Week 14 - Green Tomato Relish Pictorial

Now that we have had a freeze (see freeze prep photo post here), it is officially fall. Scott says that we shouldn't dare give out any more summer squash or zucchini (does everyone have a loaf of zucchini bread in the freezer yet?) but you're getting them at least one more time.

This week's share includes carrots, potatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers/summer squash, 2 lbs green cherry tomatoes, onions, parsley, two apples, and one jalapeno.

In honor of fall, everyone is receiving the ingredients to make a small batch of green tomato relish, which explains the last five items in the share list. 

The ingredients in the shares makes slightly more than four half-pints
of relish.

I don't get a lot of time to can in the height of harvest, and most of our cucumbers and ripe tomatoes go to the members anyway, so I preserve the items that we have in abundance once the season slows. Thankfully, that allows me to make all the green tomato relish I want. It's sweet, sour, and pleasantly spicy. Perfect with cheese, lunch meat, or hot dogs. I want a lot of it.

I understand that not everyone is up for canning, so before I get to the relish how to I'm going to offer another option.

Fried Green (Cherry) Tomatoes

Fried stuff is good. Especially when it's garden fresh stuff coated with egg wash and a layer of corn meal crunch. Generally I fry sliced green tomatoes by first dredging in flour, then egg wash, then seasoned corn meal, then pan frying in canola or peanut oil. I wanted to include my recipe because fried green tomatoes need to be enjoyed in the Yoop, but the shares have green cherry tomatoes. This is my solution. 

• 2 cups green cherry tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1/4 cup corn meal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• canola or peanut oil for frying

1. Halve the cherry tomatoes and place them in a medium mixing bowl.
2. Toss tomatoes with the flour, coating as evenly as possible.
3. Lightly beat the egg and milk together, then toss the tomatoes with the egg mixture.
4. Combine corn meal, salt, black pepper, and paprika.
5. Add the corn meal mixture to the tomatoes and toss, again coating as evenly as possible. It will be a bit slippery and lumpy. That is okay.
6. Cover the bottom of a 12 inch frying pan with about an 1/8 of an inch of oil and heat it over medium high heat.
7. When the oil is hot enough to make a drop of water sizzle (test with just a drop - otherwise you risk a burn) pour the tomato mixture in the pan like a giant pancake.
8. When the bottom is set and turning golden, flip the "pancake". It will break apart, just try to flip all the pieces.
9. Cook until the second side is set and golden. Remove from heat.

I snapped this photo just after the flip so you would know what you were going for.
Sorry my stove is a bit of a mess, note the recipe notebook in the background.

And onto the relish.

Green Tomato Relish

If you taste the relish right after cooking you may think it doesn't live up to my praise, don't worry. It needs a month on the shelf before it is perfect. If you want to eat it before then you will just have to settle for really good.

• 2 pounds green tomatoes (cherry or otherwise)
• 2 small or one medium onion
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper (or none if you despise heat)
• 10 stems parsley, tough lower stem removed
• 2 tart, firm fleshed apples
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cinnamon stick 
• 10 whole allspice berries
• 20 whole black peppercorns

Place the tomatoes, onion, parsley, and jalapeno into the bowl of a food processor. It chops much better if you put the parsley and jalapeno on the bottom, but I wanted you to see how the parsley is trimmed. Use all tender portions of the stem along with the leaves.

Chop until it looks like this. It only takes a few seconds. You want some texture left in it. Once chopped, transfer the mixture to a sauce pot that will hold all of the ingredients with room for simmering.

Chop the apples into small pieces.

Add them to the pan along with the sugar, vinegar, and spices. There's no need for a spice bag because the allspice and pepper are left in for canning and the cinnamon is easy to fish out.

Bring to a boil and simmer until the apples are soft, 30 - 45 minutes. Ladle the hot relish into clean half pint jars (you should need four with about a half a cup left over) leaving a half inch head space. Top with two piece canning lids and tighten the rings "fingertip tight".

Boil for ten minutes in a boiling water bath (AKA an old stockpot with enough water to cover the jars by at least one inch). There is less risk of breaking a jar if you use new jars, do not close your lids too tightly, and bring the water to a boil with the jars in it, rather than adding jars to already boiling water.

