Tomatoes!

You know the old saying, "When life gives you tomatoes, make tomato sauce."

Well, maybe not quite.

But that is what I've been doing with the pounds and pounds of tomatoes from the farm. There are slicing tomatoes--eight pounds today, and heirloom tomatoes--another eight pounds, and plum tomatoes, and grape tomatoes, and itty bitty yellow tomatoes the size of currants. They are all so good. And even though they are overflowing my counters--thank goodness they don't need refrigeration--I am not one to turn tomatoes away. Most of the large tomatoes have been sliced and used on burgers and sandwiches. The heirloom tomatoes have been chopped and made into salads; the itty bitty tomatoes have been consumed by my son who was tickled pink that they were so tiny and delicious.

But that still leaves, oh, about 30 more pounds of tomatoes. And they just keep coming. So. There is only one thing to do with so much goodness: make tomato sauce. I've never made tomato sauce before because frankly, jarred tomato sauce is cheap and requires so little work. And even if you don't like prepared tomato sauce, regular canned tomatoes cooked with some herbs and spices are cheaper than buying fresh tomatoes by the pound and making your own. If I weren't receiving pounds and pounds of tomatoes from my CSA, I wouldn't spend $20 on tomatoes just to make one quart of sauce.

But here I am, making sauce. Last week, before I went on vacation, I had about six pounds of grape tomatoes. Now, grape tomatoes aren't normally used for making sauce since you usually blanch the tomatoes and then peel the skin. Can you imagine peeling 300 grape tomatoes? I think not. There is a different way and I found it in a book called, Can I Freeze It?. It's so easy and comes out really well.

Tomato Sauce
(adapted from Can I Freeze It? by Susie Theodorou)

6-8 pounds of tomatoes (cherry or grape)
6 Tbsp. water

1. Put the cherry or grape tomatoes in a big pot. Add 6 tablespoons of water. Take a piece of parchment paper, crumple it and wet it. Smooth is out a bit and place directly on top of the tomatoes so that it's touching them. Cover. Set the heat to low and let them simmer for 30-60 minutes. They're done when a bunch of them have split. Drain and let cool a bit.

2. Puree in a blender or food processor.

3. Take a fine-meshed sieve and set it over a bowl. Working in small batches, pour the puree into the sieve and use a large spoon to force the puree through the sieve. I started doing this with a spoon but then switched to a ladle and the work went much faster. A regular spoon is fairly useless so get something really big. After pressing a bit, scrape the tomato sauce from underneath the sieve periodically to get as much as possible. After there's no more left to press, what you will have left in the sieve are the skins and seeds. You can dump those out.

4. Use immediately or freeze for later use. You can freeze in two-cup batches in quart-sized freezer bags or in larger batches in gallon bags. If you use it immediately, put the sauce in a pot and simmer with herbs and spices of your choice.

Since all I've done is freeze my sauce, I haven't yet tried making a pasta sauce out of it. I'm sure I will soon though!

Slow Cooker Stuffed Cabbage

Week 11's take included lettuce, beets, cabbage, cilantro, scallions, shallots, zucchini, tomatoes, onions and potatoes. Since I hadn't done anything with cabbage yet, it was time to use it in some way. I adore cabbage but usually don't buy it because it doesn't strike me as a quick-to-make kind of vegetable. When confronted with cabbage, I fall back on Eastern European dishes or coleslaw because I can't think of other uses for it. So this week, I decided to make stuffed cabbage with the intention of freezing some for later. I used a slow cooker to make things easy but you don't have to if you don't have one. A regular pot will work just fine.

I was quite pleased with the result since it tasted just like my mother's golubtsi from childhood.

Stuffed Cabbage
(Print this recipe)

1 large head of cabbage
2-3 carrots, grated
1/2 cup caramelized onions, finely chopped (optional)
butter or olive oil for cooking
1 lb. ground beef (or other ground meat of your choice)
1/2 cup cooked rice
1 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes
ketchup
salt and pepper

1. In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil. Tip: Put the whole head of cabbage into the empty pot and fill the pot with water to just above the cabbage. Then, remove the cabbage and bring the water to a boil. Why? You don't really want to overfill the pot and have boiling water displaced onto your stove-top once you lower the cabbage in. :)

2. Wash the cabbage and turn it upside down so that the core is facing you. Using a long, sharp knife, cut a channel all the way around the core. If you can succeed in cutting the core out completely, that will be great, but if you can't get it out, don't worry. Scoring should do the trick provided you cut deeply into the cabbage and cut all the way around to create a channel between the core and the leaves. Some recipes tell you to pull the leaves off a fresh cabbage before boiling them but I've never had success with this method because cabbage leaves are tightly packed and they will break if you try to do this.

