A Week's Worth of Tomatoes

It’s that glorious season when every time I go out to check the garden, I see another tomato ripening on the vine. I’ve had a few bad years of tomatoes at Poppy Corners, and have had to rely on my school garden supply; this year I’ve gotten lucky. Somehow I’ve found the right place (morning and late afternoon sun, midday shade) with the right watering plan (every other day, deeply), with the correct amount of pruning (none!), and with the right method of staking (Florida weave, sort of) - or at least ‘correct’ and ‘right’ for this particular summer in this particular climate. I may do the exact same thing again next year and get entirely different results - that’s the way things are going, my friends. I’ll never take a good harvest for granted again.

Anyway, it’s been glorious to have our fill of tomato dishes. I love summer cooking - lots of grilling, and picking of basil, and shucking of corn. I ask you, what else does one need for a delicious meal?

Here are some recipes that have been in heavy rotation here.

1. Summer Steak with Corn and Tomatoes: This one comes from the always-reliable Deb at Smitten Kitchen. This is an easy, delicious meal, and if you double it, you’ll have great leftovers for lunch the next day. You don’t have to use cherry tomatoes; slicing work just as well. And any ‘flat’ steak will do - skirt, flank, flap, flat iron. I also use another ear of corn because why not?

2. Chickpea Tagine with Tomato Jam (and fresh-caught halibut!): Adam is spending the summer with us as he works his way through job interviews. He’s been lucky enough to go out on a friend’s boat several times, fishing in the Pacific. He’s caught rockfish and halibut. He grilled the halibut to go with this tagine and it was amazing. We just piled the fish with the chickpeas and ate it all at once. Alexandra at Alexandra Cooks is a wonderful recipe-writer and has a lot of fabulous vegetarian recipes. I made my own ras-el-hanout and used some as seasoning on the fish, too. You could also have this with any protein of your choice although I think pork chops would be delicious with this.

3. Garlic Lime Steak and Tomato Salad: Another Smitten Kitchen recipe, this uses up a lot of ingredients we have in the garden right now (beans, cucumbers, cilantro, basil, jalapenos) and has a real Vietnamese flavor. I usually double the dressing/marinade and up the fish sauce a little bit.

4. Pasta Pomodoro with Grilled Chicken: You don’t need a recipe for this. Just throw together plenty of chopped tomatoes, garlic, basil, salt, and olive oil on a sheet pan and roast in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes or so. Marinate some chicken in lemon juice, sherry, garlic, and salt, then grill it. Cook some thin noodles. Wham! You’ve got pasta pomodoro. Any leftover sauce can be frozen and used later as a topping for pretty much anything!

5. Polenta-baked Eggs with Corn, Tomato, and Fontina: This is another Smitten Kitchen recipe that I got from one of Deb’s cookbooks. It’s especially great this time of year because eggs are also usually quite plentiful from our backyard chickens. Cook 1/2 cup polenta following directions on the package (I like Bob’s Red Mill or Anson Mills). When the polenta is nearly finished cooking, add 1/2 cup of corn kernels (fresh or thawed frozen). Stir and cook for a few more minutes. Add 1/2 cup grated fontina, and season well with salt and pepper. Then add 2 tablespoons of creme fraiche or sour cream. Stir until everything is creamy. Coat a cast iron skillet with butter, and transfer over the polenta mixture. Stir in a chopped tomato (or two) or some pureed tomato sauce. Smooth the surface, and make four indentations. Crack an egg into each one. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and with more grated fontina. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the whites are set. You might have to broil it for a few minutes to finish it up. It’s a trick to get the whites set but the yolks still runny, but the end result is delicious with a good crusty baguette.

6. One-pan Farro with Tomatoes (and Tom’s homemade Italian sausage!): Tom made a huge amount of Italian sausage this past spring, and it’s been fun to add it to all kinds of dishes. I love the chewy nuttiness of farro (I also like Bob’s Red Mill farro), and it goes really well with meaty things. Again, you can use any kind of tomato here.

