Tomatoes, figs, dried fruit, and bake sale prep

DRIED TOMATOES: Friday, I received my 9-tray Excalibur dehydrator - a bargain at $149 for a refurbished demo model (not a refurbished customer model) with shipping included. It looks brand new -- it has no "blemishes" on the case as described in the Ebay ad and if I didn't know any better, I'd say it was new.

Saturday, I put it to work right away on some Principe Borghese tomatoes - they are smaller than some of my cherry tomatoes.

YIELD:
1 - 16 oz jar dried tomatoes
1 - 8 oz jar dried tomatoes

YELLOW KETCHUP: Sunday, I put a couple pots of tomatoes on -- one full of 5# of yellow and orange tomatoes for ketchup and another of around 6# for marinara sauce. For the ketchup, I found a lot of recipes and even one ketchup recipe on a site that lets you customize the yield and adjusts the quantities of ingredients.

TOMATO KETCHUP RECIPE:

• 5# seeded and halved tomatoes - cook down and process in food mill to remove skins, return to pot.

Add:

• 1/2 large onion, pureed in blender or food processor
• 5 cloves garlic, pressed

In a small sauce pot, simmer:

• 2 c apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 stick Ceylon cinnamon
• 1.5 Tbs cloves
• 1 Tsp fenugreek seed
• Pinch chili flakes
• 1/2 tsp coriander seed

Reduce the vinegar by 50% over low flame (you don't want to boil it off too quickly!)

Strain and add vinegar to pot with tomato sauce, onion and garlic. Cook down and then put in a slow cooker on low until it reaches a consistency you like. Puree in blender to reduce the rest of onion & garlc pieces. Can or store in refrigerator.

YIELD:
4 c orange ketchup


TOMATO SAUCE: Six pounds of tomatoes cooks down to just enough sauce for two plates of fresh rotini pasta, and leftovers for four lunches, after you've added herbs and vegetables.

GARDEN MARINARA RECIPE: 6# fresh tomatoes, seeded & halved - cook down and process in food mill to remove skins, return to pot.

Sautee in olive oil until soft:

• 1/2 large white onion, coarsely chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, coarsely chopped

Add to sauce bring to simmer:

• 4-5 2" basil plant tops, chiffonade & chopped
• 4-5 2" oregano sprigs, chopped

10 4" zucchini (or courgettes) cut into 1/2" rounds, sauteed until soft - add to sauce right before serving.

YIELD: about 10 cups sauce with vegetables
2 dinners over fresh rotini pasta with bread
4 lunch portions of pasta sauce


FIG PRESERVES: James' mom brought us some delicious figs from her neighobor's garden in Sacramento. "I brought you four dozen figs!" she exclaimed. We we curious to know why the figure was so exact and then impressed with her genius -- to keep the very ripe figs from crushing under their weight, she put them into egg cartons!

I brought home 2 dozen figs and decided to turn them into jam.

RECIPE:
24 ripe figs, halved and mashed
1.5 c sugar
1/4 c lemon juice

Simmer figs in 1-2 cups of water until soft and mash. Measure - you should have about 4 cups of figs & water. Add the lemon juice and follow the pectin instructions -- in my case, 3 tsp of calcium water, and 4 tsp of pectin added to the sugar before mixing it into the preserves.

YIELD:
2 12 oz recycled jars, stored in the fridge (one for me, one for James)

DEHYDRATING: The new Excalibur works great! I dried tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. The Principe Borghese tomatoes from Saturday came out on Sunday and are about the size of dried cherries. I also dried some of the other cherry tomatoes -- the volunteer cherries came out about the same as the Principe Borghese, while the Black Cherry, Blondkopfchen and Aunt Ruby's Yellow Cherry tomatoes were a bit smaller.

I also put in the rest of the Asian pears I had been saving in the refrigerator, along with a whole cantalope sliced up, and the rest of the red flesh apples and a few other apples I had been saving.

YIELD:
1 1.5 liter baling wire jar of thin dried fruit slices (I'll try to photograph before I eat them all)


(UN)BAKING: Last but not least - I also put together a double batch of lemon bars from the "Joy of Vegan Baking" cookbook, and started the Cafe Gratitude raw coconut cream pie recipe (but ran out of time and energy).