3. Carefully lower the cabbage head into the boiling water core side down and let it boil for 10 minutes. Hold it down with something heavy if need be (because it will try to float). Once the leaves start to cook a bit, turn off the heat and pull the cabbage head out of the water. Don't drain the boiling water yet just in case the cabbage doesn't cook all the way through.

4. When cool enough to handle, peel the leaves off and let them cool further. If the interior leaves don't seem as cooked as the exterior leaves, feel free to pop the cabbage back into the pot for another few minutes of boiling. The purpose of the boiling is to loosen the leaves so that you can work with them and not to cook the cabbage completely.  Depending on the size of the cabbage, you ought to end up with about 12-15 large leaves. Reserve the smallest leaves for a later step.

5. While the leaves are cooling, heat a pan and add a little butter or olive oil. Sauté the grated carrots until golden, about 5 minutes. Let cool.

6. In a large bowl, mix together the ground beef, rice, half the carrots, the onions (if using), salt and pepper to taste, and 3-4 tablespoons of ketchup.

7. Take a cabbage leaf and lay it out flat with the stem end facing away from you.  If the stem is too hard, you can cut it out to make rolling easier. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture at one end of the leaf and roll it up like you would a burrito. Continue making cabbage rolls in this way.

8. In a slow cooker (or a large pot), lay some of the reserved cabbage leaves on the bottom to prevent burning. Place cabbage rolls on top of these leaves. Spread half of the remaining carrot mixture on top of the rolls and add half a can of the crushed tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Add a second layer of cabbage rolls on top and again spread the remaining carrots and crushed tomatoes on top. Season well again. Add additional water mixed with more ketchup (several tablespoons) to make enough sauce to cover the rolls.

9. If using your slow cooker, cook on low for 4 hours. If using a regular pot, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for about half an hour. Uncover, turn up the heat, and let the sauce boil away until somewhat reduced, about 5-15 minutes. The leaves should be tender and the meat should be cooked through.

These freeze well so make lots and put some in the freezer for a future meal.

A Fresh Summer Salad and Crispy Potatoes

Weeks 9 and 10 were nearly identical: lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes,  beets, cabbage, and chard. Week 9 provided me with zucchini and Week 10 provided me with corn instead. I was very excited by these selections because we are now in territory that I'm familiar with: potatoes and tomatoes, staples that my kitchen is never without year-round. Although supermarket potatoes taste the same year-round, tomatoes are another story altogether. In winter, we have to put up with those pale, tasteless things that pass for tomatoes. So when the summer tomatoes come, it is cause for celebration. We usually just slice tomatoes and eat them raw in salads.

One of my favorite salads is a variation on a summer salad that I grew up with, simply called Summer Salad. This salad is traditionally made with cucumbers and radishes but when my son was little, he didn't like radishes and I began substituting tomatoes. You can use cucumbers and radishes or cucumbers and tomatoes or a combination of the three. The ingredients in this salad are so simple you won't believe how delicious it can be with just those few items. The secret is in the combination of sour cream and salt. It won't taste nearly as good if you don't salt it well.

Summer Salad
(Print this recipe)

1 seedless baby cucumber
1 tomato (or several radishes)
2-3 Tbsp. sour cream
Salt

Dice the vegetables so that they are uniform in size. If you can't find seedless baby cucumbers--and they do make a difference--make sure you take the seeds out of a regular cucumber before dicing it. Add the vegetables to a bowl and mix with sour cream and salt to taste. Let stand 5-10 minutes and taste. Add more salt if necessary. The salad will begin to release a lot of liquid pretty quickly. You can drain it if you wish or simply eat it up when you get to the end of the salad.

Crispy Potatoes
(Print this recipe)

2-3 potatoes
oil for cooking
salt

The trick to getting these potatoes crispy on the outside and soft on the inside is to boil and then fry them. It takes a little longer but the results are worth it.

Wash, peel and slice the potatoes into thin rounds, about 1/8th inch thick (or thinner). Put them into a pan and add enough water to cover them. Bring to a boil over medium heat. At this point, test the potatoes with a fork. They should be underdone a bit but not hard. If they are still quite hard, turn the heat to low and cook another few minutes. Drain and lay the slices out on a paper towel to dry somewhat. Heat a pan on medium high and add sufficient oil. This is not the time to skimp on oil. When hot, begin adding the slices to the pan carefully, making sure not to overlap the slices. If the slices are still wet, you will get a lot of splatter so it's a good idea to make sure they are as dry as possible. Fry until they are crispy on the bottom side, then flip to the other side. Remove from pan and onto paper towels. While the potatoes are still hot, sprinkle with salt. Continue frying the rest of the potatoes in batches in the same manner.

Enjoy!