When Life Hands You Green Tomatoes...

...don't make lemonade. Seriously, it'll taste terrible. You can, however, whip up a pretty good Green Tomato Soup with them.

As I mentioned last week, the farm got hit with late blight, and the only tomatoes that could be saved were the green ones. I'm not a green tomato expert, but I'm definitely not one to shy away from trying to use a new ingredient, and wouldn't you know it, the New York Times had a nice recipe for green tomato soup in its dining section. Perfect!

Being me, I messed with it a little. I threw in a red bell pepper I found getting pruny in my vegetable drawer and substituted plain nonfat yogurt for the creme fraiche in the recipe. Neither change rendered the soup inedible--in fact, it was quite delicious, and a great way to use up some of the unripened tomatoes we're picking ahead of the first frost. The soup's good both hot and cold--on a busy night, you can come home, throw a salad together, spoon up some of the soup (which is actually surprisingly filling and satisfying), and have yourself a nice 10-minute dinner. My favorite kind!

Green Tomato Soup
Adapted from a recipe on the New York Times website


2T unsalted butter
1/2 medium onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced (optional)
1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
4 cups green tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste
8 tsp plain yogurt (optional)
1T chopped fresh dill
1/2 tsp honey

Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are translucent (3-5 minutes)

While that's cooking, lightly crush the coriander with a mortar and pestle or the side of a knife. Add it to the pot with the garlic and saute for another 2-3 minutes

Add the tomatoes, stock, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the tomatoes have broken down, about 30 minutes. Feel free to watch an episode of Modern Family while you wait: I hear it's pretty funny.

Using an immersion or standard blender, pulverize the soup until it's nice and smooth

Return the soup to medium heat and add the optional yogurt, dill, and honey. Cook until heated through. Taste and adjust seasonings.

I thought the soup was fine on its own, but the original recipe calls for brioche croutons and bacon sprinkled over the top, so feel free to go nuts. I mean, what isn't improved by adding bacon?

Happy cooking, everyone!

Blighted

Well, the organic farm has thrown in the towel with the tomatoes this year.

When I went yesterday, I was told that sauce and cherry tomatoes were now "gleaning" crops, meaning I could help myself to as many usable ones as I could find. Quality was poor because they'd been hit by late blight.

Boy, had they ever. Under a gray, drippy sky I wandered the rows of dessicated plants sporting rotted out fruit that somehow still clung to the vine, although it dropped off the second you touched it, splotching the ground beneath it. The few baby tomatoes somehow still managing to sprout don't stand a chance.

Someone told me that this is the same strain of blight that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840's. We still haven't figured out what causes it or what to do about it. And walking the fields yesterday, I could get a very, very tiny measure of what it must have been like to go out to your farm in the morning and see your previously healthy plants reduced to this. Very disheartening.

Still, there is a bit of a silver lining. At least tomatoes can be eaten underripe, unlike potatoes. Circumstances like this tend to make you think differently about how you use your produce. Serendipitously, the New York Times ran a recipe yesterday for Green Tomato Soup. Keeping that in mind, I pulled some good-sized green tomatoes off the vines so I can give it a try. The weather's turned rainy and chilly very suddenly out here, perfect weather for soup. I know you can also can and fry green tomatoes, but what else? Any suggestions? I'm wide open to them!

Perfect Polenta

One of the things I like most about belonging to our CSA farm is that it essentially forces me to cook according to what's really in season, the way people used to. I'm a history buff, so I enjoy that and occasionally pretend I'm Laura Ingalls Wilder, tramping through the fields to get dinner. It also makes you use your imagination. You have no idea how many different things you can do with a tomato until you have three pounds of heirlooms, plus a pound and a half of cherry tomatoes on your hands.

Last night, I put those tomatoes to good work in a dish that would have made my Italian forbears proud: spicy tomatoes with shrimp and mussels, served over homemade polenta.

Polenta's a wonderful thing, and it's incredibly easy to make, which makes me wonder why the heck I ever spent upwards of $4 on the ready made stuff when I could have just bought $2 worth of cornmeal and made about 20 times as much of it at home. Like pasta, it's versatile and can be served as a side dish on its own, mixed or sprinkled with cheese or jalapenos to give it a kick, or covered with some kind of sauce, like we did last night. You can have it soft, like grits, or let it harden and slice it up to toss on the grill or in a pan. This also makes me feel Laura Ingalls Wilder-ish--what we call polenta she called Cornmeal Mush in her books. I think polenta sounds nicer.