7. Savory Tomato Galette with Tomato, Corn, Caramelized Onions, and Gruyere: Tom doesn’t love this because he has trouble with any soggy bottom pastry, but I don’t find this recipe all that soggy (the corn and cheese at the bottom help a lot) and frankly I wouldn’t mind if it was. Have I mentioned that Alexandra has my favorite focaccia recipe of all time? It’s worth checking that out, too. Both Adam and Rin make it regularly for sandwiches. Alexandra’s good at bread, in general, and has written both a bread cookbook (‘Bread, Toast, Crumbs’) and a new pizza cookbook.

Happy Cooking!

Freezer Salsa

I decided to make salsa with the rest of my school-garden-tomato-haul. I recently replanted our raised beds at home with winter crops, so the last of our summer pepper harvest was also used for this purpose along with our own garlic, and onions from a neighbor’s CSA share (she had so many onions that she begged me to take some!). I very roughly followed this recipe, omitting the cumin and using only hot peppers rather than a combination of hot and sweet.

Smell-o-vision would be good right about now

Since there are only two of us in the house at the moment, I don’t need to worry about having enough freezer space - there’s plenty of room. So instead of canning this salsa, I’ll just freeze it. The recipe reflects that, having less acid than usual, and I used jarred lime juice rather than fresh, and our own homemade apple cider vinegar, since I didn’t need to worry about food-safety-acidity-%. This made for a very casual salsa-making endeavor, especially with no water-bath canning to be done. I enjoyed the process a lot more, I must say!

I didn’t remove any of the pepper seeds or ribs, so this salsa has turned out a bit spicy! That’s ok - I’m the only wimp in the family, everyone else likes it that way. I used mostly 1/2 pint jars for this, so that we don’t have a huge jar of salsa sitting in the fridge for too long (and letting it go bad, therefore wasting it). They’re also the perfect size to share. Hooray for tomato season!

My Favorite Tomato Recipe

Last year, one of my students gave us a new genius idea to ripen tomatoes. It was time to cut down the vines to make room for the winter garden, and she instructed us to hang the vines, fruits and all, on the fence that rings the school garden. There, they ripened slowly in the sun, and (extremely surprisingly) did not seem to attract any wildlife; in fact, we had tomatoes available through October. So, this year’s class did the same thing.

The last two days, the tomatoes have been ripening like crazy with a burst of late-season heat. So I picked two buckets-full to bring home and process. I decided to make a batch of roasted tomato sauce, and a batch of salsa (we have a lot of peppers in the home garden right now). This afternoon, I worked on the sauce. I know I’ve written about this sauce here before, but I have a lot of new subscribers and it’s worth sharing again. It’s extremely simple and delicious, and can be used on pasta, on fish or meat, as a base for shakshuka (just add some spicy peppers), or as a topping for grilled bread. I also like it on homemade pizza.

No exact amounts needed, just use what you have on hand. I make this with plenty of olive oil and sea salt, using tomatoes, garlic, and basil from the garden. Preheat your oven to 350-375 degrees (you want these to slow-roast for a longer time). Slick your sheet pan with olive oil. Roughly chop the tomatoes and put on the sheet pan. Chiffonade your basil (or just chop it, whatever) and sprinkle it on top of the tomatoes. Mince plenty of garlic and add that. Drizzle more olive oil on top of everything and salt generously. I tend to roast for about an hour, but you’ll want to check frequently - you don’t want the garlic to burn or the tomatoes to scorch - your mileage may vary. It’s a good idea to stir the mixture a couple of times during the baking process. You want your sauce to be well-roasted but still saucy and jammy. We tend to like it just like this, but you can blend it using an immersion blender if you want a smooth sauce. I always make enough to eat the night that I make it, but with plenty of extra to freeze in quart jars for deep winter.

A favorite spring recipe

Is your herb garden bursting its confines, like mine? Fresh oregano, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, sage, and chives are at their springtime best right now. It’s a wonderful time to cut giant swathes of the stuff, tie with twine, and hang for drying.

