Dear Customers,
The color of the apples on the trees in my back yard indicates that it won’t be long before it’s time to harvest them. That is if there are any left! Heather routinely walks by that tree whenever she walks the dogs on a potty-run around the house – (translated: several times a day). Every trip necessitates her sampling an apple. I bought my wife a small cider press two years ago and, even though she asked for it, she has yet to take it out of the box. Maybe this’ll be the year!
It’s also time to start “milling” my tomato crop for canning and/or freezing. Maybe ten years ago, I watched a video by chef, Mario Batali, who maintained that the absolute best tomatoes for sauce were the San Marzano variety – and not the ones sold in Florida but the ones from Italy! I purchased a package of seeds on-line from Italy and have been growing this variety ever since. Each fall, I save one of the most beautiful, largest tomatoes and harvest the seeds from it. I dry them in the bow window and save them for next spring.
The difference is immediately noticeable. Where a regular tomato is mostly water, the San Marzano’s exit the milling machine looking more like a “slushie”. Meaty and delicious, which translates to thick, flavorful sauce. We take the resulting “slush” and in a large metal crock I misappropriated from the deli, cook it down further right on the gas grill. You can season it while you’re cooking or just leave it plain, which is generally what I like to do. That way, you can use it not only for pasta sauce, but for soups, stews and goulash, seasoning it as needed depending upon the various dishes.
Come Winter, you’ll appreciate the flavor of freshly grown tomato sauce the first time you taste the first batch of chili! It makes all the work; planting, transplanting, watering, weeding and harvesting all worth it!