A deciding moment for green tomatoes

 The last few nights, the the weather forecast is for near freezing, and pockets of the neighborhood are white with frost. Soon it will be curtains for all the tender annuals.

Like many tomato growers, I like the basil/tomato combination from a culinary perspective, but there's an additional reason to grow basil near your tomatoes.

Basil is even more tender than tomatoes.The leaves start to drop weeks before the tomatoes are harmed by the cold.

When the leaves near the top start to turn brown, or the stems look hideous like the one to the right, I know it will soon be cold enough to bring in the last of the green tomatoes.









Here is what a tomato plant looks like when it is first touched by a hint of frost, but hasn't gotten cold enough to succumb. The leaves are curling, the fruit start to go translucent. After a real frost, the fruit will freeze, and when it thaws its a mushy, blackening mess.  Before that happens, it's time to bring in all the usable tomatoes, ripe or not.

Tomatoes - just tickled by frost. The one to the right is further inside the greenhouse, and was unharmed

As I pick the tomatoes, I practice triage. Some of the tomato plants have gone crazy with the recent rain, sucking up so much water that their fruit is badly cracked. 

Slugs and earwigs immediately move in, and the fruit is inedible. To humans, anyway. The chickens love them. Who else gets excited to have rotten tomatoes thrown at them?

Here Aurora stands guard over a bunch of the juiciest of the lot, keeping the ducks and the lower ranking hens at bay.

The remaining tomatoes are of all sizes and degrees of ripeness. I try to pick tomatoes gently, and not pile them up. They are fragile.

I sorted the tomatoes. 

Those with cracked skin, minor blemishes, or very wide stem ends (like the red tomato at the top) will not store well. They are too attractive to fungus and fruitflies.

Very green ones, or ones that have not reached full size, are unlikely to ripen. They work for green tomato recipes (fried, chutney, pickles, salsa) but I won't try to store them.

As Shakespeare says "ripeness is all".  I think that over and over to myself as I harvest, and it makes me sad. It's not an inherently sad phrase - it's what you make of it. But right now, I think about being harvested too soon, or being past one's prime.

Fall is that kind of season. I try instead to think "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness". That sounds much better.

The remaining tomatoes, the best of the best, are set aside to ripen. I wipe off any dirt, make sure their skins are intact and blemish-free, and set them one tomato deep in boxes lined with newspaper. This way, if one tomato does start to spoil, the paper will protect the ones around it. I organize them so they are together with tomatoes of similar ripeness. 

Tomatoes don't belong in the fridge. They need a moderate temperature in the fifties or sixties. We in Seattle think of that as room temperature. I store mine in the basement just to get the out of the way. I check on them every week or so - more often if I need tomatoes. The big red tomato in the center of the picture will be ripe almost immediately. And because it has such a deep dimple in its blossom end, it will probably start to go bad soon after. I make a mental note to use it soon.

I make the real greenies and a few of the redder ones into green tomato salsa. It's tangy and sour when it's first made, but mellows over a few days and is delicious with corn tortillas and goat cheese.

Recipe

1.5  kilos green tomatoes (a little over 2 pounds)

1 very large red onion

4 cloves garlic

4 jalapenos or to taste

1 t salt

2 t cumin

Cilantro to taste (I think 2 T is standard, but I like about 1/2 C)

1 C vinegar or lime juice

Cube the tomatoes and onion into small dice. Crush and chop the garlic. Carefully (rubber gloves recommended) seed and chop the jalapenos. 

Place all ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook for ten minutes at a gentle boil. 

Cool slightly and process in a food processor if desired. Processing makes a better sauce for dipping tortillas. 

Recipe for Green Tomato Pickles

This isn't really a recipe, but it's a great idea my friend Portia taught me.

Eat a jar of your favorite kind of pickles. Save the juice.

Cut green tomatoes into quarters and put them in the juice.

Refrigerate and serve after a week or so. They are really yummy.

Purple Potato Bread

I have gotten in a bit of a bread making rut lately. I bake a mean loaf of crusty, tangy, mostly whole grain bread in a free form boule shape, and it's very good. But sometimes I get bored.

I used to make a potato bread that was notable for being tender, quick, and rich tasting with a deceptively simple recipe. I had gotten out of the habit, because of the extra step of boiling up potatoes. Looking at the haul of purple potatoes from our garden, an idea begins.

Purple potato patch, summer 2012

Just over 675 grams

I tell my kid I want to make purple bread out of our potatoes. He says this would be awesome. I mention the real possibility we will end up with grey bread instead.