It’s also a fine time for cooking with the soft fresh herbs. You can make pesto out of practically anything, or omit the nuts and garlic and make a simple an herb-oil puree to pour over any vegetable or meat. Make compound butters (we especially like garlic and thyme butter on grilled steak) and freeze for later use. Bake a focaccia topped with fresh herbs, or make mint ice tea/lemon verbena tisane. Now is the time to be profligate with herbs, while they are still soft and green, before they become woody and concentrated later on in the summer (when you’ll be inundated with basil, cilantro, and dill anyway).

One of our favorite things to do with young herbs is chop up a selection (today I used oregano, rosemary, chive, and thyme) in the food processor, with about a cup of cornmeal, a liberal amount of salt, and olive oil. This makes a paste that we often spread on pork tenderloin. After baked (in a 425 oven until cooked through), the herbed cornmeal makes a nice crust which adds so much texture and flavor to the not-so-exciting tenderloins. This would also be delicious on a firm white fish like cod, or even on tofu, if you’re a vegetarian.

I’d love to know how you like to use fresh herbs from your garden. Feel free to share a recipe in the comments!

A Childhood Favorite

When we moved to this property 18 years ago, we were delighted to inherit a few fruit trees located on the north side of the garden. Close to the fence line were an apple and peach, both gnarled and wonky in form, with old, disease-spotted trunks, and riotous overgrown greenery tufting absurdly out the tops. In another corner was a bushy quince, something neither of us had any experience with (and still don’t use to full advantage). The peach succumbed to disease several years ago; I replaced it with a mulberry that has yet to fruit. The quince, still vigorously bushy despite repeated attempts to contain it, mostly acts as a shady haven for the chickens in summertime. But the apple - well, I’ve worked hard to keep the apple producing. On low fruit years, I calendar a hard pruning for winter, and that always rewards me with a large summer harvest. On bushy years, I summer-prune it to manage its size. And as our garden has filled up with coops and raised beds, I’ve also halfway espaliered it to keep it flatter against the fence, and it doesn’t seem to mind that in the least. It just keeps on truckin’.

We don’t know what variety this tree is, but it ripens in July which is early for apples. The fruits are small and green, with a russet tint where the sun hits the skin, and they have very delicate flesh. They tend to be on the tart side, so it’s likely a variety meant for cooking rather than eating in-hand, but we eat them that way, too. The trunk and some of the larger branches have spots of canker, but I can’t bear to give up on it yet, not while it’s still producing so well.

Today, I was wandering around the garden trying to figure out what to have as a side to our steak and potato dinner. Unfortunately, I have covid, so I’m trying to stay out of the grocery store, and I am also taking a break from my school garden for a couple of days so I don’t accidentally infect anyone (thankfully some members of the Sustainability Club are taking care of the watering for me while I’m recuperating). This means I don’t have access to the produce there, and there’s so much more produce in the school garden (which has surprised me - I’ll be writing a post about that soon) than in the home garden. I don’t have any tomatoes or cucumbers yet at Poppy Corners; the only available peppers are spicy; I lagged in my harvesting of green beans and they all got giant and flaccid. After stripping those off and putting them in the compost (hopefully I’ll get another flush of beans soon), I was basically left with herbs and apples.

To complicate matters, I’ve been thinking a lot about a podcast I listened to recently in which a gut-health doctor/expert explained what our microbiomes prefer to eat. It turns out that the ideal diet for those little guys is plant food (I mean, did we really need someone to tell us that?), and a great variety of plant food at that - apparently they prefer 30 different plant foods per week. Simply put, the more diverse your diet is, the more diverse your microbiome is. Again, not terribly surprising, but 30 different plant foods can sound a little daunting, so I’ve been on a quest to determine if the Boegel diet meets that preference. Turns out, we’re doing quite well (the doctor said that nuts, seeds, and herbs also count, which helps), but it does take a little extra work, especially considering that I have a little… um… tomato addiction, and think eating them every day in season is quite reasonable.

