Ketchup, redux

Last weekend (namely Saturday) I decided to make ketchup again. Since I had knee surgery on September 3 and I'm still not walking, I decided not to start with whole tomatoes and have to cook them and mill them and whatnot. I started with cans of tomato puree, added the other ingredients, and cooked it down, and then canned it. Last night. More than 48 hours later.

I learned a few lessons from all this, lessons I hope that I will always remember:

1. DO NOT make more than one ketchup recipe at once. Unless you do it in separate pots. It took FOREVER to reduce.

and

2. DO NOT cook it over high heat at the beginning in an attempt to get things going faster. Unless you want to spend three days trying to clean burnt crap off the bottom of your pot.

The ketchup had a more complex flavor, either from being burned or from cooking for two days, or from both. But still. Never again.

Veggies

The last week or two has seen a lot of vegetables on my table, partly because the summer garden is finally producing.

On Monday, we roasted some beets, boiled some green beans, and sliced some cucumbers and tomatoes, and set them on the table in separate bowls to combine and dress with oil, vinegar, mayonaise and mustard, and experiment with different flavors. I was surprised to find that my favorite was green beans and sliced beets with oil and vinegar, although any of them with oil and salt was delicious, too. The tomatoes are the first Juliet and Super Italian Paste tomatoes from the garden. By the end of the week or early next week we'll have our first heirlooms (Cherokee purple!).

Last night, Loris sauteed carrots in olive oil, which we ate with some REALLY strong cheese he picked up at the co-op. On the side, we had sliced cucumbers with oil, vinegar, and mustard, and tomatoes with basil, olive oil, and burrata. If you like fresh mozzarella, you have never had burrata, and you have a chance to buy some, do it! It's amazing stuff.

We'll only have one or two more dinners with carrots and beets from the garden, but pretty soon we'll be eating peppers and tomatoes, and soon after that we'll hopefully have zucchini and eggplant. And hopefully we keep getting cucumber and green beans.

Juliet tomato

I really like the Juliet variety tomato, even though it is a hybrid and not an heirloom, and even though I am not normally a big fan of cherry tomatoes. I first tried the Juliet variety two years ago in my first real summer garden, and I loved it, mostly because it is so versatile and prolific. The fruits actually look like pint-sized roma tomatoes.

As such, I used them for everything - snacking, slicing, in salads, cooked with fish, and most importantly, added to the romas for tomato sauce.

This year, I only planted one, and now I regret it. In the future, I thinkI'd like to plant several to supplement my sauce tomatoes, because really, this beauty produces so many tomatoes! It's such a great option for when the sauce tomatoes don't do that well. Or if, as in my case, I decided to only plant half as many sauce tomatoes as usual, and the heirlooms I planted instead (brandywines) aren't doing too fantastic just yet.

The only real problem with the Juliet is that I can't keep up with pruning it, and it takes over the garden. I gave up trying to prune and stake it, and instead I sunk another stake at the end of the row and I am wrapping twine around the two stakes, and trying to keep the plant tethered in the middle. I think that will be a reasonable way to grow them in the future - between two stakes.

Now I'm already looking forward to next year's garden.

Really quick garden update

Cucumbers - taking over the garden. Should have given them more space. Had a cucumber salad the other day with our first one - delicious!

Peppers - Really producing, 95% of them doing fantastic, a few that I still can't tell if they're going to pull through.

Zucchini - the yellow squash really faltered and still hasn't really recovered. The light green variety I planted from seed died, but I replanted it about a week ago and now I've got three little sprouts. I'm hoping with these temps they catch up soon!

Tomatoes - first Juliet is almost ripe! Hopefully more will follow soon.

Green beans - producing like crazy. We have 2.5 pounds just from the last few days. Will need to look into canning them.

Eggplant - getting established. Not expecting big things any time soon.

Melon - Really taking off, but no little melons yet.

Winter squash - not doing much, I'm hoping with the heat it'll perk up soon.

Onions - almost entirely harvested - only about 10 left, but we have at least 15-25 at home still.

Carrots and beets - still quite a few left, will need to pick soon (but we still have carrots in the fridge!).

Cooking (mostly meat)

Lately we've been experimenting a lot with meat from the farmer's market. We have a local pork producer who often has lamb and grass-fed beef. There's also a fisherman from the Bay Area, and now a local free-range chicken grower. Over the past year, we've branched out from our original purchases of filleted white fish (usually cod or something similar) and pork chops to crab, salmon, tuna, scallops, prawns, pork loin, grass fed ground beef, sirloin steaks, lamb stew meat, and most recently, a whole chicken and a 5-pound leg of lamb.

