Somehow, a lot of tomatoes of a variety of types came home with us the last couple of days, and I’ve spent a lot of time processing them.
On Wednesday, I went to the little farmers market and got some green and pink tomatoes to make a green tomato mincemeat from the Local Food Journal – 2012; 2013’s on sale now – to make some bars to take to this Fermentation Fest in Reedsburg. People who are taking a class with Terese are going to get to eat them.
On Thursday, I got a mixed bag of plum tomatoes and and red and yellow slicing tomatoes in my CSA box. And I also bought a 25lb. box of plum tomatoes. And I taught a cooking class, using an extra example of the same CSA box on Thursday evening – so yet more tomato recipes.
On Friday, when we got home from Your sister’s sister, first movie we’ve gone to since TIFF, and a funny one, I sliced up about 18 of them and laid them out on two baking trays and put them in the oven on 225° and went to bed, and in the morning, I had a couple of pint containers of oven dried tomatoes – plus a few extra to eat right away. They’re like candy.
Today, Saturday, has been the biggest tomato day, though. For breakfast, I put yellow slicers on one side of my bagel and the oven dried on the other side. In the afternoon, I alternated grading student assignments with making the green tomato mincemeat and a double batch of Marcella Hazen’s tomato butter sauce (this is Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen’s version; I use Marcella’s son Guiliano’s version from Classic Pasta anyhoo, it’s all over the Internet; use whose ever you like). We went to dinner with my friend Lesleigh, because her brother’s in town for this conference that the library school is putting on, and when we got back I spent 2 hours blanching and peeling the rest of the tomatoes. I diced most of them and put them in containers for freezing – I think I have 7? or 8, maybe. But I got tired of dicing and threw the last pot-ful whole into a bowl for overnight. The plan is that I will roast peppers tomorrow morning – both poblanos and bell – and make this potato-poblano gratin for breakfast, and puree those last tomatoes with the bell peppers, and make my favorite pizza sauce tomato sauce that is simply pureed tomatoes and pureed roasted peppers, a little garlic, a pinch of sugar and dried oregano and red pepper flakes, boiled down a bit.
PS. The green tomato mincemeat is really good with ice cream.
