A Jersey Girl in Portland

My CSA What I got and what I did with it Part 4: Simple Pesto

Two or three weeks ago (!) the CSA had a bunch of tomatoes (which we ate as Caprese).

I also made a thick tomato soup with onion and tomatoes with white wine and chicken stock. It was so tasty. Especially when I finished it with pesto. 

The ability to make a good pesto is a milepost for a cook. Like making (and breaking) a hollandaise.

The ingredients are simple. Basil leaves (a bunch), less than a cup of hazelnuts, salt, olive oil, Parmesan, garlic.

If you're making it for the first time, start with less OO and a pinch more salt.

Load the ingredients into a food processor and taste it frequently as you pulse the basic ingredients together.

Yup. That's it.

I froze the leftover pesto. I hope it freezes well.

 

Well, that's all for now.

Did I mention that you can make an amazing pesto out of carrot greens? It's true.

Eat well & love big.

xoxo

Nancy

 

 

So many tomatoes.

We bought 25 pounds of plum tomatoes* at the Portland Farmers Market on Saturday.  My sweetie Christopher carried them many blocks. So I will cook them.

Twenty-five pounds of toms. (Wait a minute.... {you may ask} didn't you grow tomatoes?) Yes. This year I grew tomatoes and my plants are producing like crazy (I've gotten about 18 pounds so far) but because of the flavor profile and water content of my home-grown tomatoes, most have gone into tomato juice (here's a fun little post from 2012). 

But I need a lot of tomatoes.

Really a lot of tomatoes.

In the winter, I put toms in everything I make. They are packed with antioxidants and add their perfect summer flavor to soups and stews.

For years, my goal was to never again buy a can of tomatoes from the grocery store. Last year, I met my goal.

This year, with a combination of frozen and canned tomatoes, I'll meet my goal again!

The tomatoes are organic, from Deep Roots Farm. They were slow roasted, peeled, and canned in their own juice.

Roast for two hours at 250 degrees, a little olive oil and salt. If any of the tomatoes mash up as they cook (the small ones generally do), I put them aside in a pan and they become the juice that fills the cracks between tomatoes in the jar.

Peeling is the most time consuming bit of business but worth it. The finished product is a robust, firm tomato to be cut or mashed into soup or flavored for stewed tomatoes.

(But Nancy, why not make sauce with all those tomatoes?)

Glad you asked!  It's easy to puree a jar of plum tomatoes, flavor with basil, salt and garlic, and spread on a pizza shell for a fresh, easy sauce.  Canned tomatoes are the first building block to marinara.  Maybe one day I want pork in it and another I don't? Building a sauce from jars of tomatoes makes much more sense to me. But I cook all the time. 

The case of plum tomatoes yielded more than two gallons of canned tomatoes.  Here they are.... my beautiful plum tomatoes awaiting juice.

 

I did over-roast the first batch of tomatoes from the garden. They were too soft to peel so I juiced (removing the skins and seeds) the cooked toms in a food mill and processed the jars in hot water.  

Below you will find a video of me peeling tomatoes.

Eat well & Love Big

* For $25 which is the right price for canning.

 

 

 

My CSA: What I got and what I did with it Part 3: Preserving

In the 1970s a great home canning book called "Putting Food By" was published. It was the bible of canning for a generation.

At about that time I canned at home with my mom and sister (ha! I should say 'my mom and sister let me hang out while they canned'--I was just a little kid). We canned tomatoes and pickles, and other things I don't remember.  I'm pretty sure strawberry jam was a thing. My mom, you see, had a hippie phase. She baked amazing bread, canned, made yogurt and cooked bulgur (and other things too numerous to name). 

My sister Anne and me at the coast.

Years later, Modern folks use the same techniques -- canning, dehydrating, freezing, fermenting, -- to preserve summers flavors.

(excuse me if I don't refer to the reputation Portland has as a DIY mecca)

Every jar of plum tomatoes I opened this winter past bore the stamp of last summers work

At the Undisclosed Location, the past few weeks have been all about preserving the the fantastic fresh produce I get from our Gathering Together Farm CSA.

Each item is handled in it's own way

I have a food dehydrator* so I'm drying zucchini.

Blanching and freezing the green beans. My sweetie Chris is juicing the carrots, celery and peppers. 

This winter I will serve amazing soups with organic vegetables that I canned/froze/cryovac'd/dried. It'll be fantastic!

In the meantime, I cook.

This weekend I made a killer salmon chowder.

I picked up a lovely whole sockeye salmon at Freddy's (Fred Meyer) (the local chain grocery store that isn't as fabulous as New Seasons Market, the -- also local -- competition to Whole Foods). 

I scraped off the scales, filleted it and put the bones in water & white wine (equal parts) to cook.  I also added two cut lemons, an onion, and a carrot I managed to rescue from the Mad Juicer's (Chris) mitts.

I strained it, and refrigerated it.  That broth (or fumet) was the base of the chowder I made the next day.

That night we feasted on grilled, skin on salmon. We ate half the salmon...which means plenty for salmon chowder.

To make the chowder the next day, I sauteed some bacon & onion, cooked potatoes, and set everything aside until the broth was hot and seasoned. I added some heat -- cayenne along with butter and salt. And about two cups of heavy cream.

Crumbled salmon and chunked potatoes into bowls, ladled soup, garnished with green onion and Bob's your Uncle. Chowder. I also added a poached egg to the soup.

 

Eat well & love big.

xoxo

Nancy

 

* There will be more about the dehydrator in an upcoming blog post.