The Ul-TOMATO betrayal
You know that optimism starting a garden for the summer? Planting seeds and little sprouts getting all excited about how healthy and insta-glam you are going to be with your fresh veggies. Specifically for me, I love love love fresh garden tomatoes. I know it’s snobby and I accept your judgement but store bought ones don’t have the same taste. Once you’ve had fresh garden tomatoes store bought taste like watery mushy sadness. At the start of summer, I could see myself basking in the sun living off fresh tomatoes, it was a glorious daydream. Welcome to reality! Where you wait and wait and wait for these stupid tomatoes to be ready for harvest but NOPE there those stubby branches sit looking all arrogant and producing nothing. Just when you accept that you will get to enjoy two tiny tomatoes this year the first week of September rolls around and then these stupid little plants decide it is there moment to shine and you are drowning in tomatoes! More tomatoes than you could imagine.
All this to say my household was landed with a load of tomatoes and we were pretty dang determined they wouldn’t go to waste. Gear up for all the tomato recipes.
I have a hope that one day someone’s grandma is going to take me aside and teach me the ways of salsa, real Karate Kid style, but until then I’m just going to go with what I know. Start with the day’s harvest of tomatoes. If you’re not drowning in tomatoes and just buying them four medium-sized ones should make a single batch of salsa. Its less labour intensive to use larger tomatoes but it’s not necessary.
Prepare two bowl one filled with boiling water and the other with ice water. Put your tomatoes into the boiling water and leave them in for a few minutes. You should notice the skin of the tomato start to pucker and slip off. Carefully move them into the ice water. The tomato skin should be easy to remove with your hands. It’s a weird feeling and some part of me always feels creepy doing this step.
For four tomatoes cut up half a white onion, three cloves of garlic, a pinch of salt, and jalapenos. For the whitest of white levels of spice just use one, I would recommend at least two or three if you are a fan of the spice. Habaneros are my prefered pepper but my grocery store let me down so I had to grab the jalapenos. I was overrun with tomatoes, not with habaneros.
Throw all the things in a blender and blend it all up!
Once it’s blended it looks a weird disgusting pink colour. Put the gross pink salsa in a pot with some oil, cook on low for about an hour stirring every occasionally.
As the salsa cooks it will darken in colour. Pro Tip: do not put your face over the pan as it’s cooking. That is jalapeno and onion steam and it will make you bawl your eyes out.
Eat all the chips and enjoy the last little bits of summery September blue sky.
If peeling the skin of things isn’t your jam (no judgement) then this Bruschetta recipe will be appealing in its lack of peeling the skin off things. Also, a great way to get rid of… I mean a great way to use smaller tomatoes as that is often what people have growing in their gardens.
Start off with you guessed it TOMATOES! Cut them into small pieces. Let’s be real for us non-cooking type people when people just say ‘cut this up’ with no direction as to what kind of pieces they want to end up with it is stressful. Have no fear you can’t mess this up just cut ’em up real small.
Have roughly a 2:1 ratio for your onions. So however many tomatoes you have cut up half that amount of onion.
Also finely chop up a couple cloves of garlic and some basil leaves.
Slice up a baguette, dip one side in an oil and crushed garlic, then bake until they are crispy. It doesn’t take very long so keep a close eye on them. While the bread is toasting mix all your bruschetta ingredients together with a bit of balsamic vinegar. Bruschetta tastes better if the tomatoes and other ingredients have time to sit so the flavours get incorporated together. But it’s still delicious if you eat it right away.
My philosophy for life is that if you can add cheese to something you should do it. I’m sure there is a ‘proper’ cheese to go with bruschetta but I don’t support cheese discrimination. Asiago is what my family normally use but a well-aged cheddar is also delicious. Any kinda cheese struck your fancy will probably be delicious. Put some cheez whiz on there! It’s your bruschetta do whatever you want with it.
Now the sun is setting on warm summer days and we are getting into prime soup season. Take that tomato! You will be used for fall food! You thought you could defeat me. Think again!
This recipe is nice in that it can be adjusted easily to accommodate however many tomatoes you have left. So if perchance you have a TON of tomatoes left over you can make up some yummy soup to freeze for later.
Slice the tomatoes in half or if they are too large into quarters. Lightly drizzle with maple syrup and sprinkle with salt.
Roast the tomatoes at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
While the tomatoes are roasting measure out a cup of broth or make up a cup. Just use whatever you have on hand.
Add the tomatoes into the pot with the broth and blend them together. I added a small amount of soy milk while I was blending to make the soup a little creamier.
Tomato soup was my all time favourite food as a child. I wasn’t sure if a homemade one would be too acidic or overwhelmingly tomato flavoured. This soup holds up! This tomato soup is well balanced and quite delicious.
So there you go! All the ways I could think of to vanquish these tomatoes. Hope you enjoy!
-Hannah
