Poor Richard’s Almanac

Too many tomatoes (and tomatillos, too)! September 6, 2010

Silence Dogood here. I don’t know what you do over Labor Day Weekend, but I’ve been laboring. That’s because it’s time to put up tomatoes and tomatillos. As I did last year, I bought a Xerox-paper-box full of heirloom ‘Amish Paste’ and ‘San Marzano’ paste tomatoes Saturday morning, when our friend Ben and I trekked over to James Weaver’s Meadow View Farm in scenic Bowers, PA to try to beat the crowds that are sure to turn up there this coming weekend as part of the Bowers Chile Pepper Food Festival. (You’ll be hearing more about this from OFB and our heat-loving friend and fellow blog contributor, Richard Saunders, later in the week.)

Getting back to the tomatoes, ‘San Marzano’ is my favorite paste tomato, and of course, ‘Amish Paste’ is revered here in Amish country, so I was extremely excited with my haul. But of course, that meant I had to cook them. Fortunately, it finally cooled down this weekend: perfect weather for spending a really, really long time over a hot stove. Because I’m telling you, it takes a looong time to cook tomatoes—even paste tomatoes—down to the thickness I wanted, that tomato-paste spoon-stands-up-in-it thickness.

Our neighbors had also been giving us tomatoes, and of course we have some of our own, too (though we mostly focus on growing a variety of yummy cherry, pear, and plum tomatoes). I never turn down gifts of tomatoes, since I can always use them in sandwiches, salads, and sauces. And as overwhelming as it might seem, tomato season is over all too quickly here in Pennsylvania. So we try to eat vine-ripened tomatoes every single day during the season, and I always try to preserve some of that hot-off-the-vine freshness in sauces and salsas.

So there I was, washing and chopping tomatoes like a madwoman and dumping them into my biggest LeCreuset Dutch oven and into my Crock-Pot. (I wanted to do a comparison and see what the tomatoes did in each type of reduction.) I slapped a spatter shield rather than a lid over the huge pot full of tomatoes and turned the heat down low; that way the tomatoes could cook down faster without making a huge mess all over the stovetop (and yours truly). I weighted the spatter shield down with the bamboo spoon I was using to stir the tomatoes. I turned the Crock-Pot on low and wedged a toothpick under the lid on two sides to allow a little evaporation.

As the tomatoes in the Dutch oven cooked down throughout the afternoon and evening, I chopped more and added them until the pot was once again full, stirring well to distribute the fresh tomatoes throughout the pot. I’d have done the same thing with the Crock-Pot, but there was one little problem: the tomatoes in it weren’t cooking down, even with the toothpicks. It’s not that they weren’t cooking: They made a lovely batch of tomato juice. They just weren’t cooking down, reducing in volume. I tried pushing the lid open a bit to allow more steam to escape, and I kept the Crock-Pot cooking overnight (I refrigerated the Dutch oven until morning, when I could resume operations), but to no avail. Clearly, the Dutch oven was the winner in terms of making a thick, rich sauce or paste and using up all those tomatoes, though as noted, the Crock-Pot was ideal for making tomato juice.

On Sunday morning, I put the Dutch oven back on the stove, still on low, and continued to cook the sauce, adding tomatoes as the volume cooked down. By afternoon, I’d used the entire box of tomatoes and all the tomatoes we’d been given, and I had a rich, red, fragrant, spoon-standing paste. Yum! I plan to use it to make spaghetti sauce, lasagna, and eggplant parm. And that’s just the beginning! For more ways to prepare a big batch of tomatoes for sauce, plus a great sauce for canning, check out my earlier post, “What to do with all those ripe tomatoes, part 3″ (you can find it via our search bar at upper right).

Now, let’s time-travel back to Saturday and those tomatillos. I’d decided to plant a tomatillo for the first time this spring, buying a transplant from Jim Weaver when we got our heirloom tomato and hot pepper transplants. And yes, you read that right, I got one tomatillo plant. But hey, space is limited here in the Hawk’s Haven veggie beds, and I wanted to make sure I could grow and, of course, use the tomatillos before I planted more. Still, I felt a bit sheepish approaching the counter with my one plant.

