Posts Tagged tomato
September 22, 2011 at 6:33 am · Filed under Dried Fruit and Leathers ·Tagged 2011, tomato
Have you ever grown or seen Juliet tomatoes at the market. They’re kind of like a mini roma tomato and while they are too small for me to bother peeling and canning whole they are just the right size to dry. There are lots of methods for drying tomatoes including the age-old sun-dried variety. A few years ago I picked up an excalibur dehydrator on craigslist and that is what we use for all of our drying.
I’ve been drying the juliets from our garden all summer as they’ve ripened but I also ordered a half-bushel from the farm for an all out, run the dehydrator non-stop for a week, drying bonanza. Next year I should really try to get a quarter bushel at a time. We cut each tomato in half and toss them on the dehydrator tray. They should be arranged cut side up but honestly, there are just too many of them for me to worry about it.
They shrivel down to a pretty small size, nickel or quarter sized I’d say, so I usually use more than a recipe calls for. Most often I rehydrate them in some hot, even boiling, water before adding them to a dish but this year I want to experiment with grinding them up into a powder and adding it to sauce and soups. The flavor is so intensely tomato. We store them in a couple of vacuum-sealed canisters and I keep a small jar of them in the kitchen pantry.
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September 15, 2011 at 7:10 am · Filed under Fruit Preserves ·Tagged 2011, tomato
We never seem to can enough whole tomatoes. I just don’t seem to be able to get the amount of romas we want/need from our CSA farm. This year we were able to get 7 quarts and 3 pints worth canned with a flicker of hope for a smaller second batch. We’ll see if that happens. Next year I want to look into an additional source, we’ve tried growing them and we just never get enough to can. There is nothing like opening a jar of canned tomatoes in February to bring you back to summer.
DATE: 09/12/2011
FRUIT: half-bushel of roma tomatoes
SOURCE: CSA farm
RECIPE: from the Ball Blue Book
YIELD: 7 quarts, 3 pints
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August 31, 2011 at 7:56 am · Filed under Sauces, Salsas, and Chutnies ·Tagged 2011, pepper, salsa, tomato
Last week when we arrived at the farm to pick up our CSA share, just after experiencing our first earthquake, our farmer asked me if I wanted more tomatoes. I said I did but not that day. I could immediately tell by the look on her face that she had already set some aside for me so I quickly added unless you have some ready. Of course they did.
I had hit the wall when it came to tomato canning and needed a break but our farmer told me that she thought it was the last really good tomato week so I took them anyway. And they sat in my kitchen, and they started to ooze, and then they started to smell. Sunday I was going to deal with them but it was the urchins’ last day of summer before school so we played outside instead. Monday morning though I went through those tomatoes, pitched a whole bunch, and cut up the good ones for salsa.
DATE: 08/29/2011
FRUIT: celebrity tomatoes, italian hot peppers, and jalapeño peppers
SOURCE: CSA farm and the garden
RECIPE: from a friend
YIELD: 8 pints
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August 29, 2011 at 12:52 pm · Filed under Sauces, Salsas, and Chutnies ·Tagged 2011, barbecue, sauce, tomato
DATE: 08/24/2011
FRUIT: tomatoes, apples, onions
SOURCE: CSA farm and the farmer’s market
RECIPE: BBQ Sauce
YIELD: 18 pints
NOTES: I probably should have let it reduce a bit more. I also added half a jar of tabasco sauce this year to give it a little more kick.
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August 15, 2011 at 4:49 pm · Filed under Sauces, Salsas, and Chutnies ·Tagged 2011, cocktail, horseradish, sauce, tomato
On Tuesday I got bushel of tomatoes from our CSA farm to make pasta sauce. On Wednesday I made the pasta sauce and then wondered what I was going to do with the small amount of tomatoes left from the bushel. I had planned to make ketchup but it turns out there weren’t enough tomatoes for that, so….I thought for a while. Then I remembered that I saw a recipe for cocktail sauce in my newly acquired Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving — which I got from Costco last time we were there — and checked and sure enough it only uses 2 quarts of pureed tomatoes.
Friday morning Stefan picked up some horseradish for me and I pureed the remaining tomatoes to get, one-and-a-half quarts of puree. So, every tomato, big or small, that I had available went into the food processor. We’re talking cherries, grape, sungold, and red — just enough to get to 2 quarts of puree.
DATE: 08/12/2011
FRUIT: 2 quarts tomato puree
SOURCE: CSA farm and garden
RECIPE: cocktail sauce from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving
YIELD: 10 half-pints and one that didn't seal so went into the fridge
NOTES: I grated the horseradish in the food processor and ended up with long strings of horseradish. I let these cook a little bit and then pureed the whole thing with the immersion blender. This seemed to give it the perfect consistency.
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September 30, 2010 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Fruit Preserves ·Tagged 2010, tomato
DATE: 09/26/2009
FRUIT: half bushel of roma tomatoes with about 2 dozen tomatoes pulled out because they had blemishes (I’ll use those for sauce or salsa)
SOURCE: CSA farm
COST: $25.00
RECIPE: from the Ball Blue Book
YIELD: 5 quarts, plus 1 quart of puree
TASTE: good
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September 3, 2010 at 12:43 pm · Filed under Sauces, Salsas, and Chutnies ·Tagged 2010, jalapeño, salsa, tomato
DATE: 09/02/2010
FRUIT: quarter-bushel of tomatoes, 2 white onions, 6 yellow jalapeños and 3 italian hot peppers
SOURCE: CSA farm for the tomatoes and onions, the peppers came from the garden
COST: $15
RECIPE:
YIELD: 7 pints
TASTE: really good
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September 2, 2010 at 3:43 pm · Filed under Sauces, Salsas, and Chutnies ·Tagged 2010, jalapeño, salsa, tomato
DATE: 09/01/2010
FRUIT: quarter-bushel of tomatoes, 2 red onions, 4 yellow jalapeños and 4 italian hot peppers
SOURCE: CSA farm for the tomatoes and onions, the peppers came from the garden
COST: $15
RECIPE:
YIELD: 8 pints
TASTE: really good
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