lemon juice for lime juice.
Also, commercial salsa is sweeter, usually sugar is in the list of ingredients. I added some sugar/vinegar syrup I had leftover from pickling, which worked well for sweetening for a dipping salsa.

Sunflower Soup Casserole

Remember the sunflower soup I wrote about? Well, I was out in the herb garden trying to get a handle on the maintenance while the weather is still good, and upon yanking the Jerusalem artichokes that grew under the fence I was surprised by how big they are this year. So 2007 was a banner year for Jerusalem artichokes, who knew?


I got a bucket full in no time at all and brought them indoors, trimmed and washed them, and popped the smaller ones unpeeled into the pot of chicken stock I had simmering on the stove.
(Do you make chicken broth? Store broth is Nothing like homemade. Mine is herbed and so rich it gels when cooled. And now we are getting our chickens from the farmer's market and I am not going back to factory farmed chicken, there is that much difference in chickens too.)

Kayla ate a few with her pasta that night. Without tasting them Herb thought they were new potatoes and that she'd choke, but they were soft and easy for her to swallow whole (that child does not chew!) but the texture when boiled is really too soft for adult enjoyment. We are not fans of soft boiled vegetables.
So what to do?
Then I remembered the Sunflower Soup recipe and tried it.
It turned out pretty good with the distinctive flavor of Jerusalem artichoke, but it was smooth and bland and frankly, beige, like eating chicken gravy.
Well I say, when you have gravy, make noodles!

My recipe
I added leftover cooked 'whole wheat' linguine to the Sunflower Soup, added some leftover chicken and some frozen peas, and it was delicious.
When I began to think about it, it is healthy as well. There is no fat (as in the fat in gravy) because I cooked the onion in the broth, and the thickening was all done by the blenderizing of the J. artichokes.



J. artichokes, by the way, have some amazing health benefits having to do with their chemical makeup not reacting with the insulin our bodies produce. I remember reading about native Americans, who as a group have a high risk for diabetes, when put on a diet of indigenous foods, suddenly experiencing weight loss and blood sugar corrections. (You can Google it.) The Jerusalem artichoke is a North American native plant.

If you are interested and want to try to grow a few Jerusalem artichokes, find a friend who has a patch - they seem to be one of those enthusiastic plants that produce enough progeny to be readily shared... or do what I did when I didn't know anyone who grew them. Go to the veggie department of your grocery store and pick up a package when they show up, and plant them in a sunny spot with room to grow (up - they are about 8 feet tall). You will have enough to share in no time at all.

And if you don't like the J. artichokes, healthy food or not, their native sunflower blossoms will be good for your soul.

And speaking of good for your soul, here is another shot of one of Pat's Brandywine tomatoes, probably the last fresh tomato of the year for us... ain't she a beauty?

Tomatoes, we have tomatoes

I don't know what to do with all the tomatoes!

Herb planted his usual 16 or so plants... Fourth of July, Early Girl, Celebrity, Brandywine, Big Boy, Viva Italia, Sweet 100, and a new one (for us) this year, Principe Borghese, a drying tomato.
Even with the damaging hail in June, it would have been plenty. More than plenty.

But the CSA farmer we are participating with is supplying us with her plenty as well, and I am running out of ideas!

(Hi Pat! Doesn't she have a pretty set-up!)

I took some to the relatives, and gave some to the kids. Froze some whole, made sauce to freeze, and dried a couple of quarts in my dehydrator.

My favorite recipe to diminish the bounty is to cook Sweet 100s into a topping for bruschetta. I vary it with a variety of cheeses and different herbs, but always like rosemary the very best. I'll find a copy of the recipe and post it later.

Anyway, my Master Gardener friend Francine mentioned making catsup last week when I was at the farmers' market picking up my CSA share. (She was at the MG table, offering advice to the crowd. I always stop to ask 'what is the question of the day?' lately it's been Japanese Beetles. uGGH!)

The word catsup sparked a creative synapse in my mind, so here is a catsup recipe I played around with last week, it's easy and fast ... and it tastes pretty good too.

I had red and yellow tomatoes from Pat, so the catsup turned out a burnished orange color, quite pretty!

