In Season & Fresh from the Garden, the Fields, the Orchards & the Woods
For the last few weeks, I have been making lots of Savory Oven Tomato Preserve (or is that Savory Oven-preserved Tomatoes?). After cooking for several hours in a very slow oven, the tomatoes acquire a very intense flavor that’s quite addictive. We’ve been eating them …
In several of the old European traditions, August was the first month of autumn, the harvest season. And this year, with the especially cool summer weather, it certainly feels like it’s fall already. And harvesting, we are. Some crops have been incredibly successful, some less …
Back in April March (issue #110), Saveur Magazine had a recipe on Homemade Tomato Paste. In the last few issues, Saveur has nicely covered a number of basic kitchen skills, such as making butter, making cheese, canning tuna etc – the types of things I like learning about and I like making myself; the type of things that are not difficult to make but are almost becoming a lost art, mostly become they are often judged “too time consuming”; the type of things that are just about sublime when done carefully well – and dare I say, lovingly?
What sounded really attractive was cooking the paste in the oven, as opposed to stove-top which is what other recipes said to do. So, back in March, I marked that recipe:I was planning a large tomato garden, and was hoping to have tomatoes for paste.
Now, the large tomato garden is indeed producing: it’s not unusual to pick up 5 pounds of Viva Italia Roma tomatoes or San Marzano a day – several days in a row. It was time to try to make tomato paste.
A good tomato paste will help make a good pizza a great pizza, will bring body and depth of flavor to a tomato sauce that’s a little weak (and for good reason, since they are 4 or 5 pounds of tomatoes in one cup of paste!), and will really enhance that lasagna or that that Bolognese sauce!
I made the Saveur magazine recipe. However, in my oven, it turned too dark, too fast. Also I learned that you must stir the paste often or IT WILL BURN. For example, do not go on a walk for 1 hour while the paste is baking: when you come back, all the edges and a good part of the pan will be carbonized! You’ll be able to salvage some… but how frus-tra-ting! and what a waste of perfectly good tomatoes. GGRRRRR!!!! So stick around for 3 hours so you can keep a keen eye on the paste and stir it often.
I made several batches of tomato paste (including the semi-carbonized one). I decided that I would rather have a less concentrated tomato paste and something a little less dark in color than the original Saveur recipe was calling for. It’s still plenty flavorful though! I played with the quantities a little and with the oven timing and temperature. I also tried it in the oven pan and in a LeCreuset pan. They both work, although the oven pan is not totally flat inside, so you have to pay more attention to the edges to ensure they do not burn. Finally if you are using two pans at once (because, after all, since you have the oven going, you may as well fill it, right?), then make sure to rotate the pans every hours. In the end, the Homemade Tomato Paste worked very nicely. Continue reading San Marzano and Homemade Tomato Paste
Verdict on my first Blacktail Mountain picked last night? No maiden swooned. No that there are many maidens around here… It was good but not great. It could have used a few extra days of ripening: it was still growing (weighting at 5 pound 14 …
On one hand, it’s been a wonderfully summer, temperature wise. We’ve been enjoying many days in the 80s F (27 to 32 C) which is right balmy for normally muggy Virginia when August days are often in the 90s F (33 to 37 F) – …
Now is when you should start your fall and winter Kitchen Garden.
Truly, there are some things that should be planted in May or June for fall harvesting because those crops take a long time to mature (like celeriac, parsnip, the perennial sunchokes, winter cabbages, winter leeks, Brussels sprouts and a few other things). But they are so many vegetables that can be planted now (and over the next few weeks) for wonderful fresh eating in the fall & winter.
