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Easy summer garden meal: Fresh Tomato Pie


The semi-tropical weather we’ve been enjoying this summer has resulted in lots of tomatoes. We are amazed to have basil plants approximately twice as tall as usual. The annual surprise about which plant will produce a bumper crop and which will not continues to keep backyard gardening fresh and interesting. We have enjoyed plentiful basil pesto and a variety of tomato-based dishes.

On our post contemplating what to do with too many tomatoes on AnnArbor.com, a commenter suggested tomato pie and I thought “Yes! That’s what I want for dinner!”

I searched recipes online and in our cookbooks, and the simplest tomato pie caught my attention. I already had a pre-baked homemade pie shell in the refrigerator so this recipe was a cinch — one of those embarrassingly easy recipes that one hesitates to share because it might reveal one to be a slouch. The results were so good that I’ve overcome that resistance.

At this risk of appearing to be a kitchen simpleton, I’ll share the recipe here.

Fresh Tomato Pie

Ingredients
1 (9 inch) pie shell, baked
5 ripe tomatoes, sliced
1 onion
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Ground black pepper to taste
10 leaves of fresh basil, sliced thinly

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Slice and sauté the onion in the butter on medium low until soft. Place in the bottom of the pie shell.
3. Slice tomatoes and arrange them over onions. Add black pepper to taste.
4. In a medium bowl, combine mozzarella, Parmesan, mayonnaise and basil. Spread this mixture evenly over tomatoes.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Variations
If you are part of the anti-mayonnaise mob — a vocal minority indeed– you could replace the mayonnaise with two eggs and your result would be a more quiche-like tomato pie.

If you want a healthier version, you could again replace some or all of the mayonnaise with yogurt or low-fat sour cream.

We have made a couple versions of the Fresh Tomato Pie recently. I predict this recipe will remain in heavy rotation until the supply of fresh tomatoes runs out.

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By 20 Minute Jan – September 21, 2010

What To Do with That Whale in the Squash Patch

Summer squash and especially zucchini bear the brunt of many kitchen-garden jokes. I think Garrison Keillor defined a small town as a place where folks only lock their car doors during zucchini season, the implication being that unscrupulous neighbors might sneak a bagful of squash into the backseat. Certainly, summer squash produce bountifully. We search among the elephant-sized leaves for squash and eat up as many as we can find. Summer squash between 6″ – 8″ inches long are a delightful, quickly prepared side dish, easily stir-fried with a splash of olive oil and a pinch of rosemary.

But it doesn’t matter how carefully we search, we always miss a couple until they’ve grown as large as a whale. Continued…

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By 20 Minute Jim – September 16, 2010

Our Three Favorite Things about Too Many Tomatoes


The tide has shifted in our kitchen garden. After the long wait for the first tomato to ripen, we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of a tomato deluge. You may have also grown too many tomatoes or found yourself carried away when purchasing at the farmers’ markets. Here are a few ways to enjoy all of your tomatoes to the maximum.

1. Eat tomatoes fresh or barely cooked.
Mid-summer is too hot for lengthy cooking and little preparation is needed for tomato consumption. Jim often skips washing them and eats tomatoes still warm from the sun while standing in the garden — one of the greatest things about organic gardening. If neatness counts, slice or chop your tomato first and sprinkle on a little salt. Just slightly more work, add a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of fresh or dried herbs and now you have a classy snack or side dish. Toss on some cheese — feta or bleu — and you can call it a salad. With further preparation, you could enjoy tabbouleh. We like these two easy and fast tomato sauces adapted from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book.

Fresh Tomato and Basil Sauce
2 cloves garlic
1 cup peeled and seeded tomatoes
3 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves
2 teaspoons olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
Several dashes cayenne

1. In a blender, purée the garlic and tomato. Put the mixture in a non-metal bowl.
2. Stir in the basil, oil, salt and cayenne. Serve at room temperature on pasta, cold steamed vegetables, cold cooked chicken or fish, or hot rice.

Marinara Sauce
2 lbs peeled tomatoes
2 teaspoons olive oil
4 cloves of minced garlic
1 – 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1-1/4 teaspoons oregano
Salt, to taste
Black pepper, to taste
1/3 cup minced fresh parsley

1. Purée the tomatoes in a food mill, blender or food processor.
2. Heat the oil briefly and add the garlic. Sauté the garlic, stirring it for 15 seconds, but do not let it brown. Add the puréed tomatoes, tomato paste, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer the sauce for 20 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in the parsley.

2. Preserve for later.
Canning tomatoes is the best place to start if you are interested in learning to can. Anyone with motivation can learn to can by carefully following the guidelines in the Ball Blue Book: Guide to Home Canning, Freezing and Hydration. Most tomatoes and especially heirloom varieties tend to be high in acid and hence resistant to spoilage. Our favored method of preserving tomatoes is canning a not-too-thick tomato sauce that we can simmer further in soups or spaghetti sauces in the fall and winter. To get a smooth sauce, we use a food mill that we purchased at a garage sale for $1, but nicer ones can be had at Downtown Home and Garden or Williams & Sonoma, if you aren’t so lucky. Weather too hot for lengthy cooking sessions is also unsuitable for the boiling water of canning, so you might save that technique for later in the season and instead consider freezing a quart or two of sauce. We have also had good luck with freezing tomatoes whole in Ziploc bags or plastic containers to cook later on.

3. Share your bounty.
The best thing about having too many tomatoes or any vegetable is that you can feel generous and share. One neighbor whose partner gardens only native plants seems especially appreciative of receiving some of our heirloom tomatoes. I had a co-worker who would send out a morning email announcement about the fresh herbs she’d brought from her garden to share that day.