Memorable recipes have included seared tuna on heirloom tomato salad, risotto with asparagus and lamb, basil-stuffed scallops, prawns and crab with homemade mayonnaise, and hamburgers on homemade focaccia with a variety of cheeses and toppings.

A few weeks ago, we bought a whole chicken and I roasted it, stuffed with some garlic and herbs, and basted with lemon juice and olive oil. It was divine, although it could have used more salt. I don't know if I could have or should have brined it. I saved the bones in the freezer to make stock, which I'll try to do soon.

Last night, Loris cooked a leg of lamb. I'm not sure of his exact recipe or method - I just know that it took a lot longer than he expected, there were rosemary, garlic, potatoes, onions, and carrots, and it was amazing. Eight of us finished off that 5-pound sucker. It was tender and juicy and really fantastic. My husband is a wonderful cook.

Garden update

Holy cow, I will never get those garden pictures posted.

The garden is doing really well! The tomatoes are getting huge, the vining ones are growing nice and tall and the determinates are getting nice and bushy. I've already been pruning and staking them, although at my sister's garden today I noticed that someone using the same stakingm ethod ties the vine much closer to the stake, so I will probably give that a shot. Quite a few of the plants have little (or big) green tomatoes.

The peppers are looking good. I'm excited! There are a few little ones here and there getting started.

The green beans have already started producing, and are getting huge. I am going to have to start picking them regularly.

The onions are almost out of the ground, I'll probably pick a few more today. The carrots look great, I need to pick more of those before it gets too hot. We might squeeze a few beets out, too.

Eggplant went in recently, four of them, and I've got two more waiting to go in. The cucumber is rapidly recovering from its post-planting malaise and I'm trying to get it trained up the trellises before it takes over its little corner of the garden.

The melon is doing fantastic, as are the butternut squash and yellow summer squash. The zucchini I grew from seed, however, is just not looking good. I'm a little worried and disappointed about that.

And that's it! I've started a mini-herb garden at home - two kinds of rosemary, sage, basil, and soon some parsley (when I get around to buying it). I've braided the garlic, and I'm drying the onions and shallots. Pretty soon, I'll be canning giardiniera, tomato sauce, zucchini, jam, and ketchup.

Oh, and a post about making mustard should be coming up soon. Just find me some time to write and post pictures!

Onion soup

I've been busy harvesting onions, although to be quite honest I'm not sure what to do with them. There are about 20 left in my garden, and we've got maybe 15 at home - not sure what happened to the other 35 I planted, unless I'm really not counting correctly.

They didn't really dry out the way the garlic did - most of them were still green and happy. And we've been experiencing rain! And lightning! And thunder! IN JUNE! It's crazy. So I guess they're not going to dry out anytime soon.

Some of them are HUGE. And some are small. The ones I thought didn't do anything at all actually did produce nice little onions. What to do with all these onions?

Loris made a frittata for dinner a couple nights ago, which was delicious. And last night I made onion soup, using a recipe I more or less made up after browsing a few cookbooks and looking online to get some ideas. It was divine. Here's the recipe.

2.5 large onions (or more smaller ones)
Olive oil and butter
Marsala wine (dry)
Turkey stock (or some other stock - I used some concentrated frozen stock from my Thanksgiving turkey, about 1/2 cup or so)
Broth (around 4 cups - I used Knorr's veggie boullion)
Bay leaves

Slice the onions thinly. Put some butter and olive oil into a medium pot over medium-low heat, and wait for it to get hot and the butter to melt. Add the sliced onions and saute for at least 45 minutes, adjusting the heat so that they are cooking slowly (with my electric stove, I have to start with higher heat, and then lower it once everything heats up). Stir often, keeping an eye so that the onion gets soft and carmelizes, but doesn't brown. If it seems a bit dry, add more olive oil and/or butter.

Add the concentrated stock and a good helping of marsala wine, enough to make a sort of sauce, and let cook another 10 minutes. Then add the broth and bay leaves, and bring to a simmer. Simmer for another 20-30 minutes or longer (probably less is ok too).

Take out the bay leaves, and serve.

This can probably be served with a dusting of parmesan cheese, or traditional-style with a toasted slice of bread and some melted cheese.