Yes, I know: it’s hot (although not so much here this year, we have not had 100 ° F weather like last year); the gnats are terrible; it’s dry and, yes, it IS (some) work. But what are you going to do in mid-October after you’ve been scrounging around for your last green tomatoes before frost spoils them, wondering if you’ll manage to ripen them inside (don’t you want to eat something else, by then, anyway?) and getting in the winter squashes (you planted winter squash – right?)… With the rapidly declining day length, the sharpening of the air that’s telling you that winter is coming, the birds going south and the cry of the geese overhead, with the nights in the low 40’s, the smell of smoke from the woodstove hanging in the moist air, everything green and fresh is going to be precious, whether a delicate lettuce for a quick salad lunch, or the more robust Lacinata kale – that darling of Tuscan white bean, sausage and kale soup – , or a young, fresh, crisp radish with a little salt & butter. Or a sweet baby carrot, or a bunch of little white turnips to sautée with some whole cumin seeds, or a bouquet of frost-sweetened arugula for the grilled pizza, or some young leeks for braising or… or.. or… you get the idea, I hope (I, on the other hand, am getting hungry – again.) Continue reading Start Your Fall Kitchen Garden NOW
It’s been dry here for the least few weeks so I have had to water the garden a little bit, something which I try to avoid. But with no noticeable rain for three of four weeks, I have to water especially those more sensitive plants …
(no picture of the salsa…. I know, I know…) Tomatoes however are really wonderful this year. And so are peaches (albeit I don’t grow peaches, several orchards in Rappahannock County have been keeping me happy: I have bought 2 ½ bushels to date). So as …
Canning season is officially upon us as the garden is now in full production gear – too much for just eating fresh – so I am freezing, drying, canning & pickling for use in the colder months. Although we grow some hardy greens in the garden in winter, we do not have yet an area big enough to put a lot of root crops that would feed us throughout the cold months. So between now and frost is the time to process all those summer crops for later – as an alternative to winter greens, carrots, pumpkins & winter squashes (and apples): peaches, nectarines, plums & berries; tomatoes, peppers, tomatoes, hot peppers, zucchinis, tomatoes…
Monday morning is now officially designed as “weekly canning morning”. Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I only can high acidity fruit (including tomatoes); other excess crops are frozen or pickled (and then canned): cucumbers, okra, beans, peppers. No sweet corn yet… but soooon…. real sooooon…. (that is if various critters don’t get to it before me!). Yesterday was the first tomato canning of the season, with 5 quarts and 7 pints of sauce made.
The hot pepper crop is also particularly abundant this year. Of course it helps that I planted 2 dozen hot pepper plants (DON’T ASK!). Well, to be fair, there are some anchos in there, and, really, I would hardly call those “hot” – but that’s how the seeds are classified. Nonetheless there is a fair amount of jalapenos and cayennes. Nothing too exotic or super hot: I did not plant scotch bonnets or habaneros … this year.
So what to do with all those hot peppers? Full of vitamins by the way. If you don’t believe me, check here for nutrition information. According to elook, 100g of raw Jalapeno peppers provides a lot more of several major vitamins than 100 g of Florida oranges: 73% of the average daily requirements for vitamin C (77% for orange), 25% of vitamin B6 (2% for orange), 16% vitamin K (0 %) and15% of vitamin A (4%). Of course, 100 g is about 3 ounces, so it’ll take a serious appreciation of all things spicy hot to eat that much in one seating!!!
My Dad always loved hot chili peppers, fresh, dried, pickled, cooked. And I mean hot. He was famous for it: for loving them and for making quantities of hot sauce. When I was in college and back home for the summer, my friend Marie-Laure would always ask for one of his hot sauce jars to take back to school. It was THAT good. (she always also begged my mom to make her octopus wine stew – but that’ll be a story for another day – maybe). Dad was enthralled when he came to visit us here in Virginia to find hot pepper jelly in the store – and now I am tasked to bring some each time we go visit him (that, and Jack Daniel!)
A couple of years ago, I finally asked Dad for his “recipe”. He uses oil, so it should be refrigerated. Use whatever hot peppers you have or like; you can mix them, just make sure they are all of the same color, or the sauce will look “muddy”. I also make a very similar one but uses vinegar – your choice – and add some garlic, which results in a taste close to the Vietnamese –style hot sauce that you buy in the grocery store.
On to Gusto’s Hot Pepper Sauce (Sauce de Piment Confits de Gusto) Continue reading Some Like it Hotter
A few weeks ago, I blogged about picking up berries in the hedge rows – free wild food… well.. free as in “spend no cash”, but after several hours in the delightful mugginess and bugginess characteristic of a Virginia summer, the numerous scratches that you …