Turns out, I shouldn’t have worried. My lone tomatillo plant grew fantastically and produced dozens of tomatillos. I’d been looking forward to making homemade salsa verde (the famed Mexican “green sauce”), and it was definitely time to harvest the plump, pale green fruits in their papery husks: They’d filled out the husks and the husks were turning beige. So I went out with a large bowl and came back with several pounds of tomatillos.

I used a recipe I’d found on the Internet as a guide for my salsa verde, but of course, I couldn’t resist ignoring most of what it said and transforming it into Salsa Verde a la Silence. I guess I’m just incorrigible, but I know what we like and how to tweak a recipe to get it there. At least this time I (mostly) stuck to the original ingredients list, just not the proportions and directions.

I began by pouring olive oil in the bottom of my second-largest LeCreuset Dutch oven, adding Trocomare (spicy herbed salt), lemon pepper, chipotle powder, a huge diced sweet onion (‘Vidalia’ or ‘WallaWalla’ type), and three large minced garlic cloves. As the onion cooked down, I added veggie stock (any brand is good; this time, I used Emeril’s Organic) as needed to prevent sticking.

Meanwhile, I de-husked, washed, sliced, and chopped the tomatillos. This was not fun. Well, the dehusking part was fun, but the husked tomatillos were sticky, and once you rinsed them, the sticky stuff became slimy (as did your hands). Eeewwww. Next, you took your fingers’ safety in your hands (uh, so to speak) when it came time to actually slice and dice the tomatillos, which are quite hard even when ripe. All too easy for that knife to slip! A very sharp paring knife and unwavering attention are definitely called for.

I added the tomatillos to the pot as I filled the cutting board with them, continuing until they were all chopped. And of course I kept an eye on the pot, stirring and continuing to add veggie stock as needed. Once the tomatillos were all in, I added two minced green and two minced red chiles. (The recipe called for 8 to 12 serrano chiles, but OFB and I aren’t as heat-tolerant as many of our friends, and I wanted to use what I had on hand rather than going to the store to buy serranos. Not to mention that I’d already added some chipotle powder.) Next, I added a half-bunch of chopped fresh cilantro. Finally, when everything had almost cooked down, I added a liberal splash of Key lime juice.

The recipe said to put this mix in the blender and blend until smooth. No doubt, if you did that, you’d have the salsa verde you get in Mexican restaurants. But of course I didn’t. I don’t mind extra texture—in fact, I enjoy it—and I already had enough dishes piling up, given the tomato sauce situation.

Now, needless to say, I’m desperate to make burritos for supper. I have the large flour tortillas and even managed to get hold of both queso blanca and queso fresca. I have half a bunch of gorgeous cilantro left over from the salsa verde, and of course the salsa verde itself. All I’d have to do is make some rice and a blander version of my usual refried beans (adding the rest of the cilantro to the beans), spoon the rice and refritos into the middle of a tortilla, top with crumbled queso, top that with salsa verde, fold the tortilla over the filling, and secure the tortilla with toothpicks before sealing it in aluminum foil and popping it in the oven to bake (along with two more for OFB). Then, I’d just need to top each hot burrito with shredded lettuce and salsa roja (red sauce). Served up with margaritas, they’d be quite a treat!

But hey, what about that salsa roja? No worries, I have the tomato-sauce base! I’m thinking I’d saute another chopped sweet onion in olive oil with a couple more minced garlic cloves, toss in a couple of minced jarred chipotle chiles once the onion clarified, add Trocomare and 1/4 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, then add the tomato sauce. I could puree that in a blender, or leave it, too, as is. Yum!

Now I just have to make a Thai eggplant dish to use up all the eggplants, and a Thai curry, and… gasp…

            ‘Til next time,

                         Silence