canning tomatoes

20 pounds cut and ready for cooking
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

We got a hot tip from a good friend about some u-pick tomatoes and then end of season batch buys for some San Marzano tomatoes!

San Marzanos are the chef's choice sauce tomato and, from our own experience growing them in our backyard, we agree! So, we really couldn't turn down the opportunity to load up on them while they were at their peak of flavor. We ended up with 120 pounds, all told and cooked them down into a nice base for curries and pizza and pasta sauces.

This first picture is one batch of tomatoes (each batch was 20 pounds!), cut and ready for cooking...!

canning ops
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

Canning equipment all set up. We have our water bath canner, the food mill, some cooked down tomatoes ready for the food mill, and a bowl for the skins and seeds.

ready for the food mill
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

These tomatoes were cooked down and are ready for the food mill which will separate out the bitter seeds and skins.

Since we just wanted a general tomato sauce base, we didn't add anything to the tomatoes while cooking them down although, if you want to make ready-made sauces, there are lots of recipes, including Barbara Kingsolver's Family Secret tomato sauce (pdf).

tomato sauce in the food mill
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

It takes a lot of cranking to get all of the seeds and skins removed.

solids from a 20lb. batch of tomatoes
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

We kept the solids for composting.

the final product!
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

And, finally, the final product! We got about 16 quarts of sauce from all of the tomatoes (minus some we used on the fly in dinners made while we were in the process of canning)! It took 3 days to finish the canning...it was a lot of time and work, but worth it for the good tomato sauces we'll have during the off-season!!!

tomato vegetable curry

curry
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

This is a quick variation of Yamuni Devi's vegetable curry from her book Yamuni's Table.

You can also mix up the veggie content a little. Sometimes we add carrots, sometimes potatoes, sometimes corn. It all works really well!

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp. mustard seeds
• ~1 tbsp. ground coriander
• ~2 tsp. hot or mild curry
• salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 2 to 3 cups plain tomato sauce
• ~1/4 to 1/2 cup coconut milk or plain vegan yogurt
• lots of steamed vegetables and legumes (We just used a whole cauliflower, 5 oz spinach, and a 14 oz can of chickpeas. Carrots and corn kernels also work very well.)

Toast mustard seeds over medium heat (until they start popping--cover the pan!).

Stir the curry and coriander into a half cup or so of water.

When the mustard seeds have popped for about 20 seconds, pour the spice mixture into the pan over the mustard seeds.

Swirl around and and let the spice mix cook down. (If some of the spice mix remains behind in your cup, add a bit more water, swirl, and pour into the pan.)

When the spice mixture is almost dry, add the tomato sauce. Stir until well combined.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Then add steamed vegetables and legumes.

Continue to cook for another 5 minutes or so, occasionally stirring very gently so as not to mash the vegetables.

Finally, stir in the coconut milk or vegan yogurt, heat through, and serve over basmati rice.

padron peppers

padron peppers
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

We picked up these Padron peppers from our local farmer's market, cooked them up in a little olive oil, sprinkled sea salt on them and enjoyed...! They couldn't be easier to make and, amazingly, our 3-year old liked them!

The bigger ones tend to pack more heat -- but, even then, it's still a little like pepper roulette, some are hot, some are not -- so we gave him just the smallest ones.

We liked them so much the first time around, we got more and prepared them for a dinner we had on the beach (enjoyed while we waited for fireworks to light up the sky...)!

Ingredients

• Padron peppers
• about 1 tbsp. of olive oil
• sea salt to taste

Rinse peppers and pat dry.

Heat olive oil in skillet and add peppers when oil is hot

Remove from pan when skin begins to puff up and wrinkle.

Sprinkle with sea salt and enjoy!

post-rumpus meal at Saturn Cafe

sometimes, all we want is steamed veggies...
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

We went to a not-so-wild rumpus at the local Borders tonight (which included a reading of Where the Wild Things Are), so we ate out instead of cooking. I promise I will have a real post with us really cooking very, very soon!

But, for now, can I just say, we love seeing our 3-year old gobble up veggies?? It always makes us happy that, vis a vis veggies, we've set him off on the right path....

As for us parental types...Tom enjoyed a vegan burger and I had a bowl of Moroccan Stew. We all shared some skinny fries and a couple of vegan milkshakes for dessert (but, Dylan had eaten so well at dinner, he barely had any).

vegan mofo day 1 - pasta pomodoro

pasta pomodoro
Originally uploaded by coffywoman.

I'm attempting to post our vegan meals for the entire month of October as part of Vegan Mofo 2009. I can't make any promises or guarantees since having a 2-month old and a 3-year old can sometimes get pretty hairy! But, we'll see how it goes.

Expect to see mostly pictures of our meals as I'm mostly cooking from cookbooks these days...and expect easy-peasy and kid-friendly meals. But (!), for the meals I just throw together, I'll post my "recipe!"

So, to kick it off, here's our dinner from tonight: a simple pasta pomodoro. We had impromptu dinner guests who needed to be at an appointment only 60 minutes after we arrived at our house, so the meal had to be uber-easy and uber-quick!

Ingredients

• pasta
• minced garlic
• diced heirloom tomatoes
• basil, chiffonated
• olive oil

Toss cooked pasta with olive oil.

Add minced garlic and toss.

Top with desired amount of chiffonated basil and diced tomatoes. Add salt to taste (optional) and enjoy!