The relish will keep for at least a year on the shelf. Remember it is best after it has sat for at least one month.

Homemade Condiments: Preparation for the Dark Days Ahead

If you are a CSA member, there are a few things that I would like you to know about your farmers.

1. They are busy.
2. They love ugly vegetables, leftovers, and the leavings that get pulled out of the field at season's end.
3. They appreciate you a lot.



A bit of what we shared with our members this season. Thank you
CSA members of the world.


At least those things are true of me and my husband.

I think that most people understand that growing vegetables is a lot of hard labor. It is, of course, labor that we love or we wouldn't be doing it, but it cuts into our time for doing other stuff. Like eating and sleeping. And canning.

Canning is what I am actually getting at here. I make some preserves to sell at the market, but I don't have time to can much to put on my shelves during the growing season. Most of our produce goes to the shares, the market, or our dinner, and most of my energy goes to growing said produce, working my day job (yes, I still have one), and loving our one year old daughter.

So, when fall comes along and other people are sitting back admiring their well stocked pantries, I start to fill mine. The CSA season is over, the fields are getting cleaned out, and I have time to can stuff (and love my daughter) almost to my heart's content.



Cold weather goodies we just cleaned out of the garden: parsley, green tomatoes,
and scallions. I'll assume you knew that we didn't grow the ginger.










This year I am particularly excited to get canning because I am going to be participating in Urban Hennery's Dark Days Challenge, which is a challenge to eat local through the winter months (December 1st through April 15th) when finding food produced in your community can be especially tricky. I want to be able to rely on items that I have prepared ahead of time for some of this challenge.

To that end, I have been making condiments.  Condiments have been my favorite thing to can since I started canning. They allow for creativity in flavor combinations, unlike tomato and apple sauces - which we eat but aren't exciting to make, and we eat them - unlike jams and jelly which sometimes sit on the shelf indefinitely. I make a mean crabapple ketchup that my husband and I love on meatloaf (and hotdogs - it's cool if they're local hotdogs from Vollwerth's, right?) and I have been trying to perfect a chokecherry barbecue sauce that I use on chicken for a few years now, but this year I have been branching out.



From smallest to largest: ginger scallion sauce, green tomato relish, chimichurri.

My green tomato relish recipe is still under construction, so I'm not going to post it right now. I mentioned it simply because I made a whole lot of it (along with salsa verde and pickled tomatillos) so you can expect it to turn up frequently during the coming dark days.

My green tomato relish recipe has been posted and can be found here.

I am going to share my ginger scallion sauce and chimichurri recipes though. They're both pretty easy, especially if you employ a food processor, and they are extremely useful condiments worthy of having on hand. Happily, the main ingredient of each also happened to be lingering in the fields when we cleaned things up for the season and survived my neglect while I dealt with the more perishable items.  I'll start with the simplest one first.

Ginger Scallion Sauce

My brother in law introduced me to ginger scallion sauce earlier this summer. He discovered it via Francis Lam's writings on Salon.com. It only has four ingredients so I haven't changed it much from the way Mr. Lam presented it, but I'm still going share how I do it because that is what the internet is for. I do make it with a lot less oil than Francis Lam's version. I just like it better that way.

When I made the batch pictured above my coat was hanging on a hook in the kitchen near where I combined the oil with the ginger and scallions. It has smelled like a Chinese restaurant ever since. To me this is a seriously good thing.

The coat, not yet ginger scallion scented, out and about on Halloween.

This quantity of ingredients makes about two cups of sauce. It is best with rice, vegetables, eggs and fish.

• 12 ounces scallions, white and green sections
• 4 ounces fresh ginger
• 1/2 cup peanut oil
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

1. Chop the scallions and ginger very finely, until they have formed a paste. The only practical way to do this is with a food processor.
2. In the meantime, heat the peanut oil until it is smoking hot.
3. Transfer the ginger and scallions into a high sided, heat proof pot. The pot must be large enough that the hot oil can safely be added to the vegetables in the pot. Allow for boiling oil and splattering.
4. Stir the salt into the ginger and scallions.
5. When the oil is smoking hot, pour it in a steady stream over the vegetables, stirring as you do so. Continue stirring for a moment to incorporate all of the oil.
6. Cover and store in the refrigerator. 