Polenta A La Bree

1/2 onion

1 cup cornmeal (course ground works best)

Olive oil

salt and pepper

1. Saute the onion in the olive oil until it just turns translucent and starts to release its flavor, about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly.

2. In a large saucepan, stir together 1 cup of water, the cornmeal, and 1 tsp. salt. Add the cooled onion. Stirring constantly, add 2 cups boiling water.

3. Turn on the burner under the saucepan to medium heat. Cook the polenta, stirring constantly, until it's thickened and comes away from the sides of the saucepan. Taste and season.

**If you like, you can fold in some parmesan or pecorino romano cheese, or sprinkle the cheese of your choice over the top of the warm polenta. Serve warm immediately, or spread in a greased brownie pan and let cool. Cut into slices and grill or saute.

Canning Craze

It's that time of the summer when the produce starts rolling in faster than we can eat it. We've been especially overrun with tomatoes, despite the blight and crappy weather--not that I'm complaining. The tomatoes we're getting from the farm are fabulous, but I was starting to run out of ways to prepare them. I was having the same problem with all the summer squash we were getting. My solution--tomato sauce, homemade, canned, and put aside for January, when a hot bowl of pasta with yummy summer veg would be most welcome.

So, that was my project on Sunday. While the sauce was simmering, I blitzed up some pesto, using the enormous bunch of basil I got from the farm last Wednesday, and canned that too (waste not, want not!) The sauce turned out beautifully, and I now have five jars of it, sealed and sitting in my makeshift closet pantry, just waiting for those chilly winter days.

Summer Pasta Sauce

1 large summer squash (zucchini or yellow squash)

1 medium onion or 2 small onions, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

4-5 large tomatoes, chopped small

1/2 bell pepper (any color)

your favorite herbs (I used a few leaves of fresh basil and thyme)

Olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat a deep saute pan over medium heat. Add enough olive oil to coat the bottom. Add onions and garlic and saute until the onions are just transparent. Add squash and stir. Saute for a few minutes, until the squash just starts to color and cook a little.

Add the tomatoes, stir, and simmer for about five minutes, stirring frequently to keep them from sticking to the pan.

Add the herbs and peppers and simmer the sauce about 5-10 minutes, until it reduces and thickens slightly. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Can in sterilized jars for later use or refrigerate.

**Cook's note: if you don't mind a wetter, slightly thinner sauce, you don't have to bother seeding the tomatoes. If you want your sauce thicker, though, gut the tomatoes before adding them to the sauce***

The Tomato Extravaganza

Despite the blight and the uncooperative weather, tomato season has come to New Jersey, and Restaurant Serenade in Chatham celebrated with their annual Tomato Extravaganza. As a major perk of the job, A. and I scored seats at the press table for the dinner, which was fabulous.

I'd been meaning to try Serenade for a while--their menus sound amazing, and I wasn't disappointed. The five-course meal kicked off with tomato cocktails (we tried the tomato water with, presumably, spicy vodka, which was interesting. What the heck is tomato water, anyway?) and some little bites before progressing to amazingly velvety corn soup, halibut, fried green tomatoes, little bison burgers, and a particularly inventive tomato bread pudding with an outstanding basil ice cream--quite the inventive take on the traditional tomato basil salad.

To my (kitchen nerd) delight, I got to chat with the chef/owner before the dinner, and in doing so I learned a couple of things:

1. The cold, wet weather has played hell with the tomatoes. Apparently, hot, sunny days are needed to get great, sweet, ripe tomatoes. Even the ones that ripened properly have a watery flavor this year. I had no idea.
2. This unfortunate situation required a complete overhaul of the evening's menu. A last-minute overhaul, by the sound of it. Apparently, in years past, the tomatoes have been the star of the show, but this year they were relegated to more of a supporting player role because the flavor wasn't all there. No matter, everything was still delicious, and I loved the gazpacho served in a small, hollowed-out tomato that served as a side for one of the entrees.

As a bonus, the farmer who grows Serenade's tomatoes (and peaches, and...well, almost all their produce, really) was on hand to answer diners' questions in a dessert-time Q&A. I learned more about tomatoes and cutting back peach trees during that 20-minute session than I thought I ever would. Maybe someday I'll put it to good use and manage to keep a plant alive for a change. Well, a girl can dream, can't she?