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 New Way to Ripen Late-Season Tomatoes

You will not be surprised to hear that I learn as much from my students as they do from me.

Two weeks ago, my Edible Landscaping class had to take out all the summer crops from the veg beds at school, and plant up our fall and winter crops. The tomato plants were still pumping out fruit, despite their blighted leaves, and so a conversation ensued about what to do with them. I mentioned my old trick of picking them green, putting them under a tea towel, and letting them ripen. Several students talked about good recipes for green tomatoes. Then, another student mentioned that she always cuts the vine at the base, then hangs the tomato plants (vine and all) upside down outside, and the tomatoes ripen beautifully.

The class went for that idea, and when I suggested that they be hung indoors, I was promptly overruled. The vines got hung up on the fence that surrounds our garden.

At first, not much happened. The vines started to die and looked awful, while the green fruit just hung there. But as you can see, slowly, the tomatoes started to ripen. And then suddenly all at once, the rest of them changed color. And now we’ve got a bumper crop of tomatoes, that somehow the birds have ignored.

Today, for the first time this fall semester, there were finally enough greens to harvest for a salad. The students made a big bowlful of greens, radishes, borage, and yep - tomatoes - all dressed with a parsley vinaigrette. It felt good to see that process happening all over again; the garden providing a weekly lunch to my students this semester just as it did in spring semester.

So, a good idea. Cut the tomato plants at the base and hang them, vines and all, upside down in the garden to ripen. I’ll be doing that every year, from now on.

That Time of Year

April is distracting, isn’t it? The house finches are plucking coconut coir from my hanging baskets to make their nests, the yellow-faced bumblebees are in the borage, and the clematis ‘Montana’ is a froth of pink. Nature is in the midst of transition.

And so is the garden! This is the time of year when the tomatoes and pepper seedlings have to be taken out of the ‘greenhouse’ every morning, and returned back every night. It’s still too chilly for them to be put into the raised beds, so they need to be babied a bit. Oh, it’s hard to wait.

But they’re still too little, and the soil too cold. However, other things can be planted! I’ve removed the lingering cauliflower, cabbage, chard, broccoli, and beets; in their places I’ve planted potatoes (Yukon Gold, Huckleberry Gold, and German Butterball), pole beans (Rattlesnake, my favorite) and the dry beans from Rancho Gordo. I’ll wait until May to plant cucumbers, basil, and winter squash.

We’re still eating peas, both shelling and snap, nearly every day, along with asparagus (six years after planting the most recent batch of crowns, and we’re finally getting all we can eat). Artichokes are coming on, and the herbs are going crazy - the oregano and marjoram and sorrel just overtaking their beds, and the chives and culinary sages blooming beautifully purple!

And the flowers… well, the flowers are abundant. Borage, and poppies, and phacelia, and heuchera, and columbine, and salvias, and echium…. the list goes on and on, and I haven’t even told you about the fruit trees and bushes yet. Summer is coming!

What’s happening in your garden?