This year I took advantage of the summer bounty and learned to can. In case you are not familiar, canning at home means preserving food in jars. In my opinion its an art and one in which I had never dabbled.
I followed my roommates lead, she had canned before, and the sage advice found within a dusty copy of the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, published 1951. A farmer friend gave me fifty pounds of cherry tomatoes, carrots and cucumbers for days, and a restaurants supply of onions, garlic, sage, and dill. It seemed like my chance for an oft thought of canning foray. I would have to buy a few pieces of equipment first.
It is recommended I have all sorts of canning specific utensils but with my well prepared kitchen I believed I could wing it and just buy the pot. The recommended pot is the ubiquitous large black and white flecked aluminum pot. It is called a canner but for me will always be where lobsters took their last breaths. I got a flat of large mason jars as well and hurried home. Every second wasted was freshness not captured within this glass…. or something like that. Culinary experiments excite me.
First step, process fifty pounds local and organic cherry tomatoes into the most ridiculously sweet reduction. Figure out other food stuff to make in the meantime…. We settled on curried cucumbers and dilly carrots both stuffed with garlic, herbs and whatever else seemed to fit in.
Boil jars to sanitize, fill, remove bubbles, cover but don’t touch the food or the rims. Boil again for @ a half an hour. Voila, cans. Er, Jars.
Now that’s the short version, of course, and I would seek the advice of a professional (a book, a blog, your grandma…) but its important to note that it was easy (though maybe I will grab some of the cool gadgets recommended next time) and the pay off is tremendous. On this cold February weekend as local root vegetable stockpiles dwindle down, nothing tastes or feels better than a jar of homemade tomato sauce.
Saturday Brunch Menu:
Baked Eggs with 100 Cherry Tomato Sauce
Homemade Pickled Carrots and Horseradish Goat Cheese from Nettle Meadow
served with a Greenhouse Salad Mix from Sang Lee farms.
(We will have to thank the French for this one too, as the process was invented there in 1795, by Nicholas Appert, a chef determined to win a prize offered by Napoleon for a way to prevent military food supplies from spoiling.)
Filed under: cooking, Eating local at home, Farmers, Local Food, Uncategorized Tagged: | Baked Eggs, Canning, Cherry Tomatoes, Curry, Eating local, Farmers, February, food, homecooking, local, Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, Napoleon, Nicholas Appert, organic, Sang Lee, sustainability
Canned tomatoes saved my parents life.
Seriously.
They always make about a hundred jars at the end of the summer. You can imagine how full their basement pantry is every fall. At 2AM in October 2005, the furnace adjacent to the pantry caught fire and an electrical fire began to climb through the walls of the house. Many people die of smoke inhalation this way. My father, a very heavy sleeper, happened to hear smashing sounds in the basement. He woke up startled. (Not only by the sound but he heard it coming near his secret money stash–another story.) Sure enough he saw the fire, grabbed his cash, my mom and the cat. They got out in time. He left a little money trail that the firefighters kindly handed back to him.
I like to imagine the jars getting all hot and excited, dancing off the shelf, screaming, “Sal, wake up!” Of course I always loved those tomatoes that made themselves into many a lasagna, wood-fired pizza and pizzaiolo beef dish. But since then, I have an even deeper affection for them.