BIG THANKS to Lisa for coming over and helping to halve and seed tomatoes for the dehydrator, mill tomatoes, clean dishes and keep me company - we had a lot of fun for a few hours and it was really good to have some help. She also loaned her slow cooker so I could put the ketchup in it overnight.

Darfur Stoves Project

If you're reading this, chances are you don't risk rape or other violent attacks when you prepare your meals. If you are a woman living in Darfur, where millions of refugees live in very dense camps, and you have to walk for up to 7 hours to collect firewood for cooking, chances are you will be assaulted and raped if you encounter a militia group. The catch is - you can't bring a man along for protection because he'll most certainly be killed by the militia and the camps are only about 20% male because of the genocide.

A group in Berkeley has engineered a cookstove that uses 75% less fuel than the traditional three-stone hearth used by these refugees.

Please consider donating to this project -- just $20 will help someone make dinner with less risk to her life and health.

Darfur Stoves Project
Engineers Without Borders

Paste Tomato Sauce-Off

This weekend I scored some killer tomatoes from an organic garden at a lovely private campground in Willits. These babies were huge -- like 7" long, looking more like big red peppers than tomatoes. The gardener said they were Romas -- and that all the big tomatoes had been picked and made into sauce already. I brought home about 10 of them and tonight I made a small batch of sauce (saving the seeds, of course) with these Romas, and a small batch of sauce with some of my Debarao tomatoes.

The Romas had a very sweet flavor before I even cooked them -- it's a lot hotter up there in Willits! The Debarao tomatoes had a very solid flesh and less juice than the Romas, and a very tomato-y taste. Both are good and after packing four small jars, I ate the rest of the sauce on warm bread.

YIELD:
2 - 8 oz jars Roma tomato sauce
2 - 8 oz jars Debarao tomato sauce

The Hawaiian pineapple and Yellow Ruffled are starting to come in, as are the Amana Orange. I think I am going to make some yellow and orange pasta sauce out of those babies, too. The Italian Tree tomatoes are starting to get really ripe, and may make a nice little batch of sauce as well.

I'm looking at buying an Excalibur dehydrator - we haven't had enough heat or sun for my solar dehydrator to work very well. I'm pretty disappointed in the lack of weather cooperation at tomato harvest time here.

Pear Vanilla Vodka

Today I decanted the green pear infused vodka -- the jar that had half a vanilla bean and four allspice berries in it? I just want to say "YUM" -- I put some into a flask with about a tablespoon of maple syrup and it makes a very delicious, fruity liqueur. I may try agave with this as well, before serving.

YIELD:
1 750 ml bottle pear-vanilla fruit brandy

Quince Butter, Round 2

Tonight, I was determined to make membrillo. I took the last 8 cups of quince pulp, added some juice and water to puree it in the blender, measured the sugar and pectin and cooked. And cooked - we're going on four hours now and I don't think it's going to be membrillo, so this, too, will be quince butter.

I also took the rest of the first membrillo attempt, added juice and pectin to it and made it into a nice thick but still liquid quince butter. I just hope it is still spreadable once it cools -- I'm afraid the first batch of quince butter is going to be rather firm and sticky, ideal for crispy toast or spreading on a slice of manchego (for those non-vegans) but not so good for soft bread. Might make a killer filling between two pizzelles, though.

I confess that this stuff is probably really good out of the jar with a spoon but I'll pass along those calories to my friends and family instead.

YIELD:

Quince butter #1 (super caramelized, same as Monday's batch)
4 - 12 oz jars
8 - 8 oz jars
1 - 4 oz jar
plus one 10 oz jar that went into the fridge.

Quince butter #2 (dark pink)
12 - 8 oz jars

Quince Preserves

The membrillo just didn't behave. All I can imagine is that there wasn't enough pectin in the fruit - perhaps it wasn't ripe enough. The quince paste has caramelized to a deep dark brown, it tastes great but it's not membrillo. It has the rich, dark, sweet texture of my favorite apple butter from cider mills in Ohio and Michigan -- most apple butter I find these days is just slightly thicker than apple sauce.

Tonight, I heated up a batch and put it into 4 oz jars, and labelled it:

Quince Butter

YIELD:
10 4 oz jars

I'm going heat up the rest of the quince paste and add pectin to see if that helps it out. I still have about 8 cups of quince pulp in the refrigerator and I'm going to add a shitload of pectin to it to make it set very hard. I will have membrillo, dammit!