 He says "that's OK. It will still taste good". The bitter sweetness of a child becoming mature.

The recipe:

1 1/2 pounds (700 grams) of potatoes, scrubbed
4 cups flour (or a little more)
1 1/2 t salt
2 T olive oil
4 t baking yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
A handful of cornmeal






Place potatoes in a pot with cold water to cover. Bring to a boil and then simmer until a knife inserted in meets little resistance, about 20 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes. Drain, and return to hot pan to steam. A cut open potato shows a dark purple center and a very pale band around the skin.

Boiled and cut open

 Mash potatoes with olive oil and salt. Let them cool to lukewarm. At this point my purple potatoes were an amethyst color, with tatters of dark skin throughout. Because they were mashed without added liquid, they didn't get fluffy and creamy. They were just crumbled up.

Mashed purple potatoes

Mix yeast and water to dissolve.

In a stand mixer, with mixing paddle, combine potato mixture with yeast, and add 3 cups of flour. Set mixer on low and mix to combine.

Change to dough hook and add the remaining flour. The dough will be weird. It starts out as a shaggy mess, and then as the water in the potatoes gradually combines with the flour, it will form a heavy, soft dough. At this point it's clear the bread will be a soft shade of purple at best. All the vibrancy of the potatoes is merged with the pale flour.


Mix on low for 8 minutes, until a soft dough forms. Even after eight minutes, my dough was still not uniform, but rather a very light colored background with flecks of different purples scattered about.

Let the dough rise until doubled in size, one to two hours.

Dough with flecks of purple

Once the dough is doubled in size, gently deflate it by pressing it down. Break or pull it into two equal sized pieces, and knead them briefly and gently. I kneaded too much and started losing flecks of potato. A few moments should be enough.

Shape each half of the dough by stretching it slightly and then tucking the outside edges in so they all meet in the center, forming a ball. Pinch the seams together, then roll the ball between you hands to slightly elongate it. I found the dough to be a bit strange. It felt like children's play dough, and was perhaps the least sticky dough I have ever worked with. I barely had to wash my hands after shaping it.

Shaped loaves

Set each loaf on a sheet of parchment paper, and cover with a damp kitchen towel. Set them in the warmest part of the kitchen to rise for 45 minutes or until doubled in size.  

When the loaves have been rising for 15 minutes, place an oven stone, a cast iron griddle with the smooth side up, or an inverted cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven, and preheat to 450 degrees.

Once the loaves are doubled in size, remove the towel. Sprinkle the baking stone with a bit of cornmeal and gently life one loaf at a time from the parchment paper. Set it down, upside-down, on the stone or sheet in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes, then check the loaves. If they are deep golden brown and sound hollow when you tap their underside, they are done. If they are pale or sound solid, put them back for another fifteen minutes. 

Not grey. But not really purple either

I could tell from the golden exterior of the bread that it wasn't dark enough to be truly purple inside. What I got was a pale lavender bread, flecked with darker purple and maroon. 

The texture was velvety, tender and dense. I tasted olive oil, and just barely a hint of the potato, but I wouldn't call this a potato dominated bread. 

The main flavors were yeast, toasted grain, and a slight sweetness, although no sweeteners were used. This bread would make great cinnamon rolls with a bit of brown sugar added to the dough.

It's also pretty good just the way it is. 

Shared on little house in the suburbs , farm girl blog fest

Halloumi - the real story

I think it's time I tell the real story of how the halloumi in my last blog post was made.

Step one - I woke up about half an hour later than usual, on my day off, planning to make cheese. "Should take about three hours start to finish". Did morning barn chores and made sure I had all the ingredients.

Made the kid breakfast. Started to make a cup of coffee. Good thing I didn't get far.

Phone alarm - oh, yeah, fasting blood test day. Starting with a cholesterol test seems like a bad omen for cheese making but what the heck. I hurry off to the lab.

Severe caffeine withdrawal. Fasting blood tests always do this to me. One hour coffee break.




Phone alarm goes off - oh, yeah, I was going to help recharter the scout pack today. Two hour meeting. Meet three great dogs, a parrot and the fabulous woman who cares for them and who wants to do a lot of paperwork to help scouts! Bless her heart. Rechartering is well in hand.

I return home and eat the last of the homemade crusty bread. You are not supposed to start bread and make cheese on the same day but I sometimes do anyway. This is a day when I do. The kitchen is warm, and I open the back door.

