When the tomatoes need to be cooked now

We all have busy lives so we don’t always get into our gardens the minute something is ready to harvest. This week when I filled my basket with tomatoes, some of them needed to be cooked immediately. If a tomato is split or has a soft spot and it sits in the kitchen window too long (that’s where I keep them until there’s enough to can) they will attract fruit flies. The same is true of any other fruit or vegetables left on a counter. To avoid that problem, I decided to make a batch of pasta sauce.

By the time I had picked the tomatoes there wasn’t time to complete the sauce. What follows is a very rough two-day recipe for making a simple sauce from fresh produce and herbs. You could, of course, make it in one day but sometimes sauces deepen their flavor if left in the refrigerator overnight.  I apologize in advance for not being more exact with the recipe; it leaves lots of room for creativity! You’ll want to use the proportions of ingredients that are right for the amount of tomatoes you have.

Easy pasta sauce

Day 1 (takes 1 hour or so)

Chop ½ onion and 2 carrots. Sautee in olive oil in a large skillet or pot (that has a lid) that will hold all of the tomatoes you have. Smash two cloves of garlic then chop and add to the pan.

While the onion and carrots are slowly sautéing, chop 12 or so ripe tomatoes. Add them to the pan. Lightly salt and cook. Add ½ cup of red wine. Bring to a nice boil then turn down to simmer. Taste to see if you need to add sugar. I sprinkled just a little (no more than ¼ cup) over the top then stir it in.

Chop a big handful of fresh basil and add along with other herbs you like. I added dried marjoram, rosemary, thyme, black pepper, salt and a sprinkle of red pepper to give heat.  Turn off, cool then put on lid and store in refrigerator.

Day 2 (takes 30 minutes)

Warm the sauce base.

In another pan, brown ½ - 1 pound sweet Italian sausage. Chop green pepper and add to sausage. Chop 2/3 cup zucchini and add. Salt lightly. 

While that is cooking, boil salted pasta water and add pasta.

Drain fat from sausage pan, add to sauce and stir. Add ½ cup fresh parsley. Taste and adjust seasonings. If you have a leftover rind of Parmesan, chop it and add it. That will give you wonderful little bites of Parmesan in your dish.

When the pasta is done, spoon it onto the top of the sauce. Grate Romano cheese onto the pasta then stir. Grate more cheese onto the top of the dish and serve.

By the way, I know this might be some sort of sacrilege to the Italians, but I had a little bit of two different types of pasta leftover from earlier meals (bowtie and penne) so I mixed them for this dish. You can see that in the photo.

Haitian Rice and Beans

Just about daily I chat online with my friend Juana Rodriguez who is working in Haiti to improve living conditions. Her dream is to establish a cocoa farm that would give people dignified work while also protecting the land. Those sorts of dreams can be very difficult to bring to reality in a country of so much poverty. But like the people of Haiti, Juana is resilient. She moves forward, even if conditions dictate moving at a slow pace.

Yolantha Harrison-Pace is another woman I think of when Haiti comes to mind. An artist who lives in Kentucky, Yolantha visited Haiti prior to the 2010 earthquake and returned to write a chapbook called, Nobody Knows the Haiti I’ve Seen. Besides relating stories of the land and people she came to know, Yolantha also included recipes from Haiti. She agreed to share one of these recipes with us for our simple Lenten meal of the week.

Haitian Rice and Beans

¼ cup fresh parsley
2 cloves garlic, minced
pinch of thyme
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 TBSP salt
2 TBSP oil
1 cup rice
2 cups cooked beans
1 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water

With a mortar and pestle, mash parsley, garlic, thyme, onion and salt into thick paste. Heat the paste and oil in a pot, add rice. Coat rice with oil, add vegetable broth, water and beans. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and cover, simmering until the rice is tender and water has been absorbed. Stir and serve hot.

As I eat my rice and beans, I also pray for Juana, Yolantha and people of Haiti.

Tasting Summer in January

One of the beauties of preserving garden produce is that you have the opportunity to enjoy a bite of the season gone by even when your garden is resting. That’s what we did last night with a group of friends.

I decided it was time to start digging into the freezer to see what I had preserved to add some summer sunshine to a winter day. I found frozen yellow squash and pawpaw puree that I wanted to use. I also pulled a jar of our canned tomatoes from the shelf, garden carrots from the fridge, sweet potatoes from the basket and fresh parsley from under the grow light and went to work. Here’s the menu I came up with.

Italian Squash Soup
European Peasant Bread
French Lentil Salad
Sweet Potato Fries with Avocado Dip
Panko Crusted Salmon
Pawpaw Sour Cream Pie

I prepared the pie the night before so it could sit in the refrigerator for 24 hours before serving. The bread, which mixed white, whole wheat and rye flours, I put together during my Friday lunch break. Everything else I began preparing 2 ½ hours before I expected our guests.
The result? The smiles around the table and the requests for seconds told me the meal was a hit. Here are two of the recipes you can try.

