domestic goddess

Sep 9, 2008 at 11:37 AM
13 comments

Over the weekend, we had some nasty weather. Which makes me want to get all domestic and whatnot and putter around the kitchen. Like Nigella, I prefer puttering when things are "fiddly, not difficult".

I really, really love tomatoes, and my favorite grocery guy at Lionette's Market knows it. He convinced me to buy a 20 pound box of tomatoes to try my hand at home canning. "Just make a decent tomato sauce and follow the directions. It's not hard." And it wasn't!

Steps:

Buy tomatoes. Haul home. Make sauce. Follow directions for canning. Devour leftovers with lots of bread, forsaking all notion of low-carb eating. Send the rest to friends. (Requests welcome!)

I made two kinds - one an improvisation on this arrabbiata with lots of peppers/cayenne/parsley, and another that was more freeform with loads of roasted garlic. Plus a tomato jam that makes me crazy.

Here's a few photos:

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welcome to your new obsession! canning is super addictive. and thus the reason that jed and i have been canning all kinds of food as gifts for our wedding guests.. crazy? maybe. but who can resist? and when the big earthquake hits, our friends can all survive off of jars of banana peppers, blackberry jam and pickled beets and think of us. :)

miz_ginevra replied to andrea’s comment:
Sep 9, 2008
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how I wish I had a garden like yall! but the gulls (ew) and the rats (eeeeew) and the bugs (.......ew) get everything I try to plant outside here in the Rox, so I'm left with buying stuff, which isn't quite so....cost efficient. But next weekend - I'm thinking salsa? What do you recommend?

[this is good]

I've got a really good recipe for Chilli Tomato Jam lying around and one of my friends (confusingly also called Simon) has improved and simplified it here.

i haven't honestly been brave enough to make anything tomato-based, since i don't have a pressure cooker for processing. call it an irrational fear of botulism. :) so if you need recipes for jams or pickles, i'm your gal.

i am spending the afternoon today making a ridiculously huge batch of escabeche, that delightful pickled jalapeno/carrot/onion mixture. um um um.

miz_ginevra replied to andrea’s comment:
Sep 9, 2008
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oh lord, please don't let me get botulism. I do want to do a plum or cherry jam, since they're almost in season. send em my way!

miz_ginevra replied to Simon Wistow’s comment:
Sep 9, 2008
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4 tbsp (60ml) Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce), Worcester Sauce or Soy Sauce is it wrong that I want to add all three? because then it's not jam so much as sauce. But still.