Pottsfield Relish

Pottsfield Relish, September 2007

After breakfast, James and I made up a big batch of Pottsfield Relish. This is from my grandmother's recipe -- it's a sweet tomato, onion and pepper relish. I actually found other versions online (varies as Pottsfield and Pottsville) which include cabbage, but the basic recipe is: tomatoes, onions, green peppers, a bit of vinegar and sugar. That's it.

RECIPE: POTTSFIELD RELISH
6 large tomatoes - peel, cook and strain
4 large onions, chopped
1 large green pepper, chopped

Add 1 c. sugar
1/2 c. vinegar
1 t. salt

Cook on stove 40-45 minutes or until thick. Ladle into jars and hot water bath process 10 minutes.

USE: This stuff is great to add to recipes, on top of potatoes, on top of mac-n-cheese and all sorts of things. My grandmother always put it on top of meatloaf and pot roast while they baked in the oven. As kids, we relished chilled Pottsfield relish on top of a bubbly open face cheese sandwich.

NOTES: After going out on my own, I continued to make Pottsfield Relish and applesauce every year -- even if I didn't have the time or resources to make other preserves. These two things are staples in my kitchen.

However, I've always double, triple or quadrupled the recipe, spending hours over the sink with a pile of large plum tomatoes, scalding them, seeding them, cooking them down. I always reserve the juice from the seeds to strain and reserve with the juice I pour off the tomatoes before adding the onions and peppers -- it makes a great soup base.

This year's batch, turned out a bit different -- it was a lot more watery and the tomatoes really cooked down lot.

I realize now, after looking at the results, the recipe and last year's photo that I did a few things differently. First, this batch of relish came out much like my grandmother's relish in her later years, after they moved to a retirement community. What I did differently this time:

• I used Heirloom tomatoes - not just plum tomatoes - and they cooked down a lot more
• I seeded the tomatoes, but didn't cook them down before adding the peppers and onions.
• I didn't peel the tomatoes (they were really ripe and I thought they would just dissolve).
  

It's been years since I have used tomatoes that weren't plum tomatoes for this -- now I remember why! Plum tomatoes have stronger meat and hold their own in cooking a lot better. The result tastes great, but looks a bit different from last year's relish (I've got the last quart in the fridge having opened it only two weeks ago when tomatoes appeared imminent).

Still yummy, though.

YIELD:
13 - 12 oz jars Pottsfield relish
1 - 12 oz jar tomato juice
1 - ice cube tray of tomato juice

Waffles!

I got my vintage Rival waffle/pizzelle iron on Friday -- so today, we put it to use. It took several attempts and two batches of batter to figure out how to get it right, but I think I may have it figured out. It's been over 20 years since I have made waffles or pizzelles. I plan to make up a batch of pizzelles for a fundraiser at work... or maybe vegan cannoli since this came with cannoli forms.

Quince-o-Rama

Wednesday night, I spent about five hours peeling, quartering and coring 25# of quince. My plan was to use the juicer to process the quince -- taking the juice for jelly and using the pulp to make membrillo.

Sadly, this experiment did not work. The quince just aren't juicy enough. I cooked down all the quince and set the mash to drain in the colanders overnight, reserving about 1.5 gallons of juice for jelly.

Today, I took a PTO day to finish up the quince. I really wanted to get this mess out of my kitchen. I still have 15# of Asian pears in my refrigerator to manage!

QUINCE JELLY: The quince jelly turned out great -- it set nicely, though I think I boiled it down a bit too much and could have had more jars if I hadn't been distracted with outher housework.

YIELD:
14 8 oz jars

MEMBRILLO: Next project was to make membrillo. I used the leftover pulp for one batch and the juice/mash from the juicer for another batch. I followed the instructions and added equal weight of sugar to fruit and it got thick. It got like molten lava. The spoon could stand up and jumbo drops of molten quince goo came out of the pot and to burn my arm and leave blisters. I figured, it was ready. I put the quince goo into baking dishes (and some onto a silicone mat on a half-sheet) and put it in the oven at 125 to set.

But, after 8 hours in the oven, it didn't set. It's going to stay in the oven overnight in the hopes that it reduces enough.

Black Cherry Tomatoes