Italian Squash Soup (adapted from Neal Brown’s recipe)
2-3 cloves fresh garlic
1 lb. cubed, frozen squash that is thawed
1 lb. cubed potato
1 small sliced carrot
1 jar tomatoes, crushed
16 oz. vegetable broth
¼ cup olive oil
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. dried parsley

Prepare potato and carrot. Heat olive oil. Add potato and carrot and sauté 5-10 minutes, until they begin to soften. Chop garlic and add to oil for one minute. Add remaining ingredients, cover and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Pawpaw Sour Cream Pie (adapted from Moosewood Cookbook, 1977)
Note: Most pawpaws are quite sweet so when cooking with them it’s important to taste them then decide if you should lessen the amount of sugar you add. This recipe has less sugar than the original. In addition, this pie is similar to cheesecake but not as firm; it’s very creamy.)

Crust:
1/3 lb. (1 package) crushed graham crackers
8 Tbs. melted butter
¾ tsp. cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
½ cup chopped, slivered almonds
Combine all ingredients and press into pie pan.

Filling:
¾ cup pawpaw pulp puree
12 oz. softened cream cheese
1/3 cup loosely packed brown sugar
t2 TBS fresh lemon juice
½ tsp. vanilla extract
¼ cup sour cream

Beat together well. Pour into crust. Cover and chill overnight.

Enjoy!

Mother Wind does me a favor

One of the joys of having a greenhouse during winter is stepping inside to be enveloped by sun and warmth as I check on whatever is growing. I planted lettuce in two containers to grow this winter and dug up my flat leaf Italian parsley to repot and continue harvesting. My watering visits to the greenhouse were a highlight of a sunny afternoon.

Were. No longer. Yes, you read right. New Year’s Day brought 40 mile per hour winds that knocked down the green house and blew at the plastic, tearing holes in it. As you can imagine, my lettuce containers also toppled from the shelves, spreading black soil and baby plants all over the fallen greenhouse.

When I returned from church and saw the disaster, I quickly changed clothes and made my way out there to see what I could salvage. The wind continued to whip the fallen plastic around me as I scooped up soil and plants to carry inside. Somehow the parsley plant remained intact so I had to merely carry it indoors.

As for the lettuce, my goddaughter and I spent some of the afternoon carefully repotting it from the one oblong and one round container to three round containers that would fit on the counter under my grow light. Yes, you heard me right. I received a grow light from Santa this year. Since I had been planning to bring in one container of lettuce to grow in the heat and light of the kitchen, Mother Wind did me a little favor by pushing me to repot. The long, oblong container that I had photographed in the greenhouse earlier in the week wouldn’t fit under the two-foot light anyway.

I no longer have a test pot in the greenhouse to see how long it could stand up to the sheltered cold. However, I do have lettuce plants that have decided they want to continue growing. They aren’t quite as beautiful as they were all snug in the greenhouse, but they’re getting there. Perhaps in another month we’ll have fresh salad. In the meantime, I need to look into replacing or repairing the greenhouse cover so it will be ready for my spring seedlings.

Creamy potato soup

Yesterday I enjoyed an energizing lunch with fellow writer Patsi Trollinger. We both needed some encouragement and found it helps to speak aloud those writerly concerns and dreams that can bounce around in our heads like a pinball.

Even writers need good food so I prepared potato soup, apple salad with fresh garden greens and onion rosemary focaccia bread. In the spirit of fall soups, check out the recipe below.

Beth’s Creamy Potato Soup

A few nutrition specifics:

Miso provides manganese, zinc, phosphorus, copper, protein and fiber to a meal. It originated in Japan and is typically made from soybean paste.

Parsley is packed with Vitamin K; just two tablespoons of the fresh herb have more than 150% of the daily recommended amount of Vitamin K. It also has properties that have been shown to inhibit tumor formation and further protect the body from carcinogens.

For more information on both, check out World’s Healthiest Foods.

Ingredients:
red and white potatoes (enough for 3 cups cubed)
1 medium onion
2 Tbsp. butter
2 cloves garlic
2 cups miso soup + 2 cups seaweed broth (or 4 cups chicken broth)
2 carrots
Salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. flour
1 cup sour cream
1 ½ cups finely grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

Make soup broth by putting 4 cups water on the stove to boil. When water boils, add the miso soup mix (comes in a packet) and 1 five inch strip of dried seaweed. You can find both of these in a health food store or you can use chicken broth, preferably low-sodium. Let the seaweed sit in the hot water for 20 minutes then discard it.

In the meantime, wash and cube potatoes to bite size. Chop onion. Melt butter in soup pot. Sauté onions 3 – 4 minutes. Peel and dice garlic cloves. Add to onions. Add potatoes to soup pot. Add broth, including the seaweed if it hasn’t been stewing in the hot water for about 20 minutes.

Peel and chop carrots. When the soup has cooked 20 minutes, add the carrots and a few sprinkles of salt and pepper. Continue to boil very gently for 20 minutes with lid on pot, just cracked open. You’ll have to turn down the temperature to remain at a gentle boil.

Test potatoes and carrots with a fork to see if they are soft. When they are, add the flour. Remove lid and turn heat to about medium to return to a boil for just about five minutes. Back off heat just a bit so no longer boiling and add parsley then sour cream. Stir in sour cream until melted. Stir in cheese and taste for seasoning. Add more salt or pepper if you need to. Total time: 1 ½ hours