Series: From my Covid gardens
I used mainly the vegetables and herbs from my Covid gardens for cooking this summer. Practically from end of May to end of September, all I needed was to saunter into our back yard in the morning with my cup of coffee and pick up the ones ready for use.
Fresh greens, garlic, onions and later on zucchini, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, beets, and a variety of herbs made delicious dishes. In this storyline I’ll share some of them with you. Since I finished my last post with “How many pasta sauces one can make from green tomatoes?” I’ll start this series with my last harvest – the green tomatoes.
We were under lockdown in the spring and ordered our seedlings online and by phone. So practically we didn’t have much control over the selection. We ended up with way too many of everything, especially tomatoes. I used all the pots. Then Alex built a new raised planter box. It took only 3 tomato plants. The rest were zucchini, peas and beans.
However, the entire box gradually converted from orderly organization to a jungle of bushes, with tomatoes dominating over everything else.
We didn’t have a day without tomatoes. Come the end of October they were still growing and trying to ripen.
But it was time to pick them all in case of frost. We ended up with about 5kg (~10lb) of green tomatoes. Some, we left inside and they turned from green to orange and even red. I pickled half of the remainder (guess what my kids are getting for Xmas?) and decided to make some pasta sauce from the rest. I tossed them with olive oil and salt in a big roasting pan, added garlic and onions and roasted them for about 20 min in my Gemini top oven on 400F.
Once they were soft enough, I added a can of diced tomatoes to reduce the tartness. I also added a few tablespoons of maple syrup. Once the mix was cold, I spooned it into small containers. My freezer containers are about 1 cup and a half. One container is enough for a pasta meal for up to 4 people.
Green tomato pasta sauce
I titled it pasta sauce but it really is green tomato sauce. I’ve used it since in a variety of dishes, not just pasta.
So basically, the recipe is:
Ingredients:
About 5 lb green tomatoes
2-3 medium size onions. Any kind of onions will be good
6-10 garlic cloves (if you use garlic)
2-4 tablespoons maple syrup or 2-3 teaspoons of honey
Salt to taste
1 can diced tomatoes
About ¼ cup of olive oil
Preparation:
Mix the tomatoes with olive oil, salt, sliced onions and garlic cloves.
Preheat the oven to 400F and roast the mix for about 15-20 min.
You can stop here if you find the mix suits your taste. I’d suggest to add a can of diced tomatoes at this point, unless you had ripened tomatoes from your crop which you can add at the beginning.
Roast for another 10 min.
Taste and if you think it is too tart add the maple syrup or honey
Mix well and let cool.
Of course, you can add parsley or basil if you have some. I prefer to add it as a fresh herb when I make the pasta.
For the pickles:
Fill the green tomatoes in mason jars. Add a few corns of allspice, cloves, black pepper and a few dry bay leaves in each jar. Add a few table spoons of white vinegar and fill with water to the top. Close with the lids and boil for about 10 to 15 min. Of course, you can make cold pickles, which means your boil the water and vinegar and pour into the jars. Release the air with a long spoon or spatula (Make sure no air bubbles are in the jar). Then close the lids tightly and let it cool. Once cold turn them upside down. If a jar is leaking it has not been close properly and it won’t stay. Discard it. Note: Cold pickles don’t last as long as the warm (the boiled jars)
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