If you have a lot to share or want to provide goodness from your garden to those in need, be aware that Food Gatherers accepts produce donations from home gardeners. You can make your donation in two ways. Produce can be dropped off at the Food Gatherers Warehouse at 1 Carrot Way, near Dhu Varren and Pontiac Trail. The hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday. You can also take your donations to English Gardens at 155 N. Maple Road during regular store hours, (Monday-Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.). English Gardens will store your produce in their cooler and notify Food Gathers to arrange a pickup. Donations of any freshly picked vegetables, fruits and herbs are appreciated.

The days of too many tomatoes pass quickly. What are your favorite ways to enjoy your tomato bounty?

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By 20 Minute Jim – September 14, 2010

The $15,000 Solar Dehydrator

Our San Marzano tomatoes are ripening in full force now. Their meaty flesh and relatively thin skin make them great for tomato sauce but also for drying. Ah, sun dried tomatoes. There’s nothing like their zesty flavor in mid-winter. To prepare some, I recently fired up my $15,000 solar dehydrator. That might seem like a lot to pay for a solar dehydrator but mine also gets over 20 miles to the gallon.

That’s right, I use my car as a dehydrator.

I know I’ve complained about temperature of the interior of the car on a sunny day. It feels hot enough to cook something. I even have one of those solar reflectors to decrease the heat. (We’ve got another use for those too… as part of a simple but effective solar cooker that we’ve written about here.) Instead of “wasting” the heat of the car, I put that heat to use to dry tomatoes.


We prepare tomatoes for drying by washing and drying them, then cutting and removing the seeds. I find seed removal most effective if I quarter the tomatoes lengthwise and just pinch out the seeds and juice between my thumb and middle finger. Then spread the tomato sections out on racks; I place them nearly crowded on the rack because they will shrink as they dry. Set the racks on trays or cookie sheets because that allows for easy transport and adequate air circulation. We weren’t going anywhere that day so we put the trays out in the back deck of the wagon which was parked in full sun on an 84 F day.

Obviously we can’t dry tomatoes in 20 minutes, but we can get our part done and let the sun do the rest. We had had a slight problem on some plants with blossom end rot this year so maybe a half dozen tomatoes had a speck of black at the tip that was easily cut off. In the interest of accurate reporting, I should say that I was able to do one tray in 20 minutes, but that included picking, washing, preparing and getting the tomatoes into the car. I subsequently readied two more trays, using about 20 tomatoes per rack.

The concern is not whether this process will work but whether the tomatoes might end up over-cooked. The goal is not tomato jerky, not to make completely dried out tomato pieces. What we want is something more like a fresh raisin or a fruit roll-up texture– still pliable, still slightly moist. Home-drying works best with the paste-style tomatoes, like Roma, Amish paste, the long ones shaped like bulbs or torpedoes, which have more “meat” and less liquidy juice to start. The drying time also depends on the weather so drying can take a day or two.

If the day turns gray or a car is not available, sun-dried tomatoes can also be made or finished in the oven. Put prepared tomatoes on racks or cookie sheets into a 150 F degree oven. Drying might take 10 to 20 hours. Check the tomatoes periodically and move the racks around as necessary.

The easiest and healthiest way to store sun-dried tomatoes is in Ziploc bags in the freezer. Fill bags with cooled tomatoes and zip them closed. All this hard work will result in a product about 80% lighter than what we started with, but don’t be fooled. These little babies pack a lot of punch. Another storage method is to fill a clean jar with tomatoes, top it off with olive oil, and keep in the refrigerator; this, however, is not a low-calorie selection.

I’ve heard hard-core organic folks muse whether the off-gassing from the PVCs in the car upholstery compromise the purity of the tomatoes, but we haven’t worried about that. We enjoy the fruits of our labor long into the winter, tossing sun-dried tomatoes in sauces or on pizza, in soups and scrambled eggs. When all we can get at the grocery are the pale imported tomatoes of winter, we can raid the freezer for bite-sized bits of sunshine in the form of home-grown, home-made, sun-dried tomatoes.

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By 20 Minute Jim – September 9, 2010

Monterey Beans and Cheese with Rice: Dinner in a Hurry

This meal is a standby at our house because it’s simply delicious. The necessary ingredients are almost always on hand in our pantry and freezer. Monterey Beans and Cheese is also extremely flexible so we can easily use up leftover meat or vegetables. This time of year we use ripe tomatoes from our garden. Here’s our take on the recipe from the More-With-Less Cookbook (World Community Cookbook)
by Doris Janzen Longacre.

Monterey Beans and Cheese

Fry, drain, and break into pieces:
• 2 slices bacon
Set aside. Sauté in bacon fat until tender:
• 1 medium-sized onion, sliced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, diced
Add:
• bacon bits
• 2 cups cooked black beans
• 1/4-1/2 lb. shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 ripe tomatoes, diced or 3/4 c. tomato sauce
• 1/4 c. beef bouillon or tomato juice
• 1 Tablespoon chili powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• dash of pepper
Cook slowly, stirring constantly, until ingredients are blended and cheese smooth — about 5 minutes. Serve with rice.

Variations:
•This dish can be made vegetarian-style leaving out the bacon altogether– we don’t make it that way, however. Even for an omnivore, this dish contains just a little meat and you get a whole lot of flavor from that.
•You can use whatever type of beans you like best. Kidney beans or white beans work well, but black beans are our favorite kind.
•The cheese used can also be varied.
•Different peppers can also replace the jalapeno. Chipotele add a smokey flavor. Green or red pepper make a less spicy dish.

We like the spicy element, however, so we tend to make Monterey Beans and Cheese on the spicy side, sometimes adding a chili pepper as well. Summer or winter, this meal is easily prepared in the 20 minutes it takes to make the accompanying rice.

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By 20 Minute Jan – August 16, 2010