Meggie, the goat, who is normally very calm, is all of a sudden very loud. I go back to check. She's in heat! She's looking around for a male goat, and freaking out because there aren't any. She is so needy. Lightning is not in heat, but she's needy too.

Meggie and Lightening hoping for some attention

I tear myself away from the needy goats and go inside. Start to warm up milk. It is now 11:30. Check facebook. Oh, everyone is all worked up about some election thing. Get involved. Milk is over-warm. Add a little cool milk and hope that's an OK strategy.

Add calcium chloride and rennet. Eat lunch while the cheese sets. Cut curd right after lunch. Stir. Phone call from work. There are just one or two things I have to do today - they just won't wait till two days from now when I'm back in the office.

Meggie won't stop crying. I go out and check on her. She's fine.


Oh, my the ducks are cute.


Pikachu, the new drake, is such a sweety.

Their water is filthy. Gross. I throw it out and clean all the bowls. Actually, every one's food dish is overdue for a scrub. I gather them all and bring them inside.


The curds have sat at least fifteen minutes too long. I hope this is OK. It's actually going to be closer to thirty minutes too long because I need to clean up after being out in the duck mess.

It is close to two. The kid gets home from school; Fridays are early release day. He is making a costume for Halloween. He says he won't need any help.

I put the curds in a bag to press. Get a weight and - the phone rings, and the name that flashes up is my uncle. He never calls. OMG, maybe someone died!!! No - it's a planning call for a family event. In the long gaps between phone calls, I always forget what a kind gentleman my uncle is. So considerate and mannered. Always fun to chat with. Meanwhile, the curd is sitting there. This is probably not a problem.

Actually, my kid does need help with his costume. He accidentally glued the wrong side of everything. We become a gluey mess. Luckily, I know how to get glue off my hands. You rub them in dirt and it peels right off. Then of course you wash.

I return and put weight on the curd. I decide (randomly) to season all my cast iron, since I happen to be in the kitchen anyway. Heat up all my iron pans. The weight falls off the cheese, about half the whey is spilled on the counter and floor.

Kid needs help with his costume. This time he wants to paint the body and needs help turning the basement into a painting studio.

I clean up the floor. Take out iron pan to oil. Burn hand. I shape the bread loaves, since the oven's already hot.

It is now five o'clock. I check the recipe. I had somehow thought the cheese took a total of 45 minutes press time. Wrong. 6 hours. I realize I will be up till midnight at best.

There is a Halloween party at the school in one hour. The costume is not ready. Briefly we debate whether it can be painted and dry - which is patently ridiculous, but in light of my inability to self-schedule, I am cutting my kid a lot of slack in his own plan-making. We mutually decide not to paint it. It is too late to bake the bread. I turn off the oven and we run out the door.

I preemptively decide the cheese can press for two hours before the event and four hours after we come home, instead of three and three.

It's a great party. I was signed up to run the bouncy house from 6:15 to 7:30 but when I got there, they switched me to 7:30 - 8:30. I lose my voice. We have fun. A guy who lives in the neighborhood has his driveway blocked in by an inconsiderate parent. While we wait for them to move their car, we chat and i get to know another member of my community. A plane flies low over the dark, misty parking lot as we head home. It's later than I expected.

I need to learn how to take nigh time pictures! This was pretty cool in real life.

We come home and I flip cheese, replace weight and go take care of the animals. Eat dinner. It is now a bit after ten. Put kid to bed. Reshape the forgotten bread dough and heat the oven. Sometimes bread is OK when you do this. Ask me how I know.


I can't decide whether to nap or stay up while the cheese poaches for an hour and then cools for 45 minutes before being brined. But if I nap, I will forget to take the bread out and that will definitely ruin it.

I decide to stay up and write blog where I totally fake this ideal cheese making experience. It isn't totally fake because I have made halloumi before and had it go as smoothly as all that. Seriously, there have been times. But today was not one of them. And as I was writing, David said something about a very famous athlete who lied about steroid use, and I heard myself say "Well, there had to be a moment when he knew he had used steroids, and he knew he was lying. And that's wrong".

Then I knew I had to sit down and write a retraction of the "oh, I'm such a perfect urban farmer, here's this epic cheese making day I just had in my perfectly coordinated home" story. I did have a great day, and in a very fragmented way, I accomplished quite a bit. But it was not idyllic, it was real. And, to spare you any undue distress, let me add that the halloumi actually turned out great. That is the real reason it's my favorite cheese. It is very forgiving. It seems to know about days that get out of hand.

Shared on : cheesepalooza, Simple Lives Thursday