Category: Cooking

Preserving

Sabine2 Replies
Pickled – cucumbers and green tomatoes.

Every year, I strive to prolong the season by preserving vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, hot peppers, winter squash, garlic) and herbs (Italian basil, Thai basil) from the garden. I do not can my vegetables in a way that makes them shelf-stable. The methods I use are quick-pickling, curing/drying, slow-roasting and freezing. This year, I had a decent harvest of pickling cucumbers, and I quick-pickled several batches, one to two jars each. I also pickled green cherry tomatoes at the end of the season.

Dried and cured – hot peppers, garlic, shallots, garlic scapes.

I cured my garlic and my three (!) shallots, as well as my pathetic squash harvest (two small butternut and three small Delicata squash). For the first time, I oven-dried garlic scapes and turned them into a very fragrant and delicious garlic scape powder, which I am using in my cooking instead of garlic powder. I also slow-dried my super hot Thai peppers in the oven (at 175 F for several hours, checking first every 60 then every 30 minutes until they start to become brittle).

Slow-roasted and frozen – slow-roasted tomatoes and different types of basil pesto.

I slow-roasted several batches of tomatoes and made one big batch of garlic scape pesto, two batches of regular pesto and tree of Thai pesto. The tomatoes are topped with olive oil and frozen for future use. If not used immediately after making it, the Italian pesto is frozen in ice cube trays, covered with olive oil. This makes it easy to use. I just thaw a few cubes to use as pizza topping or for pasta. I freeze the Thai basil pesto straight in the jar (covered with sesame oil), as each batch makes one recipe for the crispy pork noodle bowls that we all love so much.

Pickled Green Tomatoes

SabineLeave a Reply
Green cherry tomatoes and Thai peppers

Yesterday, I made pickled green tomatoes. After the community garden fall cleanup day on Saturday, I brought home a few handfuls of green cherry tomatoes. I used a different recipe this time, which called for lemongrass and Thai peppers – both from my homegrown (and frozen) reserve. I am excited to see how the pickles turn out.

Ready for the fridge

College Send-Off Dinner

Sabine1 Reply
Crispy Pork Noodle Bowl with Thai Basil Pesto

I moved my son back to college yesterday, and we made one of his favorite dinners the night before – crispy pork noodle bowl with Thai basil pesto. I had made the Thai basil pesto a few days before (using a different recipe), covered it with sesame oil and stored it in the fridge. So, so good!

Thai basil pesto

I made one batch earlier this month and froze it for use in the future. I had experimented with freezing it last year and found it to freeze very well.

Thai basil pesto mise-en-place
Thai basil in the garden plot

August Tomatoes

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August 13 (the plum and cherry tomatoes are from another gardener’s plot that I had been tending to while they were on vacation)

I harvested the first tomatoes (Stupice) on July 23 and then a few more Stupice, Scotia and Ailsa Craig the following weeks. Things started to really get rolling by August 10. On August 17, I picked my first Green Zebra and Dr. Wyche’s Yellow (two of my favorite varieties). Since then, I have been harvesting about two to three pounds every other day.

August 17

There have been a lot of Caprese (and other tomato) sandwiches and tomato salads on lunch and dinner rotation, like this tomato and peach salad with whipped goat cheese, for which I like to use Dr. Wyche’s Yellow.

August 20

I also made two batches of slow-roasted tomatoes, which I packed in olive oil and froze. For this, I used mainly smaller red tomatoes.

August 23

My daughter made an amazing tomato galette the other day (using red tomatoes only), with home-grown garlic and basil. It has been an exceptional tomato season so far!

August 25

Notes for next year: The Ailsa Craig tomatoes were prone to cracking; Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, Ananas Noire and Black Krim to catfacing (not a big problem and also unavoidable with the strange weather earlier this summer); and Ananas Noire and Black Krim were prone to rotten spots. Brimmer was a bit crowded out by the other tomatoes and stayed small as a plant (but did produce a few very tasty tomatoes, like the large pink-red one in the picture of August 31). Same growth issue for Stupice, which was crowded out by the calendula flowers.

August 31

Pesto Time

Sabine2 Replies

Made my first batch of “pesto” yesterday. I forgot to take pictures of the actual product (which is just basil, olive oil and salt for more versatility). I pureed everything and scooped it into an ice cube tray and covered it with more olive oil. This morning, I moved the frozen cubes to a ziplock bag. There will be several more batches, and I will make one that is an actual pesto with garlic, nuts (likely sunflower seeds), and cheese. Nothing better than to pull a couple of cubes from the freezer in the middle of winter to add to pasta or use as pizza base, focaccia topping or over chicken or fish.

Garlic Scape Powder

Sabine1 Reply
The final product

Last week, my daughter brought tons of garlic scapes back from work and made two cups of pesto – one for the freezer and one that we have been using up all week. There were still quite a few scapes left (around 20), and I decided to turn them into garlic scape powder. I have never done this before, so it was an exciting new project.

First, I washed and dried the scapes. I then cut off the flower buds and chopped the stems into 1 cm long (about 1/2 inch) pieces. I placed them in a single layer on a baking sheet and dried them in the oven at 150F. I checked every 45 minutes to an hour and turned them. After quite some time (4 hours and 45 minutes, the last 45 minutes at 170F), they were completely dry and brittle. I then let them cool and blitzed them in a mini food processor. Those 20 scapes yielded around 3 tablespoons. Not a whole lot, but it smells divine, so I think it is very potent.

Before oven-drying …
… and after

Garlic Scapes Season

Sabine2 Replies

I harvested my garlic scapes today. 15 total, from just as many hardnecks as I had put in the ground in the fall (I have 20 softnecks as well, so 35 heads total). I made garlic scape pesto, but this time, I followed the recipe to the end and included cheese and lemon juice, which I normally omit and add later. It is really delicious. We shall see how well it freezes.

Mise-en-place
To be topped with olive oil and ready for the freezer. I will transfer the frozen cubes into a Ziplock bag.