And MORE Green Tomato Recipes!

The recipes keep pouring in from our CSA & working members. I guess I can understand... I did ask them to take upwards of 20 pounds of green tomatoes home with them at their last CSA pickup!

Brenda sent in this recipe for Poblano Pepper and Green Tomato Chili. She made it with a jalepeno and one of our spicy garden peppers. Brenda also mentioned that the recipe doesn't say when to add the green tomatoes. Brenda put them in at the end during the final cooking.

Morgan sent in a couple of recipes. The first is for Cool 'n' Spicy Green Tomato Soup with Crab and Country Ham. The second is for a dish I've heard talked about many times, but have never tried myself - and I think that this is the year to give it a go! Green Tomato Pie. One tip: Morgan said that the recipe was really tasty (she would have sworn it was apple pie if she hadn't known) but it was really liquidy. She would recommend draining most of the liquid out of the pie mixture before adding it to the crust.

Happy cooking!

More Green Tomato Info!

Jessica sent along these links from Mother Earth News...

A recipe for Roasted Green Tomatoes. Sounds very simple, and a nice way to mellow out the tang of the green fruit.

A discussion entitled "How Long Can You Make Green Tomatoes Last?" Read the comments for some great tips from the Mother Earth News readers!

Indian Green Tomato Recipes

Brenda sent along a link to this blog, entitled "My Diverse Kitchen: A Vegetarian Kitchen in India." This blog has recipes for Green Tomato Relish (pictured), Green Tomato Khorma, Green Tomato Pickle, and Green Tomato and Onion Curry. Khorma is one of my favorite Indian dishes, so I'm really excited to check out the recipe. To visit the blog, click here.

Recipe: Dilled Green Tomato Pickles

Jessica helped to harvest some of our 600 pounds of green tomatoes, and was inspired to send me this recipe. It's from the "Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving." Jessica says that it's tasty, but definitely on the vinegar-y side. Makes a great condiment.

Yield: 6-7 pint jars

Ingredients

3 1/2 cups vinegar

3 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup pickling or canning salt

5 lbs small, firm green tomatoes, halved or quartered, or whole green cherry tomatoes

6-7 cloves garlic

6-7 heads fresh dill or 1/4 cup dill seeds or dried dill

6-7 bay leaves

Instructions

1. Prepare canner, jars, and lids.

2. In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine vinegar, water and pickling salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve salt. Remove from heat.

3. Pack tomatoes into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of the top of the jar. Add 1 clove of garlic, 1 head of dill (or 2 tsp of dill seeds or dried dill) and 1 bay leaf to each jar. Ladle hot pickling liquid into jar to cover tomatoes, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot pickling liquid. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 25 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool, and store.

Enjoy!

Recipe: Fried Green Tomatoes

This recipe was submitted by one of our CSA members, Shannon. This dish is one of her family's favorites. Her mom has tried to do the tomatoes lots of different ways, and this is the best way she's found to make them:

- Slice the tomatoes 1/4 inch thick

- Salt the slices on both sides

- Dip the slices in a mixture of cornmeal with a dash of cayenne (no need to dip the slices in something first; they will be wet from slicing)

- Heat a few tablespoons of canola or olive oil in a skillet over medium heat (you want to cook them kind of slowly so they can cook all the way through before they are too brown)

- Place the slices in the skillet

- When they start to brown on the bottom, flip them over

- Sprinkle black pepper on the second side and wait until the underside is brown

Enjoy!

The Queen Tomato

We harvested a lovely 2-pound yellow Brandywine tomato last week. We had to pause for photos before putting it in a CSA share. I hope the CSA member that received this tomato enjoyed it!

A little bit of our tomato bounty.

How to Ripen Green Tomatoes

Fall is the season for lovely squash, crisp greens, beautiful red tomatoes... and sometimes beautiful green ones, too. As we get closer to frost we often find ourselves in possession of tomatoes that just didn't have enough time to ripen on the vine.

Tomatoes that have started to ripen - that are showing a blush of red or yellow - will finish ripening easily if placed on the windowsill. However, tomatoes that are still completely green will not ripen that way.

The best trick I know of is to place the green tomatoes in a paper bag with a ripe apple (a ripe banana will work, too). The fruit releases ethylene, which helps the green tomato to ripen quickly. Green tomatoes left out, or put in a bag without an apple, run the risk of rotting before they can ripen.

Of course, as Maryann (one of CSA shareholders) pointed out to me, there's nothing wrong with a batch of fried green tomatoes!

New York Times: You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster

The story of the tomato blight that hit plants in the Northeast - a reminder that our food is vulnerable. The blight started in plants that were sold by big box stores (like Home Depot) and spread all over the region.

The Joy of Pickling

In June I attended a Colorado Wine Dinner, and I got to spend some time talking to Jake Norris, who makes Stranahan's Whiskey (www.stranahans.com). Jake is a big-time local food guy, and he's got quite the garden. I told Jake that I was interested in learning how to can and pickle food, and he told me to get a wonderful book called "The Joy of Pickling." I followed Jake's advice, and made my first attempts at food preserving.

I started with green beans....

Ta-da!!!!

Next came the lemon cucumbers. The garden this year didn't yield any regular cucumbers, but we had plenty of these pretty yellow ones.

Lots 'o good stuff in the jars.

Zucchini pickles with sweet Indian spices (ginger, corinader, cinnamon) and chiles.

Lemon cucmber, sweet Indian zucchini, and spicy zucchini/onion pickles.

Getting the tomatoes ready.

The tomatoes were very late to ripen this year, so we ended up with a lot of green tomatoes right before the first frost. Rather than giving up the fruits, I picked them to make canned green tomatoes.

Did I say that we had a lot of green tomatoes? Really, a LOT!!

Presenting.... Green tomato salsa, green tomato chutney, zucchini relish, and canned (mostly) green tomatoes.

Mid-September Bounty

Our little potato harvest.

Home grown potatoes really do taste different. Plus, it's fun to hunt for them in the dirt!

The veggie area of our kitchen counter.

The zucchini "boats."

I never get tired of tomato pictures! The lovely dish they're in was a wedding present from our friend Kamala, who teaches pottery.

A few not-quite-ripe tomatoes ready to catch the morning rays.

Fall salad with roasted beets, arugula, squash, and goat cheese.