Potatoes from the Garden

One of my great joys in the vegetable garden this year has been digging potatoes. We planted five barrels of potatoes, including Red Pontiac, La Ratte, Yukon Gold, and Red Norland. I also planted some organic potatoes I got at Whole Foods that sprouted very quickly so I threw them in the ground.

Yesterday, I decided to have a good breakfast, which included potatoes. So out I went to the garden and dug a few beauties, which were quickly diced and into a frying pan not ten minutes after they left the ground. Served with organic apple-smoked bacon and poached brown eggs, they were delicious, crisp on the outside and creamy within—brilliant, as chef Jamie Oliver would say.

Tomato Sauce Marathon

I mentioned in one of my posts last week, that I had three boxes of organic tomatoes, Early Girl, that I purchased at the Great Basin Food Coop. On Friday, I got busy making tomato sauce for freezing. I used recipes in a article by Georgeanne Brennan that were in her article, “From Vine to Freezer - Tomato Sauce for All Year,” which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle last July. I decide to take on all three recipes, Basic Tomato Sauce, Roasted Roma Sauce, and Roasted Heirloom Tomato Sauce.

I began with the first one, which I cooked last week, with tomatoes from our garden. I sliced about twenty pounds of Early Girls, which filled the sixteen quart stock pot that Vicki gave me for my birthday. They cooked on medium for about two hours, then I ran them through the food mill.

Then I tackled the roasted roma sauce, which used my entire twenty-pound box of romas. They were sliced, then baked with olives, capers, marjoram and anchovies—the secret ingredient. After baking in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours, I pureed the sauce in the food processor, leaving it slightly chunky. The result was a piquant sauce that will make the perfect base for puttanesca sauce.

Roasted heirlooms with the next challenge, Cherokee Black and Brandywine tomatoes, oven roasted with olives, fresh basil, spices, balsamic vinegar, then simmered with white wine. This was also run through the food mill, yielding a dark rich sauce that will be superb with pasta, fish, or roasted vegetables.

I did most of this in one day, the kitchen was roasting, probably 100 degrees and floor was a mess and there seemed to be tomato residue everywhere. Still, the results were fabulous, I've put 60+ twelve-ounce bags of sauce in the freezer.

Ricotta Pancakes

A couple of weeks ago Vicki and I were down for the first football game of the year at Cal and the morning after the game we revisited the Cock-a-Doodle Cafe with our friends Dan and Sandy. We hadn't been there since last year, but the food was still outstanding. Once again, Vicki had the Lemon Ricotta pancakes and loved them so much I decided to try them at home. I used a recipe from Giada De Laurentis and varied it a little bit, adding blue berries and vanilla, rather than lemon zest. The result was two huge yummie pancakes served with a couple of slices of organic apple smoked bacon. Vicki was so anxious to eat it, she took a bite before I could take the picture!

Here's the recipe:

----------------------------------------------------

Ricotta Pancakes


Prep Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 30 min Level: Easy
Serves: 4 servings (16 pancakes)

Ingredients:

2 cups water
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups pancake and waffle mix (recommended: Krusteaz)
1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
2/3 cup frozen blueberries
Melted butter

Directions:

Stir 1/3 cup of water and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. Stir in the honey. Set aside and keep the honey syrup warm.

Using a rubber spatula, stir the remaining 1 2/3 cups of water and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the pancake mix and stir just until moistened but still lumpy. Stir in the ricotta into the pancake mixture, then stir gently to incorporate the ricotta but maintain a lumpy batter. Fold in the blueberries.

Heat a griddle over medium heat. Brush with the melted butter. Working in batches, spoon 1/4 cup of batter onto the griddle for each pancake. Cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side. Serve with the honey syrup.

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentis

Tomato Sauce

We've got lots of tomatoes in the garden now, so on Tuesday it was time to make tomato sauce. I followed a recipe by Georgeanne Brennan that was part of an article she wrote in the SF Chronicle last July. It's a fairly basic recipe that calls for sauteed shallots and herbs along with the tomatoes. She suggests peeling the tomatoes after dunking them in hot water, but since I have a food mill, I just cooked them skin, seeds, and all and after grinding them, the skin and seeds stayed behind and went in the compost.

The sauce turned out great, but the only thing I was bummed about was that it didn't make enough! Eight pounds of tomatoes cooked down to only about nine cups, which I put into six freezer bags.

I was moaning to Vicki about this and told her that I was going to get a hold of Lattin Farms in Fallon and buy a whole boatload of toms. Lo and behold, Vicki called me a few hours later and told me that the Great Basin Food Coop had a post on Facebook that they were selling 25 lb. boxes of tomatoes for $.50 a pound! I hightailed it down there and was soon on my way home with a box of organic roma tomatoes grown at Rick Lattin's farm! Of course, I still wasn't happy with only twenty-five pounds, so dropped by today and bought two more boxes.

Now I've got two boxes of slicers and one of roma—tomorrow is sauce-making day, big time!

---------------------------------------------

Basic Tomato Sauce

Makes 1 1/2 quarts

I use mostly Shady Lady for this sauce because that is the variety I have that's most abundant in my garden, but you can use any meaty variety. If you are using Roma- type tomatoes, the cooking time will be less.

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup minced shallots
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 to 6 pounds medium to large juicy tomatoes, any variety, cored, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
• 2 bay leaves, fresh if possible
• -- Kosher or sea salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions: In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. When warm, add the shallots and cook until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute, until softened.

Add the tomatoes, increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Add the thyme, rosemary and bay leaves. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring from time to time, until the sauce has thickened so much you can almost stand a wooden spoon upright in it, about 1 1/2 hours. You will hear the bubbling as it thickens, indicating it is almost ready.

To finish, reduce the heat to low, and simmer, stirring until the desired thickness. Be careful not to burn the sauce.

Taste, and add salt and pepper as desired. Puree or leave chunky, whichever you prefer. Cool and store up to 5 days in the refrigerator, or freeze.

Per 1/4 cup: 32 calories, 1 g protein, 5 g carbohydrate, 1 g fat (0 g saturated), 0 mg cholesterol, 9 mg sodium, 1 g fiber.

Uses: Use on pizza, polenta, pasta, pan-seared steak or any time tomato sauce is required.

By Georgeanne Brennan, "From Vine to Freezer - Tomatoe Sauce for all Year" San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, July 26, 2009