Anyway, back to our dinner dilemma. I snipped some fresh thyme and chives; thyme and garlic could be mixed into softened butter, which would be an excellent addition to both our meat and potatoes, and the chives could be sprinkled over everything. As for the apples, I went down a rabbit’s hole trying to figure out how I could fry apples and onions to make a savory side dish (does anyone do this? If so, please share your recipe), but eventually decided to make that old childhood staple, applesauce.

I have good memories of my mother making applesauce every year in my youth. Actually, she still makes it every year. Growing up, we had a large vegetable garden, but not a lot of fruit. So we’d take several trips to a local farm called Butler’s Orchard to pick from their fields of berries and fruit trees. Then we’d eat some of it fresh, and mom would preserve the rest. She made jams with the berries, and sauce with the apples. She’d water-bath can these, often during the hottest days of the year, so we could eat them all year round. I must say I never appreciated that properly at the time! (Sorry, Mom, and thanks.)

My mother was an excellent steward of fresh produce and believed that nothing should be wasted. I remember her cooking the apples down in a little water, pits, cores, skin and all, to get as much nutrition out of the apples as possible. Then she’d put them through a food mill, add a teensy bit of sugar, and we’d have fresh applesauce sprinkled with cinnamon for supper before she canned the rest.

Reading this, it would be reasonable to assume that I too have been doing the same every year - I mean, how delicious! But I must confess that I have not been good about making applesauce in my adult life. Honestly, I’d rather have apple pie, or apple crisp, something firmly in the dessert camp (I do have such a sweet tooth). But today, I decided that applesauce could be a decent nutrient-dense side dish, standing in for a salad in my covid-housebound state. Also, supremely easy. I figured I could wing it, but just for kicks, I went through my cookbooks.

Years ago, Tom and I spent a ‘stay and cook’ weekend at The Apple Farm in Philo, up near the Mendocino coast. It was a revelatory weekend; we learned so much about cooking using ingredients from the farm and garden, and came home with so many recipes that we use frequently, like sorrel soup and rhubarb clafoutis. The Apple Farm is also a very beautiful place and the little cabins extremely cosy and comfortable, and the meals were just so delicious (duck! ribolleta!) . We also got to meet Sally Schmitt, a bit of a hero in the world of California cuisine. Sally Schmitt was the original owner of The French Laundry before they sold it to Thomas Keller. Before Chez Panisse even existed, Sally was one of the un-sung pioneers of farm-to-table cooking.

In retirement, Sally and her husband bought The Apple Farm, and along with their daughter and son-in-law, operated a farmstand and cooking classes. At the time of our visit, Sally and her husband were quite elderly and largely out of the day-to-day operations, but we saw them at mealtimes, which was a thrill.

Sally’s cookbook was published earlier this year, just after her death in March. I immediately bought a copy. It’s full of fun stories about the early days of what would become ‘California cuisine,’ and great pictures of ‘70s clothes and hair, and of course, wonderful recipes.

Being owners of an apple farm, naturally there is a section in the cookbook for apples, so I consulted their applesauce recipe. It wasn’t at all how I remembered my mother making it. Sally used apple juice instead of water, a full cup of sugar (to 4 cups juice and 8-10 lbs apples), a knob of butter, a tablespoon of salt, and no cinnamon! Also, she peeled and cored the apples first!

Well. I was torn. I called my mother, just to check in and see if I remembered her method correctly. That was a fun conversation, leading mom to later go look in her own files and books to see where she learned to do it that way, only to come up empty-handed. A mystery! I decided to go ahead and try Sally’s recipe this time, for a change. However, I didn’t have any juice on hand, so I used water. And I added several tablespoons of lemon juice. And I omitted the salt. Ok, maybe I just basically made up my own recipe.

Gotta say, it’s delicious. Creamy and sweet, but also tart, and full of the memories of childhood.

What’s your favorite applesauce recipe?