Tuesday, September 21, 2010

It Feels Like Fall

.... and I feel like cooking! Our tomato crop has been about half of what I harvested last year. I don't know why the drastic change, so I blaming it on the weather. We had a REALLY cool and cloudy summer. Also, the majority of tomatoes I harvested had blossom end rot or were sun burned. Good for cooking, not for selling (I'm not selling - yet). This will be our last year of planting at The Mayor's home. Next year - we'll be planting the first ever (and experimental) crop of Seven Cats farm.


Although we didn't have a huge crop, here is a photo of some of what was harvested! The cool striped one is called Copia. There is also Black Krim, Fourth of July, Orange Globe and Marvel Stripe.

 
You may remember this post when I roasted tomatoes last year. Well, I am doing it again this year. No canning of tomato sauce or whole tomatoes. I think this is much easier and it tastes better. I've refined the way I cook it a bit, thanks to friends input and a plain old taste test. The ingredients are the same, but the cooking method is a tad different.


Recipe:
  • Drizzle oil (I am using rice bran oil. You COULD use olive oil, as long as you don't heat it above 300*. Anything about that temp and olive oil's composition changes into bad stuff) in the bottom of a pan
  • Sliced onions to slightly cover bottom
  • Tomatoes, cut in half
  • Minced garlic over top
  • Drizzle oil over all.
  • Lightly salt and pepper
All that listed above is old. The new thing I'm doing is cooking at 250* for four or five hours. Then I squish the tomatoes with a spoon, and put back in the oven (this time at 300*) for an hour.

The new temperatures lets the sugars in the fruits caramelize, and then the last hour helps the moisture evaporate which then condenses the flavors. YUM!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi SG-curious about your camera. Your photos are so great. Are you able to freeze the cooked tomatoes to use later?

Sydney said...

Oh yes, Chicken! I freeze in zip lock bags. Nothing better than roasted tomatoes used as a pizza base in January!