It's getting cold in Michigan, we're likely to have our first frost soon... and it's been an incredibly abundant harvest season. As I've been woefully inadequate as a blogger much of this year, I'll attempt to catch up with a couple harvest-related topics tonight. Our main farmers market is on Saturday mornings--and it's HUGE (yes, we're spoiled with probably 80 or more vendors, plus at least 2 other weekly markets that we can and often do attend). But this season has been especially warm, and a decent amount of rain--which means GREAT tomatoes, and lots of 'em. I've been eating Heirlooms sliced with mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes in my salads, fried green tomatoes (the one way my wife likes them), and ht elist goes on... but as the Roma's have been coming in, it can only be sauce-making time. We've been buying them by the half bushel or more (that's a LOT of tomatoes) and I've been cooking them down into a wonderful sauce--seasoned with basil, garlic, onions, carrots, and cooked for hours low and slow, then run through a food mill. Then we divvy it up, and freeze it for the winter. Now, it's not hard, but it is fairly time-consuming, and as anyone who has made this stuff knows--it's messy, as it spatters a lot. But I did the math--it comes out to about $0.55/cup--about 1/2 the cost of grocery store bottled stuff. And it tastes SO much better, and I know exactly what went in it, and I've supported a local farmer (or two or three) in the process.
That success led me to try an experiment--homemade ketchup. Similar process, except add vinegar, brown sugar, and tons of spices--cinnamon, cloves, ginger and the like... I hadn't had homemade ketchup since we made it when I was a little kid with our extra garden tomatoes. What a fun and tasty experience. I can't say it's cheaper than Heinz, and although it tastes pretty different from Heinz, I don't even know if it's better, per se--after all, what IS ketchup SUPPOSED to taste like? But fun, and a nice thing to share with friends at a party or two.
Next up... soup--from zucchini to minestrone, from goose to vichysoisse.
Showing posts with label tomatoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tomatoes. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, October 12, 2009
Cooking Marathon
Put mildly, yesterday was a cooking marathon for me. I generally think our cookware collection is excessive--we have more Staub and Le Creuset Dutch/French ovens than most people would need, and likewise, merging two households meant multiple stockpots. Now, I was thinking, gosh, we should really part with some of these. Yesterday convinced me that maybe it's not time for that.
This grew out of a combination of a half bushel of tomatoes, two chicken carcasses, and a lovely beef brisket. So, the planned main meal was a beef brisket carbonnade--essentially, a piece of beef braised in beer with a bunch of onions. This worked nicely--the sweet onions combined with a bit of balsamic, some mustard, the beer, and the beef to make a wonderful stew. Cooked in a dutch oven, in the oven, just large enough for the brisket, it was served with egg noodles cooked in a stock/pasta pot stove top.
Then there was the stock. I make my own stock--in this case, from the carcasses of two chickens--one broken down and made into a white stew, the other roasted, each over the last couple weeks. The bones, plus veggies, cook on low for hours on a back burner with filtered water, all in a big stock pot. Simple, tasty, great base for soups, stews, etc.
Finally, the "big picture"--the tomatoes from farmers market. We've just had a hard freeze, so this is pretty much it for getting a big batch of cooking tomatoes. Earlier in the year, I'd made batches of tomato sauce, and some tomato soup. But this was a really big batch. so, naturally, I made not one, but two, soups. The first was a spicy soup combining roasted jalapenos, poblanos, roasted tomatoes, and roasted garlic. Roasting makes peeling tomoatoes relatively easy. Onions, of course, served as a base for the soup, along with stock and some white wine. The result is a spicy soup that is enhanced by a dollop of sour cream, and perhaps a squeeze of lime. This is a truly fun soup to make.
My second tomato soup first involved peeling tomatoes after a dunk in boiling water. The soup then was built on a base of bacon and red onions. Sweet red peppers were used, along with thyme. The tomatoes cooked in stock and wine, and were again pureed. In the end, cream and milk brought added complexity. In all, very yummy! And a rather sweeter version than the first soup.
So, this all led to a big chest freezer full of soups and stock, set aside for the winter. A long tough day in the kitchen. But worthwhile and fun.
This grew out of a combination of a half bushel of tomatoes, two chicken carcasses, and a lovely beef brisket. So, the planned main meal was a beef brisket carbonnade--essentially, a piece of beef braised in beer with a bunch of onions. This worked nicely--the sweet onions combined with a bit of balsamic, some mustard, the beer, and the beef to make a wonderful stew. Cooked in a dutch oven, in the oven, just large enough for the brisket, it was served with egg noodles cooked in a stock/pasta pot stove top.
Then there was the stock. I make my own stock--in this case, from the carcasses of two chickens--one broken down and made into a white stew, the other roasted, each over the last couple weeks. The bones, plus veggies, cook on low for hours on a back burner with filtered water, all in a big stock pot. Simple, tasty, great base for soups, stews, etc.
Finally, the "big picture"--the tomatoes from farmers market. We've just had a hard freeze, so this is pretty much it for getting a big batch of cooking tomatoes. Earlier in the year, I'd made batches of tomato sauce, and some tomato soup. But this was a really big batch. so, naturally, I made not one, but two, soups. The first was a spicy soup combining roasted jalapenos, poblanos, roasted tomatoes, and roasted garlic. Roasting makes peeling tomoatoes relatively easy. Onions, of course, served as a base for the soup, along with stock and some white wine. The result is a spicy soup that is enhanced by a dollop of sour cream, and perhaps a squeeze of lime. This is a truly fun soup to make.
My second tomato soup first involved peeling tomatoes after a dunk in boiling water. The soup then was built on a base of bacon and red onions. Sweet red peppers were used, along with thyme. The tomatoes cooked in stock and wine, and were again pureed. In the end, cream and milk brought added complexity. In all, very yummy! And a rather sweeter version than the first soup.
So, this all led to a big chest freezer full of soups and stock, set aside for the winter. A long tough day in the kitchen. But worthwhile and fun.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Spaghetti
Tonight was a late night, so I cooked simply--spaghetti with red sauce. But it wasn't ragu in a bottle. I browned up some hot Italian sausage, deglazed with some red wine, and added in some of my frozen home-made tomato sauce. At the end of last fall's tomato season, we bought probably 50-100 lbs of "seconds" tomatoes, and cooked them down into a sauce. We froze it up in our deep freeze, and have been enjoying it throughout the winter. The up-shot is two-fold. First, the taste is so much better than the jarred stuff. I get to decide what is in it, what it tastes like, how salty it is, and so on. That's huge. Second, it's actually cheaper to do that, by quite a bit, than to buy even moderate quality bottled sauce.
I chose to make it a very basic sauce that I could then add flavors to as I saw fit per individual container. That means I can use the same sauce for a garlic sauce, another with basil, a third with cheese, and so on. That's another big bonus. I'm not restricted to whatever the producer throws in the sauce. Finally, I'm just plain thrilled to be supporting local producers, even if I'm buying tomatoes at a dirt cheap price. They're unloading product that is not necessarily beautiful, but tasty and useful.
I chose to make it a very basic sauce that I could then add flavors to as I saw fit per individual container. That means I can use the same sauce for a garlic sauce, another with basil, a third with cheese, and so on. That's another big bonus. I'm not restricted to whatever the producer throws in the sauce. Finally, I'm just plain thrilled to be supporting local producers, even if I'm buying tomatoes at a dirt cheap price. They're unloading product that is not necessarily beautiful, but tasty and useful.
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