Chimichurri

I just sort of stumbled upon chimichurri. It's origins are in Argentina, someplace I have never been and have no particular connection to. I'm not sure where I first read about it. I do know that when I ran across it I thought the flavor combination sounded heavenly. It is the kind of recipe that everyone makes their own way, so I read as many versions as I could, tried a few out, then combined the best of everything I had found to my liking. Feel free to tweak it as you see fit.

These quantities make a generous quart. It is fine to halve or quarter the recipe. This is great with red meats and sausages or with vegetables. Keep in mind that all of the listed measurements of minced or chopped things are after mincing. I do all of the chopping for this recipe with the food processor.

• 2 cups finely minced parsley
• 1/2 cup dried oregano
• 2 jalapeno peppers, or to taste, minced
• 1 cup finely chopped onion
• 20 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 4 teaspoons whole cumin, lightly crushed with a rolling pin, mortar and pestle, or something similar
• 2 cups olive oil
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1. Combine all of the ingredients.
2. Stir well to make sure that everything is well mixed.
3. Cover and refrigerate. This is really best once it has sat for at least 24 hours.

Refrigerated, both of these keep for at least a few months, certainly they keep as long as we can keep from eating them all up.

The most frustrating thing about farming

I've been really into taking pictures of things in pots lately. It must be all of the canning I am doing. It is the season for preserving the harvest.


The last pan of 2010 tomatoes - about to be sauced

Living seasonally is one of the most romantic things about farming. The time of year dictates our activities as farmers in a way that just doesn't happen much in modern life. It is one of the many things that I truly love about farming.

And also the thing that I most hate.

Living seasonally doesn't just mean that my life is tied to my environment, that I can live my respect for nature, and that I get to eat really well. Though, happily, those things are true. It means that I only get one go at things each year. One shot. So, as an optimistic 30 year old, living seasonally means I will only have - at most - 50 to 60 more tries at this.

My husband and I are constantly thinking about ways to make our farm better. He creates files about cultivation methods. I obsess over the best variety of shell bean to grow in our area. We both ponder sources for soil inputs, marketing methods, and the best way to grow a lot of tasty tomatoes. Each year we make a plan. We try to get it right. Of course there are always failures, big and small. We always end up with a big list of things to do differently next year.

50 tries probably sounds like a lot, but it isn't. Imagine that you only get 50 tries to get your life's passion right. A chef might cook the same dish, a pitcher practice the same pitch, a singer sing the same song countless times, until those actions are as natural as breathing.  A farmer only gets to live each season once, and there are only so many seasons in a lifetime.

Which is why it is such a pain in the butt when, as a farmer, you screw something up. Like I did last night. Actually, I suppose this screw up was more in my role as farmer's wife rather than as farmer because it was a failure in the kitchen and not the field, but I have plenty of both.

I had been saving the last of the blueberries we picked this year in our freezer to make a batch of blueberry basil jam, something I sell at the local farmers' market, just for us. Then I had a brilliant idea for something new to try with the blueberries, blueberry green tomato relish. It started out nicely...(more pictures of things in pots here)



Looks pretty...





Tastes good too.



And then it experienced a melt down. Literally. I went in the living room to hang out with my daughter while the pot simmered on the stove to allow the tomatoes to soften. A few minutes later, my husband called from the kitchen "This stuff is really boiling in here." We had a little chat about it. He stirred, turned down the heat, we called it good. When I returned, the blueberries and chunks of onion were disintegrated and, though the flavor of the relish was pretty good, it wasn't a relish. It had turned into a sort of thin blueberry ketchup with strangely large hunks of, nicely softened, green tomato throughout.

It wasn't a catastrophic failure, but I'm not sure how I'll use
up six pints of it.

I can think of a number of ways that this recipe went wrong. I used a bit too much vinegar, the wrong blueberry/tomato ratio, chopped the onions too fine and the tomatoes too large, and I obviously over cooked it. Plus I just realized that I should have added some fresh ginger. I'm sure that I could make another, better, batch of it right now. But I can't. I have to wait through the seasons before I can get my hands on more blueberries and green tomatoes.

My daughter, helping me photograph green tomatoes for the anticipated version of this post in which the relish turned out perfectly and we all lived happily ever after.