Posted on 07/25/2017 3:33:39 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
I’ve been frantically making salsa and spaghetti sauce all week, after a minor explosion in the tomato department.
As for Christmas, I’m experimenting with candied citrus in the hopes of giving them as gifts this year. A select few family members get spaghetti sauce instead, but most of ‘em I don’t love that much. :)
Lovely area. We vacation on St. George Peninsula.
People will leave zucchini in unlocked cars parked on Main Street in the small town where my wife’s family is from. And sometimes tomatoes.
I just got home after driving 10 hours from Asheville & I bought a box of wine on the way home. It seems two steps up from vinegar, but it’s not deterring me ; )
For some reason your tomato soup sounds so delicious & comforting. Sigh...
The tomatoes I would take; I can *always* do something with tomatoes. Currently I have tomatoes canned for soup, cherry tomatoes dehydrated for wintertime use in pasta sauce, cherry tomato salsa and another batch planned for tomorrow (ALL RIGHT ALL RIGHT I AM NEVER PLANTING FOUR OF THAT TYPE OF TOMATO AGAIN), and 27 pints of Awesomesauce, which is pretty much the entire reason I grow tomatoes.
I could eat chicken pot pie every day! I love any kind & even think banquet pot pies are delicious. I have used James Beard’s cream biscuits on mine. Can’t wait to see your recipe. Enjoy your trip!
I know you’ve mentioned his tomatoes before. That is such a lovely memory.
You can try it.
Get the freshest Okra, you can find.
You might consider getting one of the small Weber kettles. We have one for beach use and sometimes just to do a small thing or two.
At the beginning of the season you cant wait for the first vine ripened juice to drip from your lips..
Toward the end of the season, produce is delivered clandestinely in non descript paper bags to your porch under cover of darkness LOL!
Harpswell Peninsula on those rare occasions I can go.
LOL!
Have you ever tried candied Ginger? That’s one of my favorites - and Pineapple!
When we were doing more experimental cooking, we kept a box of red, and and a box of white, for cooking. We also drank some of it - not so bad! There are boxed wines that are passable, especially the whites.
We once attended a tasting menu event, done by a very discriminating local chef - he had boxed wine there, for the folks to sip on!
The tomato is my favorite food. I eat them at least in 2 meals a day in the summer. Breakfast is either a BLT or bruschetta. Can eat them like an apple with a little bit of Lawry’s seasoning salt. Heaven!!
Like this one. Ina Garten’s Panzanella recipe. Tomatoes, basil, garlic, capers (Love these little guys!!!), garlic, toasted bread with a Dijon vinaigrette.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/panzanella-recipe-1944317
Another good one I have is so old and made so many times I don’t even know the amounts. Tried to find something similar on the net but nothing close came up.
Greek(?) Pasta Salad
Rotini tri-colored pasta
Tomatoes
Green pepper
Black olives
Feta cheese
Nuts (usually pecan)
Mayo
Dill
Garlic
Tarragon vinegar
Black pepper
A splash of brandy (not a brandy fan but it gives this some pizzazz!)
Missed you last week! Glad you’re back. Hope you had a good vaca!
I love Panzanella! And my favorite Summer food ever since I was a kid, has always been just sliced tomatoes on toast, with lots of Mayonnaise, salt, pepper - LOTS of pepper!
I don’t get the kinds of eating tomatoes now that I did when I was a kid; but that sandwich is great even with the ‘maters from the supermarket; and I often eat it in Winter, with the hothouse tomatoes :-)
OK, you can’t say something like that and not give us the recipe for that sauce!
I planted 32 San Marzano tomatoes plants. I couldn’t help it, the little seedlings all came up and I couldn’t just throw them out… So I think I will be overwhelmed with tomatoes in a couple weeks.
But thank goodness the garden produces one thing at a time. Right now it is corn, I have two big buckets full that I need to take off the cob and freeze tomorrow. It is super sweet, almost like eating candy.
Okay, I will gleefully show off, though the recipe’s kind of...flexible...and the closest I’ve gotten to reliably writing it down is in LARGE batches.
That said:
Take 6-8 quarts of Cherokee Purple tomatoes. Only. Not any of the red kinds, though black tomatoes or some other purple variety would probably work OK. Peel them, chop them, and drop them into a Dutch oven-type pot.
Mix half a cup of dry red wine with 6ish tablespoons of cornstarch until it turns an appalling mauve color. Dump that into your pot, and follow it up with half a cup of turbinado or light brown sugar (white doesn’t work quite right, and dark is downright disgusting). Stir it all in, beat it up with a potato masher or immersion blender (or a heavy spoon and a hearty dose of aggression), and let it simmer all by itself for 15-20 minutes.
Add 4 tablespoons of basil, 2 tablespoons of oregano, and garlic to taste. (Your taste, not my taste. My taste in garlic is possibly a wee bit excessive.) Simmer it for another 30 minutes or so, stirring whenever you think about it.
In the last 5 or 10 minutes, add salt to taste. Then serve it up with pasta, can it, freeze it, or run away with a bowlful and a handful of crackers like my child did last time I made a batch. The purple tomatoes give it kind of a smoky taste that I haven’t been able to get with regular tomatoes, and it is to die for. Especially with good Parmesan cheese and some chicken or shrimp.
I love candied ginger! Really love pineapple when it’s *good*, but it’s hard to find it where you taste more pineapple than you do sugar. I treat myself when I’m in Atlanta and go to the DeKalb Farmer’s Market, which has all sorts of weird delicious stuff. Found chocolate-coated ginger once, and it was SO GOOD.
Last summer I made tomato cheese pie several times. The taste was amazing. The problem is that even though I laid the tomato slices in a strainer prior to assembling the pie, no juice drained out so the crust was soggy.
Now that it’s tomato season, I’m craving that dish but want to avoid the soggy crust. Anyone know how to force the drainage of juice from sliced tomatoes?
(((You are on that channel watching the Christmas movies in July, aintcha?? I won’t tell. I’ve only watched 2 of the sappy things myself)))
I secretly want to live in one of those quaint always freshly snowing villages. I love those movies and everyone laughs at me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.