Roasted Tomato Catsup

1 1/2 - 2 pounds ripe tomatoes, remove stems ends and cut in half
3 -4 tablespoons sunflower oil, divided

1 medium onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced

1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Place tomatoes in an oiled casserole and brush tops with oil. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes or until they begin to carmelize on top.
Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat and saute the onions and garlic until translucent.
If your tomatoes are homegrown and therefore truly ripe, they will produce a lot of extra juice, so transfer them with a slotted spoon to a blender and process until smooth. (Refrigerate the juice for other use.) Add the tomato puree to the remaining ingredients in the saucepan and continue cooking, uncovered for 20 t0 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until thick. Refrigerate and USE it!

Homegrown tomatoes for breakfast

Nothing better.
Decent white bread, a little mayonaise, and a couple slices of a Brandywine tomato two minutes from the vine.



MMMM!!!

Makes me want to keep this picture for a screen saver...

And to accompany your meal, here are some folks singing about it
at the Northwest Folklife Fest 2006,
Jay Mary performing Home Grown Tomatoes:
UPDATE: if my link doesn't work on your system, the video easy to find here:
http://www.youtube.com/v/U1BBl-d0Gb4



The song that says it all, written by Guy Clark (link here)

Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden

Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with egss, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better
I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes

Recipe: Fresh Garlic, Roma Tomato and Basil Confit with Angel Hair Pasta

The morning of the day we left for vacation I pulled my garlic bulbs.
Rain threatened, and my years of experience associate "vacation" with "rain".
The garlic could afford to die back another week - we'd only be gone for a week - but I figured that rain-fattened heads of garlic would split and dry badly, while the already dry bulbs I harvested would be perfect for drying tightly.
So I pulled them and laid them on racks in the garage to dry.

The back door was cracked open to allow the cats to go in and out (please do not bother to comment - my little mousers would have gone nuts trapped indoors for a week) and the air would circulate well enough.

When we returned a week later to a trashed garage, we soon figured out the culprit... Herb saw a racoon... cat food and birdseed were scattered everywhere, but my garlic was perfectly dried and ready to clean, trim, bunch and hang. The critters hadn't bothered the garlic, but neither had it kept them away.

The weather had turned- there was no rain all week, a dry north wind, the nights were cool and the days were warm. I could have left the garlic in the ground. C'est la vie.
I'm not sure which is which variety-wise. I bought a bunch of different varieties when we had a garlic farmer come to speak at our Herb Society tea a few years ago.
Of course I can tell the elephant from the others, and some are pink skinnned and some are white, but I'd have to find my notes to guess what they all are.
ANYHOW, I once read something about growing an optimum garlic for your own use, probably in Kitchen Garden or Organic Gardening magazines... that I'll share with you here.

You need to plant only your biggest cloves from the head. In the early autumn. In rich soil. And then do that again next year, and repeat again the year after. By the third year of selection and proper growing, your garlic should have adapted to your particular location... and you will have 'selected' the best for your location.

We ate the fish Fish FISH we caught, all week we ate fish*. Enough! I'm ready for fruits and veggies for the rest of the summer!

*However! we did get out between times to eat at Bortelli's (more fish, yes, but the setting on the Lake Michigan beach where we had our lunch has a million dollar view), Luciano's classic Italian, The Hamlin for breakfast, Ronnie's Ribs, and the Jamesport Brewery. You can eat well for a week in Ludington without nary a ringer.

Anyway, here's the recipe I meant to relate, what with all the sweet fresh garlic and the current basil blowout, and what with using up the last of the frozen Viva Italia tomatoes trying to make room in my freezer for the tomato harvest to come ...

Pasta with Tomato Confit

You'll need an oven proof casserole which will determine the size of your recipe.

Make a bed of basil leaves in the bottom of the casserole, depth depending on how much you love basil... Fit as many cored Roma (Italian paste) type tomatoes as will fit snugly, core side down, on the bed of basil. Tuck slivers of fresh garlic into the spaces.

Lightly season. Salt, ground black pepper.

Drizzle over enough olive oil to come halfway up the sides of the tomatoes.

Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees until the tomatoes become browned and carmelized, and softened. (About 1 hour or so.)

Cook the angel hair pasta (it takes like 2 minutes! or cook the pasta of your choice), drain and place in a large serving bowl. Yes, I cooked these birds nests of nidi capellini right in with the green beans - saved a pan!
Dump the hot tomato-basil confit over the pasta and toss gently. (Or, in this case I added the pasta right into the casserole of tomato confit.)

Plate it up while warm and top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

...life is good